A teenage mother-to-be
Across the continent, poverty has taken its toll on many Third World countries. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, teenage pregnancy, lack of education, prostitution, and juvenile crime are so prevalent that they have affected the socio-economic sectors of these countries.
However, things are now changing. What used to be the problem of these poverty-stricken countries has now shifted to Europe and the United States of America.
Teenage pregnancy is now booming in the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, and France, and in fact throughout the whole of Europe.
The question is why children, who have a lot more chances and facilities for education than their counterparts in the Third World, suddenly choose to be mothers instead? Is it peer pressure? Are they from a family of a broken marriage? Or victims of alcohol and drug abuse, or simply ignorance?
It is now very common to see children and sometimes adults who can speak their own language in Europe, including Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, but can’t read or write. Is that illiteracy or semi-illiteracy?
The Dutch Youth and Family Affairs Minister recently said that “Sexual morals of the country’s youngsters have gone astray. A girl is seen as an object, and sex as a currency. The meaning of love does not play any role anymore in the lives of youngsters.”
He stressed that if the mentality among Dutch youths is to enter a garage to get a girl and the very moment you want sex, then we have lost the principle of moral relationship. Many have distorted ideas about sex. Said Andre Rouvoet.
The minister was responding to a television documentary, “Sex Sells,” aired on Dutch television, which showed 12- to 16-year-old boys and girls speaking openly about sex.
The open experience sex debate revealed that some of the youngsters had their first sexual experience at the age of 9. The average of they lost their virginity at the age of 13.
If the same problems taking place in so-called Third World countries are also occurring in Europe and the USA, then I’m afraid there are no more differences between a Third World country and an advanced country anymore.