Unplanned Parenthood: The Socio-Economic Consequences of Adolescent Child-bearing in Nigeria

Abstract

Adolescent girls feel that adolescent years are a period of breaking away from parents and authority and of finding personal values and particular social and vocational roles. It is an exciting period but possibly a time of experimentation and discovery, discovering people in a relationship and for the first time expressing that relationship sexually. Unfortunately, adolescent girls in the society today are ill-equipped with knowledge about the functions of their body chemistry. Although, in the African culture a girl is brought up and socialized in preparation for motherhood, it is a major component of the feminine gender roles as taught to a female child by the parents and others with whom she comes into contact. Though the assertion that “all women need to be mothers” comes to be true, but some adolescent become parents at the wrong time, thereby complicating matters and the implications are very enormous. This paper examines the socio-Economic consequences of adolescent child bearing. In the paper, it is observed that unplanned parenthood has a long time adverse socio-economic impact on the adolescent mothers and it is capable of truncating their future. It is however recommended that adolescent girls should Endeavour to complete their education, learn new functional skills, gain some work experience and designs a future for themselves before starting a family.

Keywords: Unplanned parenthood, socio-economic consequences ,Adolescent, Childbearing ,Nigeria.