ANA LOUISE J. VELASCO,  RN

I ONCE met a young couple who incidentally joined a mass wedding initiated by the City Population Office of Dagupan.

Mina, not her real name, met a young man from Villasis through text messaging. After a week of exchanging messages through SMS, the couple decided to meet here in Dagupan to go on a date.

Another rendezvous followed and soon Mina found herself already heavy with a child. Mina’s parents were aghast. They wanted the couple to be married at once. And so, young as they may be, Mina and her husband went through the wedding rituals and tied the knot.

Back then, I thought Cupid really hit the couple big time. But to my surprise, Mina came to the office barely a year after her wedding.

Even before she could speak, I immediately noticed how dejected and downtrodden she was. When she finally opened her mouth, she revealed a heartbreaking story just like the ones shown in telenovelas.

According to her, even before she could be discharged from Region I Medical Center after giving birth to her eldest child, Mina’s husband left her and never returned.

As a young mom at 18, one can just imagine the enormous challenges Mina had to face as a single mom from thereon.

But Mina’s story is not new anymore. There are a lot of teenagers who share the same story as hers.

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Teenage pregnancy in the Philippines has risen from 7% in 1998 to 8% in 2003 according to National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Also, pre-marital sex activity has gone up from 17.8% in 1994 to 23.1% in 2002.

The continuing increase in unplanned pregnancies among our youth is due to the fact that as adolescents in the Philippines face many challenges pertaining to physical, mental, sociological and even spiritual changes, majority of Filipino families particularly parents are still uncomfortable or are not capable of discussing matters related to adolescent health and development and sexuality with their children.

And so, adolescents end up getting answers either from peers who are themselves not equipped with the right information about their fertility or worse, from the internet which leaves more questions in mind than answered.

What’s more, adolescents are a group of people who are adventurous, curious and inquisitive. They are in the midst of trying to figure out whether they are too young or too old. And so with their raging hormones, youngsters sometimes make hastily-made decisions that could result to early, unplanned pregnancies and even, abortion.

* * *

On November 3-5, 2010, the Philippine NGO Council on Population, Health and Welfare, Inc. (PNGOC) in partnership with the Commission on Population (POPCOM) conducted a “Training of Parent Educators for the Conduct of Parenting Classes” in Manila.

The training was intended to train educators to provide information and education to parents so that they in turn could help their children cope with their struggles during the adolescence stage.

Next week, this corner wishes to tackle issues discussed during the training seminar as well as the techniques on how we can better understand our adolescents, how we can build  a positive relationship with them and how we can harness our adolescents with life skills.

And hopefully, as we delve deeper into this topic we can as PNGOC Executive Director Dr. Eden Divinagracia said during the training “help build a stronger nation.”