Teenage Pregnancy In South Africa

1.1. Background

In South Africa we are affected by wild crime, unemployment, violence and HIV and Aids. South Africa must as well deal with the high number of teenage pregnancy in schools. Teenage pregnancy is the major problem in our world today we should all learn about it and how to deal with it, teenage pregnancy is the situation whereby young girls between the age of 13 and 19 become pregnant while they are still at school. Researches have been completed that reveals that the number of teenage girls who become pregnant between the ages of 13 and 19 increases each and every year, actually the number double itself. According to Palash Ghosh (2013) “BBC reported that some 182,000 female high school learners- mostly poor and black become pregnant

There are many causes of teenage pregnancy such as lack of parental care, when basic needs are not met most parents spend their time and energy finding essentials such as food and shelter, leaving little or no time and energy to interact with their children, so most girls find it as an opportunity to go to the get-togethers as they wish and date sugar daddies who have resources to buy sex and end up having unprotected sex. Secondly peer pressure, it is strong among young girls, during adolescence stage most teenage are under pressure of making friends and fitting in with their peers, they allow their friends to make decisions for them in order to be in a certain group of people, because they want to be like other girls who are at the same age with them, they tend to do things such as , dating older men in order to have what their friends has for example fancy clothes, jewellery etc. 33% of pregnant teenage girls stated that they became involved in sexual relationships to impress their friends, because they didn’t want to be rejected. Thirdly school drop outs, most children drop out at school when they fail several times; when they are at home they become fed up and end up doing wrong things. In addition lack of education about sex and relationships at home, parents are often afraid to talk with their children about sex and relationships because they feel like talking about sex and

Traditional African worldview it is a person’s way of thinking and understanding life, religion, culture and beliefs of certain group of people for example Sotho, Zulu, Xhosa people etc. African people especially our parent expect us to fall pregnant after getting married they believe that the only time is right for girl to have masculinity is when they are married, for example Zulu people each and every month they check all the adolescents to see if they still have their virginity, when a young African girl become pregnant her parents become disappointed because they expected many things from their child, they feel like that particular child does not follow or obey the rules of their culture or show any respect towards the elders of the community. Secondly African believe that if a guy impregnate a girl he has to pay for damages to show that what happened was not his plans, it was mistake also to show some respect towards the parent of the girl, paying damages is the way of apologising to the parents as well as to the ancestors because we as Africans we believe in ancestors, we believe that they the ones who protect us as well as God because there is this saying “sex before marriage is a sin” of which we also believe that, paying damages is the way of showing that you are sorry that you have slept with the girl before marrying her and you accept and