With the closure of schools which is almost nearing 2 years (from March 18th 2020 till date) that has also made Uganda go down in history as the country to have schools closed for the longest time ever, we have seen a worrying rise in the number of teenagers getting pregnant.
Most of the students who are now mothers have not shown the desire to go back to school once the schools reopen. They have opened another chapter and while some are raising their children in their parents' homes, others have got married and are now fulltime house wives.
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| A teenager with her baby |
This leaves the pondering question of "who is to blame?"
We know the times have been hard, parents have lost their jobs and have had to sit at home with their children who have come back from school, people have contracted COVID, people are depressed, but to what do we exactly pin the cause of these pregnancies?
To the government for closing schools for all this long?
To the teachers that are supposed to have equipped these teenagers with sex education at school?
To the teenagers themselves for their ignorance and negligence?
The healthcare system?
We have, to a certain point, addressed some of the causes at least the ones that are within our "addressing range" but since COVID is not disappearing soon it leaves us baffled whether this whole fiasco will ever end.
We need to evaluate the parents' contribution to the problem since they are now the sole groomers of the children considering teachers are out of the picture. What have parents done to reduce the teenage pregnancy rates?
With constantly being confined in homes with their children, parents have subsequently grown reluctant in disciplining and checking in on the behavior of their children.
Children stay out late without the knowledge of the parents, almost every school going child has acquired a phone in this pandemic and the parents don't even ask them how they got the phones or how they manage to get money for airtime and data on a daily basis. It is small overlooked issues like these that have made young girls to run to men in their ignorance leading to pregnancies.
However, assigning blame will not do much to curb these growing teenage pregnancies, combined effort to raise these teenagers is greatly needed. Look at that pregnant girl like she was your sister, daughter, niece, grand daughter, what would you have done to prevent her from getting pregnant. Did you give her the required sex education? Did you listen to her when she had personal issues or you didn't even realize she had personal issues, did you notice her staying-out-late episodes and not call her out.
The moment we start addressing this issue on a personal level is when we will see a positive change.
It is also time to stop sheilding these young boys and girls against sex, because they have the internet at their disposal. Have honest and sexual conversations with them, let them be aware of the consequences.
Let's strive to put an end to teenage pregnancies together.
