March 29, 2024

VANDA DOBRITOIU

You see them everywhere you turn your head: babies. Worse, you hear them.

As a usual frequenter of city transit, most of my day is spent on the bus.When I come home late from school or from work the last thing I want to hear is the high-pitched scream of a baby. It would be my lucky day if there was just one, but instead I get treated to a whole bundle of them seated in their strollers, cramped onto their mothers’ laps, running around the front of the bus and so on.

Another place where babies and little kids seem to spend their free time is in the grocery stores. You hear them six aisles over yelling for chocolate and the next thing you know they run past you like they’re being chased by hungry bears.

What worries me is not the babies themselves, but the mothers. When I take a look at whose child is screaming their brains out on the bus, I often see a young woman, no older than 20, sitting there reading Cosmopolitan while her child is red in the face. I know many of my classmates from high school are pregnant or have already given birth to their first child.

This brings me to my next point: is procreating this generation’s main priority? Instead of going to school, getting an education and a good job from which they can support themselves, girls just fresh out of high school get pregnant.

The world’s population is already incredibly high, and it’s been said that it will hit its peak soon. Gas is expensive, food prices have skyrocketed, the unemployment rate keeps rising and yet none of these factors shy girls away from having children.

I feel that when you have a child, your whole life becomes devoted to him or her, but it’s hard to do that when you’re balancing school and part-time work at the local grocery store.

How many of the girls who are pregnant or have children at such a young age are still with the father of the child?

I feel that is a very important question to be asked because it’s hard enough to raise a child with two young parents, much less with one. Even if the teens’ parents pitch in and help, there’s only so much they can do, as they have full-time jobs of their own.

Teenage pregnancy has become the newest trend and I wouldn’t be surprised if this period of time becomes known as the age of the new baby boomers.

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