When my senior year ended last spring, my friends and I were talking about all the teen moms who dropped out of school or had a baby a little later the degree. We started counting, not thinking it would be that high. We stopped counting when we reached twenty girls out of four hundred (MCHS). If we continued counting instead of 20%, the result would be higher for Marine City High School, which is one of many high schools in the area. One girl in particular dropped out of school to give birth and was pregnant with her second child, and she herself was only seventeen. That's when I thought we needed a way to control it. In our health class we only taught abstinence because they were afraid of offending some parents or students in the school district. As a community, we need our local schools to teach safe sex and abstinence to stop the epidemic of “kids having kids.” To understand why rates are so high, let's look at the causes. There are two main causes; glamor on television and in the media; and lack of knowledge. Together, these things can create a chaotic mix and cause teen pregnancy. The causes are equally important in terms of severity. Each of them has consequences other than the obvious ones. First, attractiveness on television and in the media. Three television shows that come to mind are “Teen Mom,” “High School Moms,” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” “Teen Mom” is the follow-up story to “Sixteen and Pregnant” that shows teen parents, more specifically moms, and how they raise their children. At least once a month a magazine cover story was about one of the teen moms. So every t...... half of the document ......ty, and Nonresident Father Involvement Among Unmarried Parents." PMC. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, February 2012. Web. 23 September 2012. 2012. “Teen Pregnancy.” Stay Teen, April 2012. Web, September 23, 2012. “TeensHealth (MST). 12 Studied effects of teenage pregnancy. Medical Billing and Coding, June 3, 2012. Web. September 23. 2012. .