Adolescent pregnancy in the U. S. is on the rise again. It reached its peak in 1991 but then started to decline until 2005. Culture has played an important role and continues to play an important an ever more complex role in adolescent pregnancy. How it influences a teenager’s choice to become pregnant is important to reducing teenager pregnancy. This essay tries to highlight some points on the matter, that is, how much of an influence culture is on a teenager choosing pregnancy. This essay will focus primarily on youth and culture in rural America. Adolescent Pregnancy: An Introduction
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2007) (CDC) details teenager pregnancy in the United States. The birth rate for teenagers from 2005 to 2006 has risen 3 percent for teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. This increase follows a fourteen year trend where teenage pregnancies were actually decreasing. The increase is highest for non-Hispanic black teenagers with a increase of 5 percent. The percentage for Hispanic teenagers is 2 percent, for non-Hispanic white teenagers it is 3 percent, and for American Indian teenagers it is 4 percent.
According to the same report, there are consequences of teenage pregnancy. Most notably, future prospects for those teenagers who give birth, and for their posterity, declines. The CDC claims that teenagers from 15 – 19 are less likely to receive prenatal care, they don’t gain the appropriate weight, are statistically higher smokers than older women who become pregnant, are more likely not to complete high school, and more likely to live in poverty. The statistics for the children born of teenagers is also dire.
They have high rates of low birth weight and health problems, for example infant death, blindness, mental retardation, deafness, that are associated with the former. The children often do not have adequate healthcare, which further complicates any health problem they may have been born with or which may have developed. (Singh et al. , 2000). For the teenage mothers and their children, these are all unwanted and dismal consequences, the statistics provide a grim outlook for teenage pregnancies. Culture in Rural America and Adolescent Pregnancy
Culture influences all aspects of one’s life. It embodies one’s religion or beliefs of one person, a family, a community, or a nation. It is where and how you live, and include such things as economic systems, media, agriculture, or symbols of a culture such as a particular dance style or sport. Culture is also not stagnant, but must change in order to survive. There are cultures surviving among greater, more inclusive cultures, and that is how it is in the United States.
There is one overall “pop” culture in the U. S., and then within that culture circle, so to speak, there are different, more defined cultures. Rural America is a culture within the overall U. S. culture but one that also harbors other cultures. For the purpose of this paper, we will define rural American culture in inclusive, broad terms, but will focus essentially on those factors of culture which today seem most influential: (1) Religion, (2) Media, and (3) Socioeconomics. Culture in Rural America: Religion Traditionally, religion has been key to culture’s identity and to the way we live our lives.
Buddhism shapes the culture and lives of Tibetans, as does Islam shape the lives of Muslim Arabs and Muslim Americans, and so does Christianity shape the lives and culture of Christian Americans, particularly those living in rural America, where Christianity has its largest foundation and support. Rural America is mainly Christian and their value systems are based largely on overall Christian values and morals. Consider the presidential candidate map, the red states are highly rural American states, and they are the ones that support Bush, McCain, and other Republicans because they share their so-called “Christian values”.
What are some of these Christian values? In the context of this paper, one is that premarital sex is a sin. Christians also believe in souls and that at conception, the fetus has a soul. Of course, another strong tenet of Christianity is “Thou shalt not kill. ” What does this all mean? Those is rural America are against many forms of sex education in the schools because they believe that this may influence children and/or youth to have sex, including instruction on birth control and STD protection. Without sex education and with such strong sentiment, a culture of ignorance is created.
On the other hand, because killing another is a sin, and that a fetus is considered to have a soul at the time of conception, abortion is strongly opposed. Abortion is tantamount to one’s soul being sent to hell. All one needs to do is drive through rural America, in Kentucky and Illinois, for examples, and there are road signs claiming that abortion is a mortal sin. The Christian Right in rural America has made considerable efforts to ensure that abortion is banned, though not successful, they have made headway. Culture in Rural America: Media
Media, however, has in recent history played an important role in shaping culture, and in the U. S. , that would be the popular culture. Children and youth watch TV more than they spend on homework and play time. While driving, we listen to the radio. There are messages that are constantly being transmitted to us on a regular basis about how we should live our lives, what is acceptable and what is not. Oftentimes, this contrasts other aspects of our lives, such as religion. Media has been extremely influential in recent years, and it also emphasizes the important role of sex.
