ADOLESCENT PREGNANCIES: STOP THE BLAME GAME

It is that time of the year and we are up in arms again. The media has been awash with stories about our children sitting for the national examinations while in labour. The joke around the block is that parents negotiated for one certification but they are getting two for the price of one. The young ones are bringing home a national exam certificate plus a grandchild.

This is most certainly not a laughing matter. Debates are raging hot on social media platforms among parents, educators and health professionals but it is clear that there is no silver bullet here. Matters of sexuality tend to rouse the most diverse of opinions amongst us. Yet what we are seemingly unaware of is that while we argue about the best approach to dealing with this crisis, the babies keep popping and our teenage mothers continue to increase in number.

For most people in the above 40 age bracket, a review of their own parent’s age of sexual debut is quite an eye opener. Most of our mothers were actually teenage moms. They were married by 16 or 17, had their first babies by 18 and were done with child bearing by the age of 25. Very few of them advanced beyond basic education and even for those who did, they already had their first-born babies before they started university or college.

These are the parents who raised children in the 70s and 80s and were very keen on education. They literally bull-dozed their children into school and fought tooth and nail to ensure these children got educated and absorbed into employment. These were the no-nonsense parents who did not think there was a future in the arts and professions such as law, engineering, accounting, medicine and architecture were the pinnacle of success.

The 70s and 80s children did not know what a domestic manager was. They walked to and from school, got home to do assignments and chores around the house, cleaned up after themselves and learnt basic life skills from their parents. Television was a privilege and they read books and comics for entertainment. The children belonged to a community and neighbours punished all children for wrongdoing even when they were not their parents. Getting pregnant in school was taboo.

This is the classic picture of the modern society. The main challenge we have as a country is the disparity between this kind of society and the societies we left behind. Rural communities that are still deeply invested in harmful practices that create an environment that enables teenage pregnancies to thrive. A report by the Ministry of Health released recently showed that Narok County still leads in teenage pregnancies where 40% of these children are mothers while still children themselves. Despite progress being made in tackling child marriages in these communities, the statistics are still nothing to write home about.

Away from the impact of harmful cultural practices, poverty still drives the statistics. This is glaringly obvious when one looks at the urban informal settlement areas. The numbers are unacceptable. The contributing factors have been reported over and over again: poverty, insecurity, lack of privacy for purposes of ablution and the unsaid severe unmet need for housing that forces families to live in unacceptably close proximity.

What is interesting is that every faction has solutions but these solutions are not being applied synergistically to solve the problem. Is it a legal problem? Very much so. It matters not the angle we view this from, it is defilement, punishable by law. Is it a health problem? Yes it is. Children should not be having children. It has negative physical and psychological consequences that we all know about.

Is it a social problem? Absolutely. Everything that contributes to enabling these pregnancies to happen is vested in the degradation of the social fabric. The line between adulthood and childhood is blurred, with children taking adult roles while adults are failing in their role to protect, nurture and guide the children.

Is it a moral problem? Most certainly so. But the bigger question here is whose morality is in question. We must not reduce this to a religious debate. Morality should not only be viewed through a religious lens. Some extreme religions across the world do support marrying off children. Morality must traverse all spheres.

We must set aside our preferences and embrace proposals made to counter this epidemic. We are losing time while engaging in unproductive debates. Let us embrace synergy so that we have an all-rounded product to steer our children away from this pitfall.

Majority of parents never had sexuality education, whether in school, church or home. They are therefore poorly equipped to offer the same. They are quick to bump off this responsibility to the teachers or religious leaders. The only language they know is the threats they received from parents when they were teenagers. Can we start here? This is the primary prevention strategy we must embrace. Equip parents to hold the awkward conversations with their own children. Equip teachers to effectively carry out the Life Skills subject in class. Equip religious leaders to handle the same from the pulpit.

The secondary strategy will require a lot of effort to get out heads out of the sand. The law must be enforced to protect minors. We cannot continue to pay lip service to the constitutional protections afforded to our children. In addition, we must be cognizant of the fact that even with all these interventions, there will still be minors who will require contraception and family planning services. These, they must access in keeping with their constitutional right to the highest attainable standards of health.

Tertiary intervention is the last bit of the safety net. For the ones who are already teen mothers, what have we put in place to cater for them? Sending them back to school is not enough. If a girl got pregnant because she had to sell sex for pads, what is she going to feed her child with? How have we changed her circumstances to prevent a recurrence? There is need for clear social protections for these young moms to break the vicious cycle. Our children’s future depends on us!