GMA NEWS TV’s recent docu, “Hinog sa Pilit”, on “Reel Time” is a real eye-opener. The title refers to young people who are still babies but already breeding their own babies. It showed some teens who become parents at a young age, like Beverly who became a mom at 14 and is preggers again at 15 when her common law husband, Noli, 18, is jobless. Another teen, Jeane, 15, is also pregnant and the dad, Kyle, 16, is also jobless. No wonder the United Nations studies on such matters say we’re number 1 in Asia when it comes to teen pregnancies. And we don’t think that’s a compliment!
When my late wife Vicky and I were doing outreach programs for the Marriage Preparation Foundation, that conducts the monthly Discovery Weekend retreat-seminar for engaged couples, we realized that those who consciously want to start right in their marriage are mostly yuppies who have finished college and have established careers. They tend to marry late, usually in their early 30s.
But the uneducated young people living in depressed areas and slum communities don’t think twice about cohabiting and fornicating as soon as they are able to do so. They live in, bear children, and as expected, quickly get tired and disappointed with each other, and then move on to have kids with other partners. Meantime, the children they’ve given birth to end up as neglected street children who become problems of society.
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