Teen Parenting

Being a teen parent would be tough. You must juggle your school, work, and having your baby. Although being a teen parent is tough I would say it is one of the best options when you get pregnant by accident, I personally would say the best option is adoption and the worst option would be abortion. Getting pregnant as a teenager closes many doors but it also opens many doors too. Having children as a teenager forces a person to grow up way faster than they should. As a teen parent if you are between the ages of 16 and 18 and not the custodial parent, child support is around $50 per month. Nearly one million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year, that means close to 2800 teens get pregnant each day. Approximately 4 in 10 young women in the U.S. become pregnant at least once before turning 20 years old. Teen parenting costs U.S. taxpayers roughly $7 billion annually for social services and lost tax revenues. Teen parenting statistics show that while it has become socially accepted for teenage mothers to stay in school, unfortunately, an alarming 80 percent of them either choose or feel the need to drop out and only fifty percent of teenage parents who had their first child during the early teenage years will finish high school before they reach 30 years old. Teen parenting statistics also indicate that it is more likely for someone who has had a child between 20 and 24 years old to finish college than someone who becomes a parent before the age of 19. Women who had children after the age of 20 earn twice as much as women who were teenage mothers.