Teen Pregnancy

What's the biggest influence on teen pregnancy? Is there a way to help control this? A better way than something we're already attempting? From the sociological perspective of functionalism, I believe we can blame the high teen pregnancy rates on the institutions in America. The main institution that is to blame is the education system we have. Right now sexual education is not a priority in schools, and I think that if we changed that, the teen pregnancy rate would go down.
In her article Preventing Teen Pregnancy, Sarah  Glazer talks about sex education in schools.  She says, "so many young teens are already sexually involved, or are about to be."  and "Often, sex education is offered after teenagers have already established patterns of unprotected intercourse, which are resistant to change." Basically she is saying that schools are not teaching their students how to be safe at a young enough age, therefore more kids are having unsafe sex, which leads to higher teen pregnancy rates.
I think that if the schools were to begin teaching their students how to have safer sex at a younger age, then we could prevent teen pregnancy.   



In conclusion, teen pregnancy can be sociologically explained through the functionalism theory, by saying that the school system institution is to blame for not teaching kids how to practice safe intercourse at an early enough age.