The term "population explosion" describes the fact that human births are exceeding deaths on planet earth by about 85 million each year. This is the result of positive advances in health care and medical treatment of formerly fatal illnesses, rather than an increase in fertility. Even though people are having fewer babies, people are also living longer. There are several ways to think about the havoc this will cause. On the macro level, concerns are that people will destroy the world by destroying the environment and using up all the world's resources. In many underdeveloped countries, when there are too many people, the economy cannot grow. Basic subsistence for the population is a constant struggle. On the Micro level, concerns center on the quality of life, the personal misery and pain of never getting ahead economically and of watching children die of starvation. When women have unintended or unwanted children, the suffering of all parties intensifies. My unit will focus on one aspect of the micro or individual level. The individual I choose to concentrate on here is the American teenager and the issue I want to consider is unintended pregnancy. Teen mothers are more likely to have large families which contributes to growing population. When the children are unintended and unwanted, their lives and those of their parent(s) are miserable. It is with the intention of addressing the human rights of child and mother that I write this unit: the right of every child to be wanted and well cared for, the right of every mother to be able to have the children she wants and to be able to care adequately for them.
Even though its teen pregnancy rate has been declining in the last few years, the United States still has the highest rate among developed countries. Eighty-six percent of pregnancies in teenagers are unintended. In our current society, getting pregnant and becoming a parent as a teenager can result in enormous negative social consequences for the parent and the children. For the parent, these include completing less education, working at low-paying jobs, having a lower possibility for lifetime income, and not reaching one's full potential as a contributing parent and citizen. "When compared to children born to women aged 20 and older, babies born to mothers aged 15-17 have less supportive and stimulating home environments, poorer health, lower cognitive development, worse educational outcomes, higher rates of behavior problems, and higher rates of teen childbearing themselves." A shared goal of many educators and health care providers alike is to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy because it is bad for teens as individuals, bad for local and national communities (because of the financial costs of supporting young parents and babies, the medical costs for premature and low birth weight infants, and the costs to society of losing the potential contributions to society of the teens who drop out of school due to pregnancy), and bad for the world because it contributes to growing population.
Postponing the arrival of the first child and ensuring that every child is a wanted child is the goal. There is a need to convey this information to teenagers so that they will have unprotected sex less frequently which, in turn, will lead to a reduction in the number of teenage pregnancies. This can be good for the world by lowering the number of births, good for the country and for local communities by decreasing the number of children and adolescents who need support services, and good for the individual who consciously chooses when and how many children he or she wants to raise. The object here is to convince teenagers that it is better for them personally as well as better for the rest of the world for them not to get pregnant unintentionally.
This unit is designed to be taught at the same time as AIDS Education Week, an educational unit for all ninth grade classes in the New Haven Public Schools. The five day AIDS Week presents information about HIV and AIDS, its transmission, its effect on the immune system, its symptoms and treatments, its prevention and its epidemiology, with a special focus on the incidence among young people in the US and in Connecticut. AIDS Week targets students' motivation to protect themselves from this virus by attempting to increase their own sense of vulnerability. Individuals infected with HIV visit each class for discussion and students watch a film showing young people who got infected as teenagers. Another objective of AIDS Week is to teach behavioral skills needed to effectuate healthy decisions. These include relationship skills such as communication, negotiation and assertiveness skills; and materials skills such as where to get and how to use condoms correctly. The projected outcomes of AIDS Week are behaviors which prevent the transmission of disease as well as pregnancy: not having sexual intercourse or always using protection when having sexual intercourse.
AIDS Week is part of the Social Development curriculum, a comprehensive, sequential, skills-based kindergarten through 12th grade program. The goal of the Social Development Program is to prevent problem behaviors which lead to negative outcomes (like dropping out of school, becoming involved in violence, using drugs, getting pregnant or infected with a sexually transmitted disease). This is achieved by promoting positive, health-enhancing behaviors and encouraging the development of emotional and social skills (like being aware of one's own and others' feelings; handling anger, frustration and hurt in constructive ways; problem-solving; conflict management; accepting and appreciating differences; making decisions based on understanding consequences). Students learn that there are alternative ways of behaving which do not create problems in their lives. Knowing how to recognize signs of stress and then what to do to reduce that stress can help students better cope with their emotions in a constructive rather than destructive way. Understanding that controlling one's impulses to react to a stressful situation until calm and thoughtfulness return can help a student avoid getting suspended for fighting. Taking seriously the knowledge that sexual intercourse can lead to pregnancy, learning peer resistance and communication skills as well as how to prevent conception can mean that unintended pregnancy won't happen in their relationships. The high school curriculum is not being implemented currently (with a few exceptions), except for AIDS education. I am writing this unit to provide a broader educational experience surrounding AIDS Week for ninth graders.
