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Be sure to read Part 1 before working on this unit. See these other units for more issues related to teen pregnancy:
Concern about teen pregnancy in Aboriginal communities is growing, not because we value parenting less or don’t want babies, but because in the current world having children early is hard on the parents, especially the mothers and the children. Most of us young parents are not prepared for the responsibility of raising children, and we often don’t have family support close by — parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles — that we once had to help in this taxing job. Many, many young parents today are single mothers with little money. Having children usually ends our education early, so our families stay poor. Family problems like alcohol and drug abuse, violence and neglect can result. Many Aboriginal people believe that youth today don’t have what we need to make a sound choice to have or not have children. We do not have all the facts or a clear understanding of what it will mean. Some of us get pregnant because we think having a baby will solve other problems, or we have taken risks with sex, but others have been forced or coerced to have sex. We don’t always have the services we need to prevent unwanted pregnancy or to deal with one after it happens. Young people want to make a real choice to have or not have a baby at each stage of our lives. This requires good sex education so we feel good about our sexuality and can make good decisions, parents who can talk with their kids, information on the real effects of getting pregnant and raising children, and on birth control and abortion, and ways to get the birth control we need, when we need it. For those of us who do get pregnant (by choice or not), we need good counselling and health services so we can choose abortion or adoption if it is right for us at that time. If we go ahead with a pregnancy, we need good prenatal care, enough money, ways to continue with our education, help with child care, and support from our communities to parent well.
Working on Teen Pregnancy in Aboriginal Communities Sexuality is a gift from the Creator. It is intended to be the source of great pleasure and joy. It is a wonderful way to share affection, love and intimacy. Many Aboriginal teens, however, engage in sexual activity and become parents before they are emotionally and financially able to give their children a good start in life, and to get a good start themselves. Community health workers identify low self-esteem and the lack of other options as two major reasons for the growing numbers of Aboriginal women having babies at a young age.
Health and community workers agree that it is not unusual for young women to get pregnant to fill a "hole" in their lives, or to feel needed. Lack of self-esteem makes it difficult to make active choices about your future, to have goals and dreams, and to believe you can do things other than raise children (important as that is). Building self-esteem will help youth make different decisions about being sexually active, protecting themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections and deciding whether to raise the baby if they do become pregnant.Programs designed to improve the general self-esteem and sense of self-worth of Aboriginal girls and young women are important to building strong and healthy communities. The benefits of such programs are that some teens develop the confidence to choose to postpone child-bearing, while others become better prepared for the challenges of teen pregnancy and parenting.
Poor education and training options and a lack of job opportunities can make becoming a mother an attractive alternative. Research has shown the direct link between having other options and choosing to delay parenting. Providing more training programs, culture-based education, job experience and support programs for youth will help.
Some ways to prevent teen pregnancy include:
 I
think there are a lot of teen pregnancies ... because we are not talking
about healthy relationships. The last two generations of Métis, my mother
and my grandmother’s age group, went through an assimilation process
where you weren’t allowed to talk about your traditions and your
culture. So that age group couldn’t pass on the skills from their
grandparents or great grandparents who had an openness to talk about
sexuality.Métis community leader, northern Alberta
Ojibway grandmother, Ontario4 (click here for footnote)
Some ways to support teens who get pregnant include:
A recent national consultation on teen pregnancy involved both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community projects of the Community Action Program for Children (CAPC) and Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP). The overall goal is to maximize the number of thriving children and youth and lower the rate of teen pregnancy. The report, Pro-Action, Postponement, Preparation and Support: A Framework for Action to Reduce the Rate of Teen Pregnancy in Canada, offers ideas about what a community can do to reduce teen pregnancy rates and to support pregnant teens and young parent families. The framework elaborates on three spheres of action:
1 Report on a Preliminary Study of the Issue of Teen Pregnancy for the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, D.R. Harley Consultants Ltd. for Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, Ottawa, 1997, Appendix C. (back to paragraph) 2 Tenuous Connections: Urban Aboriginal Youth Sexual Health and Pregnancy, Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres, Toronto, 2002, p. 26. (back to paragraph) 3 Tenuous Connections, pp. 54-5. (back to paragraph) 4 Tenuous Connections, p. 56. (back to paragraph) 5 Tenuous Connections, pp. 26-7. (back to paragraph) 6 Pro-Action, Postponement, Preparation and Support: A Framework for Action to Reduce the Rate of Teen Pregnancy in Canada, Young/Single Parent Support Network of Ottawa-Carleton, Timmins Native Friendship Centre and Canadian Institute of Child Health for Health Canada, 2000, p. 25. Available at: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hppb/childhood-youth/cbp/npf/pdf/Section%201.pdf (back to paragraph)
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Inuit
saw living together as a young couple as okay, and quite often if the
young mother was unable to look after her child, it would be taken care of
by the extended family. Every parent wants their child to do the right
thing, but in the olden days, if young girls had babies, it was not seen
as a shameful or bad thing to do. If the girl was seen to be too young to
raise the baby, the baby would be loved and taken care of by a family
member. It wasn’t until the Europeans came and brought their own way of
thinking that living together in common-law became a bad thing and
shameful.