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Teenage pregnancy is another epidemic we need to deal with as black people in South Africa.
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We can try to sugarcoat it all we like but teenage pregnancy is not a blessing but a societal plague that is rapidly slowing our economic growth as the black community. Most teenagers who fall pregnant do not raise the kids themselves.
Their kids become a financial burden to their parents. Our parents are taking one step forward and 2 steps back because we choose to have babies that we cannot in one word âaffordâ At age 16 youâre still a child yourself!
You are not emotionally, mentally and financially prepared to nurture and raise another human being. Parenthood is not opening your legs and letting a child pop out! it goes way beyond that. and this is the beyond that you as a 15 year old doesnât have the strength to go
Children need stability! When we talk about âaffording a childâ we donât necessarily mean âfinancesâ only we are talking about mental health and emotional stability too. This is something that you donât have wena Nombuso at age 17,
still worried about whether youâll obtain good grades to get into varsity, you havenât even figured out what career you want to go into, you are still trying to maintain friendships and you have not developed any meaningful bonds.
The truth is having a child is a more life altering event than marriage. Children are permanent! They have a direct impact on all of your choices the moment you figure out you are pregnant. At age 18 you havenât even started making life decisions for yourself.
now youâre forced to start making life decisions for another person. Do not be fooled by âmy child is a blessingâ posts here on Media. Ainât nobody is posting pictures of themselves crying themselves to sleep because baby daddy and his family flat out refused paternity.
They donât have R30 to take a child to the clinic or how the grandma must go door to door borrowing money to buy Nappies. They are not telling you about how their parents started treating them like a disappointment.
They canât even watch TV in peace because if comments like â wena ke awuzithengelwa mpahla, kaloku wakhetha ukuzala. Uyintombi endala kaloku wena esiyikwazi ukuzalaâ or â awuzuya lwandle kaloku nathi nge 31st uthi umntwana uzohlala nabaniâ or
ânani ke nilandele ekhondweni ladadewenu ni focus emadodeni, nizomitha nino 16 years nibe nisifakela amehlo.â Our parents deserve more! They deserve more than this bullshit we are giving them. You have watched your single parent struggle to raise you and your siblings,
living pay check to paycheck and you want to add to that struggle by being pregnant or impregnating at age 16! Some of The most broken of the âbrokenâ members of society were direct victims of teenage pregnancy..
Iâm talking about young girls that were forced out of school to provide for their kids and ended up with sugar daddies. Iâm mentioning young men who had a bright future but now have criminal records because they tried to shoplift nappies , baby formulae and wipes from shoprite.
Should I make mention of young men who were forced out of school to go work for kids only to discover years later that the kids werenât even theirs! Iâm talking about young girls who were so shamed by their families for teenage pregnancy and casted out...
as black sheep of the family and resorted to alcohol as a safe place. Iâm talking about kids that were a product of teenage pregnancy that grew up with anger issues & feeling unloved because they were raised by aunts while the mom was away trying to build something for herself.
Young men that were denied by their immature teenage fathers and were never raised up to be proper men of the society and instead resort to violence. Kids can and will hinder your growth especially if you have them at a very young age when you havenât achieved any of the -
things you set to achieve for yourself. As black young girls we already carry so much burden, changing the situation at home, breaking generational curses , fighting a system that makes it impossible for black people to be top achievers
in life or even lead lives above the middle class, breaking a patriarchal systems that view women as a commodity and inferior to men and lastly transforming our society and we in simple terms âcannot afford to carry even more burdenâ
in life or even lead lives above the middle class, breaking a patriarchal systems that view women as a commodity and inferior to men and lastly transforming our society and we in simple terms âcannot afford to carry even more burdenâ
Thread Written By Ulanda Lusawana
