Tis’ the season for back to school.
Most kids will be accompanied by their adult parents, who will watch those little ones board the school bus or line up with their classmates in the schoolyard.
Another group of younger children will be accompanied by their teenage parents to a babysitter or childcare center before they board the school bus to their own schools. Unfortunately, not many teen parents will be sitting in the classroom themselves.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy cites parenthood as a leading cause of school dropout among teen girls.
Pregnant teens and teen parents, especially girls, are more likely to experience disruptions in education than their non-childbearing counterparts.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010, nearly 368,000 infants were born to females aged 15- to 19-years-old. Only half of teen mothers earn a high school diploma by age 22 compared to 90 percent of women who have not given birth as a teenager.
While teen pregnancy and birth rates has reached an all-time low in forty years, the school drop out rate for teen parents remains high. The biggest drop in teen births occurred among African-American and Hispanic females, yet they still continue to have the highest rate of pregnancy and birth, and thus, are at the highest risk for not earning a high school diploma.
Approximately 30 percent of teen girls will drop out of school because of pregnancy. Even fewer will go on to college. And, over their lifetime, most will earn lower incomes than their non-childbearing counterparts.
A pregnant teen has special needs that may not be available in or tolerated by schools. Prenatal care may cause pregnant teens to miss school, especially in the later stages of pregnancy, during complications, when doctor’s visits are more frequent or if they require hospitalization.
Pregnancy can also be uncomfortable and tiresome for the high school student who has to endure a seven-hour school day and then complete hours’ of homework. Teens who have given birth also miss school because they need to recover from delivery, tend to a colicky newborn or care for a sick child.
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article courtesy of TheGrio.com
