One of the statistics that everyone is happy to trot out against single parenting is teenage pregnancy. Many single mothers were teenagers themselves which puts their daughters at higher risk, and being raised in a single parent family seems to raise the risk in general.
Girls from intact families get pregnant as teenagers as well, but since no one is pointing the finger at their families it’s just us, single moms who are told our daughters will be another statistic.
What can you do? How can you help your daughter make better choices when you may be guilty of those same poor choices?
The most important thing you can do is have the dreaded sex talk. Contrary to popular belief this isn’t one talk that you have when your daughter reaches a certain age, it is an ongoing, age appropriate talk. The more your daughter knows about how her body works and what can happen, the more likely she will make the choice to wait.
Many schools teach abstinence only and in a perfect world that would be all that was needed. We don’t live in a perfect world so it’s important that our children get information from a source they can trust. Did you know that most teenage girls who get pregnant thought that either they or their boyfriend was sterile? Lots of teenage boys will claim to be sterile because they have taken many hits to their scrotum, remind your daughter, if this was true, there would be no more children since all boys, starting at a very young age frequently get hit there.
Teach your daughter that it is better to wait, and why, but don’t forget to give her the information she needs to protect herself. Hopefully she may never use the information but maybe she can help another girl who’s parents didn’t tell her how to protect herself.
Teach your daughter to respect herself, explain why teenage boys act the way they do, and give her other options. Tell them they always have the right to say no. Teach them how to say it in a way that is no threatening and won’t cause things to escalate if they find themselves in a dangerous situation.
Encourage abstinence and lay out the consequences of choosing to have sex. Pregnancy as a teen is hard, but there are also diseases that you can carry the rest of your life or can even take your life. In addition, a baby is a forever choice. Explain how her whole life would change and all the things she would have to give up to spend the next eighteen years raising someone else.
Most of all, be someone your daughter can talk to, even about uncomfortable things. Make sure you are talking, not lecturing, and make sure you are doing more listening than talking. Sometimes just saying, “How do you feel about that?” or “What would your do in that situation?” gives your daughter the opportunity to talk about these things before they ever happen to her, and she will decide for herself that waiting is the right thing to do.