Dear Sir/Madam,

Whilst reading an article on teenage pregnancy in the January 12th issue of the Daily Mail, several thoughts crossed my mind. With this being a controversial issue, I thought that, despite being a regular reader of your newspaper, it was necessary to express my disapproval at the way the article displays teenage parents. Teenage pregnancies are not all a tragedy, and cannot all be treated as such; many teenagers can make responsible parents. Although the attempts to solve the issue of teenage pregnancy are reassuring to see, there are several aspects of the article which simply must be addressed.

Homogenous; of same kind or being similar in nature. Teenage parents most definitely cannot be described like this. We cannot treat teenage parents like a self-contained system, a single set of data or a simple statistic. The use of the phrase ‘those teenagers’ in the article could be seen as an implication of teenage parents being a separate breed of teenager, which suggests that as a newspaper you mean to isolate and separate them. Clearly, we can see this is unjust; each teenage parent has a different story, whether their pregnancy was planned, or an accident or even due to an attack. Arguably, the phrase may not have been intended to segregate teenage parents and was simply an expression to describe teenage parents as a whole; nonetheless, we must concede that greater consideration needs to be taken with the wording of the article when it comes to such a delicate issue. Attempting to isolate teenage parents shows a lack of intelligence that is somewhat disappointing from the government.

In the course of reading the article, it became clear that the same government who claim to want to ‘support’ and ‘help’ these teenagers in fact only appear to care about their own image. The article compares Britain to neighbouring countries, saying “The UK has the highest rate of teenage births in Western Europe, twice that in Germany, three times that in France and six times the Dutch rate”. To a certain extent, the comparison to other countries may be a positive way to encourage action to be taken, as it is clear that these countries’ methods are successful and the government could employ such methods in Britain. Whilst we have to see these statistics as surprising and it must be acknowledged that a solution is needed, it should not be based on comparisons to other countries. This could be seen as a somewhat objectionable approach; the government’s primary concern appears to be on how they appear to other countries, not about the teenager’s lives involved.

On the one hand, the fact that the government have implemented a ’10 year rolling programme’ suggests the government intend it to be a long term, continuous plan which embraces several generations of teenagers; therefore we must applaud the government on the action they have taken. However, we must also recognise that the programme is in fact longer than a government term, and therefore risks being rescinded if another party comes to power; this suggests a lack of planning from the government, supported by the lack of detail as to how exactly the plan will be implemented, as they have only expressed that the money ‘has been made available’. Moreover, it is harder to measure the results over a 10 year programme than over a shorter period of time, therefore it is evident that the government have been somewhat negligent in the preparation of this strategy. Despite being a positive attempt to help, this strategy lacks the consideration needed for it to be successful, and the solution is not specific enough to allow us to have confidence in it.

In conclusion, we must acknowledge that some action has most certainly been taken in order to solve this issue and reduce teenage pregnancies. Whilst the injection of 30 million pounds is a positive step towards supporting teenage parents, it was disappointing to see no indication as to how the money would be spent. Moreover, it seems the 10 year teenage pregnancy strategy could be poorly planned and risks being unsuccessful due to protracted plan being longer than a government term, as there is the possibility of it being withdrawn. To reduce teenage pregnancies, several different improvements could be made to the existing solutions; more specificity in the 10 Year teenage pregnancy strategy would show the public that the government are taking considerable steps towards solving the problem and supporting teenage parents, and allow people to have more confidence in the plan. Furthermore, making the strategy shorter in length would make it more measurable, and eradicate the risk of it being rescinded. These are simply suggestions as to how the government can ensure their methods are successful in reducing teenage pregnancies.

Yours Sincerely,

Julia Smith