Situating Foucault in Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Measures

Introduction

Teenage pregnancy in USA has declined over the years (Heller & Blackman, 2016; Sonfield, 2012). Teen birth rates have decreased by 67 percent from 1991. In 2016, the teen birth rate was 20.3 births per 1,000 girls in the ages 15-19 years, which represents a 9 percent drop from 2015 (Heller & Blackman, 2016). However, in spite of these declining rates, teenage pregnancy in USA continues to remain the highest amongst the industrialized nations across the world (Heller & Blackman, 2016). Roughly 1 in 4 girls in U.S. becomes pregnant once before the age of 20. While 1 in 6 teen births is a repeat birth. Further there happens to be a significant disparity in teen births across different racial and ethnic groups, geographic regions and age groups (Heller & Blackman, 2016; Sonfield, 2012). Teenage pregnancy is higher amongst the African American, Alaska Native and Hispanic population as compared to the White and Asian American populations (Heller & Blackman, 2016). Teen birth rate among the black and Hispanic teens is twice that of the white teens nationally. While the teen birth rate of American Indian is 60 percent higher than that of the white teen birth rate (Heller & Blackman, 2016; Martin, Hamilton & Ventura, 2015).

Teenage pregnancy has been associated with various social, health and financial issues. Early motherhood disrupts the girls’ educational and career goals, their future earning potentials and has a direct impact on their parenting skills. Teenage mothers are more likely to live in poverty and be dependent on public assistance (Heller & Blackman, 2016; Akella & Jordan, 2015; Shuger, 2012; Santelli & Melnikas, 2010). While children born to teen parents are also at risk educationally and behaviorally. These children are more likely to have lower school achievements, drop out of high school, become teen parents themselves or struggle with drug addiction or incarceration (Heller & Blackman, 2016; Bryant, 2006; Chen, Wen, Fleming, Demissie, Rhoads & Walker, 2007; Banerjee, Pandey, Dutt, Sengupta, Mondal & Deb, 2009; Papri, Khanam, Ava & Panna, 2016; Summers, Lee & Lee, 2017; Santelli & Melnikas, 2010).

It has therefore become imperative in terms of economic opportunity and development, to prevent young people from getting pregnant early. A variety of teen pregnancy preventive strategies have been designed over years to prevent and combat unplanned pregnancy. These constitute increasing awareness of sexuality and sexual education among the youth in middle and high schools, integrating sexual education as a part of the curriculum in schools, providing access to birth control measures and contraceptives, providing information to the youth on sexual transmitted diseases and the consequences of high risk sexual behavior. Other programs include providing peer mentoring and mentors to the young mothers and financial assistance to young parents. While some programs have integrated technology to create educational apps and videos to reach out to the youth with the needed information on sexual awareness and behavior (NCSL Report, 2016).