Single moderhood and pregnancy

In researching material on single mothers and teen mothers, the factual problems with single mother households, and the stereotypical problems, I found a few interesting issues in the resources I collected which are worth mention. The first is the general statistics of sexual activity and early pregnancy. The second deals with the conflicting views of the effects of single mother families on thechildren. The third deals with the financial issues of prevalent poverty amongst single mothers, and the fourth focuses on global issues.

Single motherhood is an issue of human rights for a few key reasons. in the United States, the title of "single mother" creates several assumptions about the mother's ability to care for her children, the possible negative emotional and mental effects on thechildren, and leads right to the label of "dysfunctional family". Considering the fact that many single mother households are so by the choice of the women(not desiring to have a man around) these kinds of stereotypes are presumptuous a huge overgeneralization. To add to the issue of the stamp of disapproval society gives single mother families, many of them in the U.S. are not receiving the aidthat they should be. On top of raising one or more children without the help of a second party (whether the woman had no choice in this or chose being single was the better of two options), many women are also having to struggle to stay out of poverty. It is nearly impossible for a woman with an average salary to support children on her own, including the expenses of school, clothes, food,transportation, and other necessities; and this is just the middle range of the spectrum.

These issues fall under human rights concerns because a woman should realistically be able to survive and support her family, alone if necessary, without the censure of society or a lack of aid from the government.

The reasons why U.S. women are increasingly becoming single mothers are teen pregnancy, fatherdisappearances, adoption (by choice and often without financial problems), and the biggest of all, divorce. Reasons for single motherhood become more violent and complicated in their repercussions once investigations are done into other countries, such as Muslim nations, or those who have gone through civil war and internal terrorism. Where there is rape and censure of women, the possibilities ofsingle motherhood grow and the consequences worsen. The specific international cases I found were in Sierra Leone (civil war, rape), and Morocco (issues regarding Muslim law and pregnancy out of wedlock).

Not only are single mothers a hazard and disgrace in many areas of the third world, they are also often illegal. In many places, as soon as a women gets pregnant out of wedlock, she ischarged with prostitution (the Moroccan case), and is forced to spend time in jail or pay hefty fines for the crime. These charges are made even if the woman has been raped. These charges are baseless, without trial, and thus an infringement of the autonomy of the woman and her right to not be charged with false crimes and punished; and especially not for the convenience of the governing maleindividuals.

The following are several important statistics dealing with single mother hood and teen pregnancy:

The UK has the highest number of unmarried teenage mothers in the world.

The United States has, worldwide, the second largest percentage of men and women who are sexually active before the age of 18 (73% of men, 63% of women).

22% of girls 15-18 who have had sexual intercourse willbecome pregnant.

About 13% of all US births are to teenage mothers, rising to 33% of all girls who have had less than 10-12 years of schooling.

Single parent households grew form 5% of all US households in 1970, to 9% in 1990.

Out of the 5.7 million women who were due to receive child support in 1989, only 50% received full payment, while 25% received nothing.

25% of all births in the...