Teen Statistic Avoided As a young African American teen from an urban area there are many statistics that are easy to obtain. Teen pregnancy was the highest problem among African American teenage girls. Here am I a teenager from a broken home living from group home to group home with little to no supervision. I was only in the eleventh grade, and was going through a rough time in my life. The reason why I have chose this event because getting pregnant at seventeen was the best and worst thing that could have happened to me. As a young African American, getting pregnant was supposed to cripple my future and land me straight on welfare with no education. Knowingly and not knowing I also thought my life was over. At this time I noticed that society was setting me up to fail and give up. The reason I say setting me up to fail, because once I found out I was pregnant I had to apply for welfare and or government programs to get any assistance. Another reason was because my high school wanted me to drop out of my technical program optical mechanics that I studied for three years and go to a mothering school. I did understand that me being a teenager I needed to be taught how to take care of my child. But for me to drop out of regular high school, where I am training to get a diploma and a skilled trade and go to a motherhood program would have been a complete failure. The mothering skill wouldn’t provide me with a sufficient job to provide for my child. There were lessons that I had to learn as far as parenthood and being an adult. I could have gotten the necessary training on the weekend or after school. Why have to just drop out of school? At that very moment of realizing that I had to actually grow up to raise a child when I was still a child was frightening. The scary part was me having to actually be responsible for someone’s life. What was surprising to me and maybe others was that even though I didn’t have that positive role model parent I was willing to just handle my business as a young adult parent. Having a child at seventeen is significant to me because it changed my life for the good. I really didn’t have guidance or goals about being a parent. Because I was in high school I was always hanging out with the wrong crowd doing everything I was big and bad enough to do. The mere fact that I could become pregnant had never dawned on me. But, once I knew I was having a child I started focusing on school and getting my life together for my child and I. Being that I didn’t have dependable parents, I concentrated on being the best parent I could be.
After reading most teen magazines I noticed there were a lot of teen parents who have dropped out of school. This acknowledgement gave me the will to fight to finish school. Yes I stayed in my regular high school I joined extra groups in school studied hard even had extra tutoring after school. So yes I graduated with two diplomas a high