Impact of the Main Family for being Pregnant in Teenage in a Selected Semi Urban Village in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Teenage pregnancy is an issue considered globally. The teenage girl is becoming pregnancy within the age between 13-19 years can be defined as the teenage pregnancy. It has identified as a problem in both developed and developing countries. It caused to raise various human right issues as depriving her right to education and denying her right to health. There are many reasons associated with teenage pregnancy as poverty, ignorance, alcohol and drug abuse, mothers working overseas, risky sexual behaviour, poor parent-child relationship and poor teacher-pupil relationship. Accordingly, the major objective of the present research was to identify the impact of the main family for being pregnant in teenage and the specific objectives were to identify the social, economic and emotional factors associated with the teenage pregnancy and to identify necessary suggestions to minimize the teenage pregnancy. As methodology case study was applied and data were collected via open interviews with the pregnant teenagers in vide array and their family members based on five case studies. Further the ‘grama niladaree’ (GN), class teacher and family health midwife (PHM) were interviewed as a mechanism to protect the validity and the reliability of data. Necessary steps have been taken to protect the confidentiality of data; the names of the participants and also the name of the village were not mentioned in the report. Date was analyzed through data through thematic analysis technique. As an economic factor all the respondents presented poverty as the major cause for teenage pregnancy. Similarly, negative parenting, lack of the understanding of sexual education, education level of the parents, income of the family, alcohol addiction, drug abuse and peer teacher-student relationships were identified as causing factors to the teenage pregnancy and by providing the services of all the public officers who are already attached to the villages and properly supervising and regulating that service, the incidence of girls in such situations can be minimized.