Seeing a pregnant teenage girl can cause us some strangeness or surprise, but what is really unexpected is seeing a pregnant teenage boy. With this plays the campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy launched in the United States.
Next to the shocking image of a boy wearing a belly, we find the motto "Unexpected? Most teenage pregnancies are." With these words the campaign aims to call the attention of young people to the responsibility in the practice of sex.
As some of you know, I work with preteens and teenagers and there is something that greatly worries me about some attitudes of the boys, who see unwanted pregnancy as a problem of the opposite sex, something that they have no responsibility for. And it is more difficult to take preventive measures if only one of the parties involved wants to.
In this sense, the campaign we are talking about today personally seems very successful. It has been promoted by the Chicago Department of Public Health, which has opted for these unusual images to make an impression on young boys, conveying the idea that Pregnancy is not just girls responsibility.
The ads can be seen on public transport in the city, on a website, Twitter, Facebook ... and the rest of the campaign promotes the use of condoms (or abstinence, everything must be said: "Use condoms. Or wait") as prevention of unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Precisely an important part of the new website BeYouBeHealthy.org, aimed at the sexual information of adolescents and parents, is dedicated to condoms, Love the globe. There they explain everything necessary to know how to use them well.
The fact that this campaign has taken place in Chicago is because there the birth rate of teenage mothers is the highest in the United States. Recall that teenage pregnancy is mostly unwanted, so to the physical problems of going through this stage before the body is prepared there are many psychosocial problems.
A lot of awareness and training of young people is necessary, sex education is still a taboo subject on many occasions and should complement these types of advertisements.
But campaigns like this one showing us pregnant teenage boys to prevent unwanted pregnancies I think it is a good starting point that I hope will lead many boys and girls to reflect, become aware and continue to inform themselves so as not to maintain risky relationships.
Official Site | Be you Be Healthy In Babies and more | "Do not change your backpack for a baby," campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy, Decide to be a teenage mother, "Teen mothers" on television: help or morbid?