J. D. Brown (2002) confirms that mass media are an increasingly accessible means for teenagers, as well as others, to learn about sex and sexual behavior. Media is crucial with regard to youth because they are at that developmental stage where they are forming their sexual beliefs and certain patterns of behavior. Kosicki (1993) provides that agenda setting/framing theory whereby the media can in certain terms “tell” people what is important in the world and how to think about that same world.
This theory combined with the cognitive social learning theory, which suggests that people imitate the behavior of others when the latter are rewarded for their behavior (Bandura, 1977), predicts that youth will believe that certain behavior they see on TV or elsewhere is “ok” and then they will imitate it. For example, when there’s a TV show popular among youth, such as Beverly Hills 90210, and the high schoolers are indeed engaging in sexual intercourse without being punished, but possibly indirectly and directly being rewarded for it, youth will follow accordingly.
Arnett (1995) affirms that one of the five primary uses of media by adolescents is identification with youth culture. In effect, the media is a socializing agent. Brown et al. (1991) and Courtwright et al. (1980) have determined that mass media does affect awareness of, beliefs about, and possibly actual sexual behavior in youth. They believe that more research is necessary, but the overall census is that is definitely has an impact. Media impacts culture, shapes and defines it as culture had initially shaped and defined those in the media.
It is an ever evolving process, but with regard to teenage sex, the process has already commenced and indeed has already been shaped with definite boundaries. Culture in Rural America: Socioeconomics The socioeconomics of rural America is connected to a number of key elements, including a core set of demographic, educational, and economic forces. Rural America is more inclined to poverty and low educational attainment. The 2007 U. S. Census report indicates the same.
The South, largely rural, has the highest poverty level, high unemployment, and low educational attainment. Socioeconomics of course influence our life choices just as must as religion and media. In some ways it influences our morality, but in many ways it influences what we can and cannot do due to lack of financial and mental abilities. Poverty demoralizes us. Lack of education puts us in the dark. If a teenager lacks education on safe sex, or sex education in any form, s/he will not understand its consequences.
Further, if that same youth lives in poverty, s/he may not even care about those risks. There are studies that back up the above-mentioned notion that poverty and lack of education precede teenage pregnancy, and indeed may influence it. Kirby et al. (2001) found that community characteristics have an impact upon adolescent sexual behavior, pregnancy and childbearing. Rates of pregnancy are related to such factors as the level of unemployment, community income, and perceived opportunities of a prosperous future, measures of community stress and the crime rate.
On the contrary, another study found that children and teenagers in neighborhoods with higher overall quality were more likely than their counterparts in low-quality neighborhoods or rural areas to practice contraception when they did have sex. Pregnancy and an Adolescent’s Choice A brief understanding of culture in rural American has been provided, and it is now implicit the complexities that underlies the intersection of religion, media and socioeconomics. The combination of all three in rural America does indeed have a great impact of the youth.
Media tells them sex is ok, their religion states otherwise but indicates that if indeed one does get pregnant then it’s wrong to abort the child, meanwhile poverty and lack of education seem to create more space for youth’s sexual activity. Broadly speaking, and as an example to conclude, a teenager in rural America chooses to have sex because, again, the media indicates it is ok, but because of limited sex education, the teenagers do not use protective means, thus, in pregnancy occurs and the youth decides to keep the baby because it is against her religion to abort.
References
Arnett, J. J. (1995). Adolescents’ uses of media for self-socialization. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24(5), 519 – 533. Bandura, A. (1977). A. Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Brown, J. D. & Newcomber, S. (1991). Television viewing and adolescents’ sexual behavior. Journal of Homosexuality, 21, 77-91. Courtwright, J. & Baran, S. (1980). The acquisition of sexual information by young people. Journalism Quarterly, 57, 107-114. D. Kirby, K. Coyle, & J. B. Gould (2001). Family Planning Perspectives, 33 (2), pp. 63-69.
http://www. agi-usa. org/pubs/journals/3306301. pdf. J. D. Brown. (Feb. 200) Mass Media Influences on Sexuality. Journal of Sex Research. Pan, Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10, 55-75. Singh, S. , & Darroch, J. E. (2000). Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: Levels and trends in developed countries. Family Planning Perspectives, 32(1), 14-23. United States Department of Agriculture (October 25, 2007) Rural America at a Glance, 2007 Ed. http://www. ers. usda. gov/Publications/EIB31/EIB31. pdf