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Infant Simulators Role In Reducing Teenage Pregnancy

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Teenage pregnancy takes place when a female under the age of 20 falls pregnant.
Boonstra (2011) identified that moderate rates of teenage pregnancy occur in Australia with 43.7 pregnancies per 1000 teenage girls. This is a significant contemporary issue as there are larger risks involved with teenage pregnancy including health, financial and social implications (Brinkman et al, 2016), creating larger socio-economic problems for young parents, their children and society (Zhou et al, 2016). To reduce the numbers of teenage pregnancy and raise awareness various sex education systems are placed to manage incidences of pregnancy.

Infant simulator programmes are a method of preventing teenage pregnancy by giving teenage girls’ electronic dolls …show more content…

Hence, education systems must address the cause of teenage pregnancy and be inclined to educate adolescences on sexual health and contraception. Therefore, as infant simulator programs only address the outcomes of pregnancy they are not an effective measure in educating adolescences on the causes of teenage pregnancy. Whilst still not completely effective, promoting multiple types of sex education, skills and contraception use simultaneously are said to be the most efficient in reducing the numbers of teenage pregnancy (Malinowski & Stamler, 2003). Thus, infant simulators only attempt to display a negative opinion on teenage pregnancy and not the ways in which it can be avoided making it an ineffective method in reducing teenage pregnancy.

Nonetheless, the program does not change positive attitudes that adolescence have towards teenage parenting, but are reinforced through the experience of infant simulator programmes. They can increase the desire for teenage girls to become mothers due to the negative aspects of teenage parenting being overlooked throughout the program (Quinlivan, 2016). These attitudes are said to be pre-exiting and if education was to be performed before mindsets develop, the more likely the number of teenage pregnancies would reduce (McCowan et al, 2009). This shows that the system is ineffective as its purpose is to deter teenage pregnancy, not encourage it and is also addressing already set …show more content…

Infant simulator programmes also do not provide education on the causes of teenage pregnancy, just the outcomes of unsafe practices and could be more effective with further sex education. They furthermore have the inability to reshape attitudes as they encourage already developed mindsets. Yet, they are somewhat effective as they give students an interactive and engaging experience to reflect on which can have supporting effects on neutral/negative opinions, as well as first-hand experience on the social attitudes that disrespect teenage

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