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Child Abuse and Single Parenthood
| Article
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10651 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
1,079 Words |
| Author
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Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson
Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson are cofounders of Childhelp
USA, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to treating,
preventing, and eventually ending child abuse. Childhelp USA
was organized in 1959; its headquarters are in Woodland Hills,
California. |
Child abuse is a major factor that must be considered when calculating the high costs of teen pregnancy, and adolescent mothers are particularly vulnerable, both as victims and as victimizers, in the cycle of neglect and abuse. This is our firm conviction after more than thirty years of involvement in treating and preventing child abuse through Childhelp USA.
Abused children do not just grow up and forget the horrors of their childhood. Neglect and exploitation leave deep psychic wounds affecting virtually every area of their lives. Our nation's criminal statistics also confirm that the abused all too often grow up to become abusers themselves. That is the bad news. The good news is that abusive and neglectful behavior is not a contagious or terminal disease. It is learned--and what is learned can be unlearned. The vicious cycle can be broken.
We believe, therefore, that the answer to the question raised by Eby and Donovan--"What is to be done regarding the growing problem of teen pregnancy in America?"--must include the eradication of child abuse, because these issues are so deeply and inextricably intertwined.
Each year, 2.9 million children are reported as victims of child abuse and neglect; 1.3 million run away from home; 1.1 million teenage girls become pregnant; a million students drop out of school and another 300,000 are chronic truants. People under the age of 21 commit more than half of all the serious crimes in the United States; 84 percent of inmates in our overflowing prisons are victims of child abuse; and more than 6 million youths between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed.
Clearly, the United States is reaping the whirlwind for neglecting and abusing its children.
Among the most vulnerable of these victims are the one out of every five American girls who are becoming mothers before leaving their teen years. Some 80 percent of these pregnancies are unplanned.
If this situation is not frightening enough, statisticians also say that over the course of the teen years 40 percent of American girls become pregnant at least once, and for about 30,000 girls each year their pregnancies occur before they reach the age of 15. Moreover, of the teens who become pregnant, half give birth, and 96 percent (most unmarried) keep their babies rather than give them up for adoption. Of the remaining half of these pregnancies, about 10 percent
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