Teenage Pregnancy Narrative Essay

GCSE Humanities | Teenage pregnancy | | Are young people represented fairly by the media in British society? | | 0900001846 Haleema Shafi | 2/3/2010| Deadline 17/03/10| Contents page Sections Page number * Abstract * Introduction * Methods * Results * Discussion * References * Appendices Abstract Introduction This research is an investigation into whether the media in the UK represents young people accurately. The media have been constantly running stories about young people binge drinking, being involved in knife crime, gang culture and drug taking, amongst others.

The daily mail has run headlines such as ‘British Teenagers are the Binge Drinking Champions of Europe’ (Hope, 2009), ‘The Face of Britain’s Knife Crime Scourge: Teenage Mutilated during Vicious Assault With Three-inch Blade’ (Daily Mail Reporter, 2009), ‘Inside Feral Britain: a Blood Chilling Journey into the Heart of Teenage Gang Culture’ (Malone, 2007). These stories give readers the impression that young people are violent, did not have respect of other or the law moreover they did not have respect for the society. This research will investigate whether media stereotype young people in this way or whether media reflect reality.

This is done in the context of teenage pregnancy. In the Daily Mail the article ‘Time to get tough on teenage mums’ by Katie Hampson (2006) is saying that teenagers think that they can get an attractive lifestyle by getting pregnant. This includes getting free council flats and finical rewards which is provided by the tax payer. Hampons also suggests that young mothers have different values to the rest of society. One example is that teenage mums go out night clubbing and are sexually promiscuous (Johnston, 2008). This provides readers with a stereotypical view of young mothers.

Stereotyping is when people are put into groups and are classed as something, for what they do or what they wear. One example from Rosenhan (1978) where she said ’on being sane in insane places’ this shows how people behave according to someone is labelled or stereotyped. Research has shown that the media has stereotype social groups in the past for example Stan Cohen (1980) shows the different type of stereotyping views that are used by the media. In his study he describes how the media are categorizing young people into groups which are ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’.

From this the media nowadays is using the same thing with teenage pregnancy. The media is saying that young teenage girls are ignorant and did not think about others, or society as they get intoxicated and pregnant and are using the tax payers money and getting support from the government to help them. This can also lead to prejudice, discrimination and persecution. Prejudice- A prejudice is an implicitly held belief, often about a group of people. Race, economic class, gender or sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age and religion are other common subjects of prejudice ( en. ikipedia. org/wiki/Prejudice) Discrimination- Discrimination toward or against a person of a certain group is the treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit. (en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Discrimination) Persecution- Is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic. (en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Persecution) For example, Stuart Hall’s stereotyped black males as muggers. People then believe the stereotype and behaved differently.

People were afraid of being mugged by black males, and were scared to go out at night people called for the government to do something about the supposed problem of black males mugging. The government bought in the suss laws they were used to prosecute black males. ‘In Britain, the Sus law was the informal name for a stop-and-search law that permitted a police officer to act on suspicion, or ‘sus’, alone. ’(en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sus_Laws) Below is one article that I found about a sus law riot. SUS LAW SPARKED RIOTS By Emily Miller 28/05/2007 0’s Brixton (PA) NEW “stop and quiz” proposals carry disturbing echoes of deeply unpopular stop-and search laws that triggered mass riots in the early 1980s. Known as “Sus”, the law allowed police to stop, search and arrest anyone they chose as a crime prevention tactic. But it was widely believed to have been abused by officers to harass young black men. On April 2, 1980, police raided the notorious Black and White Cafe in St Pauls, Bristol, sparking the most serious riots on mainland Britain since before the Second World War.

And after Met police stopped and searched 943 people – the vast majority black and law-abiding – and arrested only 118 during a blitz on robberies and burglaries in the spring of 1981 trouble flared again in Brixton. Complaints of harassment and racism soared and riots on the streets left police cars and properties burned out. In July the same year Toxteth, Liverpool, was gripped by riots. Police were forced to withdraw as 150 buildings on a one-mile stretch of road were torched and 781 officers hurt. The law was hastily abolished that year.

The government in the UK have said that they would try to lower the teenage pregnancy but nothing is been done about it. In the article Tony Shadow the health secretary quoted ‘it is unlikely that the government will meet its targets to have teenage pregnancies by 2010’. In this article ‘How Labour is losing the Fight to cut teen pregnancies’, the media is saying that teenager’s pregnancy rate has risen over the decade by 12% over the past ten years. In 2004 the amount of teenage girls under the age of 18 who got pregnant was 39,545.

Teenage pregnancy has become a large problem in the UK, so bad that the government are using the tax payer’s money to help these teenagers to get abortion etc. In this article it shows that the total amount that the tax payers are giving is ? 138 million. In this same article it tells us the amount that the NHS are spending on teenage pregnancy a year, the amount is ? 63 million this is ‘more than 1 million a day’. Methods I have used primary and secondary recourses to help me with my project. For my primary researched I did a questionnaire.

In my questionnaire I asked nine questions. For my secondary research I used online articles from newspapers such as the Daily Mail. I did a questionnaire about teenage pregnancy to find out what people thoughts are about it and what their view were upon teenage pregnancy. I asked 10 people to fill in my questionnaire. 70% were female and 30% were male, their age group was the same percent to. The reason I did this was because I wanted to find out what young people thought about their fellow members in their same age group.

I also asked other people, the ages of 30 and over, I wanted to find out what the older generation thought about the younger generation and weather they were stereotyping young people. After getting people to fill my questionnaires in I found out and interesting results. In my results when I asked the first question which was on ‘how many teenage pregnancies do you think occur in the UK’, the majority thought 39,545 and they were correct, this showed me that people are not stereotypical toward teenage pregnancy and it is only the media that is making teenage girls look bad and horrible.

