Addressing Macro Perspectives Of Societal Influences In

ADDRESSING MACRO PRESPECTIVES OF SOCIETIAL INFLUENCES IN RELATION TO TEENAGE PREGNANCY BY THE PROFESSIONAL THROUGH THE NURSING PROFESSION

.As your actions are informed by your awareness of values, your thinking and your ideas are shaped and changed by your experiences with those actions (Chinn, 1995, p. 3)..

As a nursing professional, addressing the cause and not the symptoms of societal concerns in relation to teenage pregnancy would be the ideal. In order for a profession to evoke transition in this or any aggregate, it is important for that profession to correlate those macro perspectives, which influence poor lifestyle choices and how these choices may be approached in a health promotion perspective. It is the intent of this dissertation to relate current statistical information, some societal factors involved in the increased numbers of teenage pregnancy, and the nursing implications to this issue.

Despite education about birth control and the negative connotations in regards to procreation in the adolescent, the number of teenage pregnancies in the United States are very significant. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy that approximately one million teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 get pregnant each year in the

United States and that nearly eighty percent (80%) of these pregnancies are to unmarried teens. Move than one half of teen pregnancies end in birth and fewer teens choose abortion or adoption. In the United States, teen pregnancies contribute to at least $7 billion in cost and the United States is ranked as having the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world (1998).

It has been noted that the educational success is significantly restrained by teenage pregnancy for both the teen and her child. Jane Manlove states that less than one-third of teens that begin families before the age of 18 ever complete high school and approximately fifty percent (50%) of teen mothers that had quit school did so before becoming pregnant and the other half dropped out after becoming pregnant. Children of teen parents often do worse in school and are fifty percent (50%) more likely to repeat a grade (1998).

With these statistics, the nursing professional addressing a macro perspective to the issue would need to look at what are some of the influences, which increase teenage pregnancy, specifically societal contributions. According to Nola Pender that health promotion involves strategies related to an individual lifestyle and personal choices made in a social context that have a strong influence over one.s own health expectations (1996). Keeping this ideal in mind and looking at

some areas which may be addressed are the higher numbers of teenage pregnancy linked to lack of education, self esteem uncertainties, lack of access to the health care delivery system, relationships pressures, and access to medical expulsions of unwanted pregnancies.

Looking at strategies to improve lack of education first, nurses should get involved in the political arena to develop and encourage referendums in legislative policies to get the needed education to the target population. This should be accomplished at the local, state, and national levels to encompass that macro perspective. Nursing professionals must maintain that professional status by presenting themselves as an advocate for those aggregates in order to be recognized as an entity in support of their needs.

School nursing is another venue where the community needs should be assessed and addressed. According to Jennifer Frost and Jacqueline Darroch that school based programs geared towards the sexual education of teens provide a natural laboratory for attempts to change adolescent behaviour and efforts to document change. Students are a captive audience for the intervention and can usually be re-interviewed one or more years after the intervention without too much difficulty (1995). This research

area may provide valuable information, which may be passed on to verify the need for this aggregate.

The second societal influence to be addressed pertains to that of self-esteem uncertainties. Many young females have reported the rationales behind their pregnancies at such a young age to be related to a lack of self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem have been related to feeling of being unloved by family members or significant others, inferiority complexes, misunderstanding the female/male teenage role related to parenthood, and a means of being in control of circumstances they have not been able to control in their own lives.

In a study conducted by Cynthia Connelly, she determined that low self-esteem factors were present prior to pregnancy and once the teen became pregnant, self-esteem was heightened (1998). Although this study was limited to obtaining data during the gestational period of the sample group, it indicates an area in which the nursing professional may develop appropriate and effective therapeutic interventions. Lois Bolden and Barbara Williams found in a study of a measurement of self-esteem in pregnant teenagers that consideration of the self-esteem of pregnant teenagers will enhance the nurses’ assessment and intervention with this vulnerable population (1995). Nursing needs to bring about more research to determine

what specific interventions provide the best results to addr