In the last few years, the "little mom" phenomenon has been increasing. There have been TV documentaries, a soap opera, and two years ago, a movie ("Jenny, Juno") about junior high students having a baby became a hot topic.
There are even fan pages of little moms on the Web. It seems that teenage motherhood has become a new trend in Korea.
But being a teenage mom is harsh. Most have to leave school for their babies, and because they are young and their parents don't support them, nearly 60 percent are facing serious economic problems.
It cannot be denied that they made a brave decision but the problem lies in the fact that they made choices which led to circumstances forcing them to make such a decision in the first place.
So how can we solve this problem? Reportedly some 30,000 teenage girls a year have abortions. Additionally, 15 percent of all teenage girls are sexually active but only 15-20 percent of them practice birth control.
Many girls don't know how to use condoms. One of my middle school friends didn't even realize she was pregnant until five months into the pregnancy. She finally had an abortion.
Why does this happen?
Incorrect knowledge and inappropriate sex education are the main causes. A recent study found that 55 percent of teenagers get their information from friends, 15 percent from teachers and 8 percent from pornography. Parents accounted for a mere 1.7 percent.
School sex education offers us very little. I have not received any sex education since I entered high school. When I was a middle-schooler, the school nurse came in and showed us a video about sperm and ova meeting and making babies. The video also said being pregnant as a teen is painful, teens being sexually intimate is bad, abortion is murder - they just told us "Don't do it!" but didn't tell us why and what to do if it happens.
Confucian ideas in Korea have made sex a taboo and now we can't get access to real useful knowledge and information. But time has passed and people have changed.
Now it's time for sex education to be changed. In other countries like America and Britain, they teach kids how to use condoms and what real sexual intimacy is. They also use realistic illustrations to teach teenagers how a baby is going to be born.
With this type of open education, teenagers can get correct and appropriate knowledge. Sex education has to be about "why not" and "how to solve it". Teenagers also need to learn the consequences of their mistakes and what responsibilities they will have.
Parents have the biggest role to play. The aforementioned study found that parents have shockingly little influence over their children. Parents blindly push their children to study and pursue success with little to no concern for the possibility of their child engaging in sexual acts.
Parents seem to think that avoiding the subject will make it go away, that by talking about it they are encouraging the act. Now that we are seeing the numbers of little moms (and dads) rising near or above 10,000 a year, it is time for parents to take responsibility and address the topic of sex with their children.
Lastly, the media should also be cognizant of how they are portraying these adolescent parents. There are numerous TV programs and movies describing little moms as happy and brave girls. They even describe teenage sex as ordinary happenings. But by distorting the reality like this, they are producing more and more moms. Society is influenced by the media and the media should not be minimizing the drastic impact that teenage pregnancy has on the lives of kids.
Our society needs to wake up and face this problem actively in school, at home and in the media. When kids end up having kids, life becomes much more difficult for everyone involved. Ignoring and sweeping aside the issue of sex will not make it disappear as we are already seeing.
What are the implications of unprotected sex and what do we do if we find ourselves in such a situation? Those are the questions all teens need to be able to answer before and not after.
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