The second question I asked was where you think teenage mums are most likely to live. I found out that generally people thought they would live in a council house but a few thought that they live with their parents. This shows that many people are stereotyping all teenage girls and are saying that they live in council houses so they can get money. I found an article on in internet, which said that the government are planning on sending teenage mother to supervised homes where they are taught how to look after their babies.

When I asked do you think teenage mothers get married to the baby’s father, I found an interesting result because it showed me that more than half of the people I asked said they do sometimes and 40% said they don’t get married. Sometimes it depends on what kind situation the teenager is. Most of the time teenagers get pregnant to gain attention or to have responsibility, when I asked ‘what do you consider to be the reason for young females to get pregnant’. When analysing the results I found out that 80% thought it was done accidental which shows me that people are not stereotypical towards teenager girls. 0% thought girls get pregnant to gain attention, whilst the other 10% thought it was because girls get lonely. When I asked the question ‘do you think that teenage girls plan to get married’, the results showed me that 90% thought they don’t whilst the 10% thought they do. When I asked if people thought there was enough information to help young people to avoid becoming pregnant. 80% thought that there was loads of information out there for all teenagers but they ignore it and the other 20% said yes.

Bias- To incline to one side; to give a particular direction to; to influence; to prejudice; to prepossess. (http://thinkexist. com/dictionary/meaning/bias/) Results Figure 1 * 70% of female did my questionnaire and 30% of male did my questionnaire. Figure 2 * The highest age group that did my questionnaire were between the age of 17 to 20 years old, the other 30% were 30+. Figure 3 * My results show that 50% were British, 20% were Pakistani, 10% were Asian, 10; were Black African and 10% were others. How many teenage pregnancies to do think occur in the UK? Figure 4 For this question I got an interesting result, 50% of people thought that there were 39,545 teenage pregnancies in the UK, 20% thought there were 40,00, another 20% thought there were 55, 345 and 10% thought there were 85,567 teenage pregnancies in the UK. Figure 5| | * From the results I have found out that 30% think that teenage mums live with their parents, the other 60% think that they live in a council house and the other 10% think they own their own house. Figure 6 * 40% think that they don’t get married whereas the other 60% think they do sometimes. Figure 7 From the results it shows that 90% of people think that teenage mums don’t plan to get married and the other 10% think that they do. Figure 8 * From the results majority (80%) think there is enough information to help young people but they ignore it, (purple), and the other 20% think that there is plenty of information out there to help young females to avoid becoming pregnant. Figure 9 * The results show that 80% of people think that teenage pregnancy happens accidentally, 10% think that teenagers get pregnant to get attention, and the other 10% think it is because they are lonely. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Discussion and evaluation Are young people represented fairly by the media in British society? What is the focus of my evaluation? The focus of my evaluation is that I’m trying to study and find out how teenagers in Britain are being treated by the media. I will examine if young people are represented fairly in British society. I will give examples and study how people view young teenagers, moreover how we can change the representation of young teenagers. The topic that I have chosen to study on is teenage pregnancy in the UK.

How do I use sources of information in the evaluation? For my evaluation I will try to use different type of source to help me get different view by people. I will do some questionnaires for different type of people such as elderly people and middle aged people and teenagers themselves. I will also do some research on the internet, I will try to get less information from the internet and try to get more information about teenagers and how they are represented by using books, listen to the radio and television.

I will give examples of how the teenagers are represented by asking them about their experiences, I will do this by going around college and meeting people outside of college and find out more. Arguments (against)| Arguments (for)| College- most teenagers are sensible, they might be doing A level in school or studying in college and focusing on their studies and their future, not out drinking and getting pregnant. There are many mature teenager in the UK, but the media are labelling them all saying stuff like they go out and party and get drunk etc. | | Beliefs- some people like myself don’t drink alcohol at all because of their religion.

As a Muslim myself i | | | | References * http://www. dailymail. co. uk/news/article-1165002/British-teenagers-binge-drinking-champions-Europe. html * http://www. dailymail. co. uk/news/article-1124104/The-face-Britains-knife-crime-scourge-Teenager-mutilated-vicious-assault-inch-blade. html * http://www. dailymail. co. uk/news/article-483249/Inside-feral-Britain-A-blood-chilling-journey-heart-teenage-gang-culture. html * http://www. dailymail. co. uk/femail/article-379738/Time-tough-teenage-mums. html * http://www. dailymail. co. uk/news/article-401824/How-Labour-losing-fight-cut-teen-pregnancies. html * http://www. dailymail. co. k/news/article-1217047/Teenage-mothers-sent-hostels-council-flats-vows-Brown. html * en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Prejudice * en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Discrimination * en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Persecution (en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sus_Laws) http://thinkexist. com/dictionary/meaning/bias/ Appendices Questionnaire * What’s your gender? F M * How old are you? 14-16 17-20 21-24 25-30 31+ * What is your Ethnicity? British Pakistani Asian Black African Indian others prefer not to say * How many teenage pregnancies to do think occur in the UK? 39,545 40. 000 55. 345 75. 75 85. 567 90. 143 * Where do you think teenage mum most likely to live? With parents council house have their own house * Do teenage mums get married to the baby’s father? Yes No sometimes * Do you think teenage mums plan to get pregnant? Yes No * Do you think there is enough information to help young people to avoid becoming pregnant? Yes No yes, but teenagers ignore them * What do you consider to be the reason for young females to get pregnant? Accidental To gain attention loneliness to have responsibility Secure relationship with their partner