Gretchen Otto
Blog #2
“Coming of Age”
For this blog entry I chose to read the article about teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I thought it would be significant since for my first blog entry I wrote about 16 and Pregnant, which took place in America, that way I could compare and contrast the two. In the article I chose to read, it was a study being done to try and see why there were so many school dropouts after a girl was pregnant. They took qualitative research and analyzed what they found. They interviewed teenage girls that were pregnant or already have a child and head people of the school. The study consisted of girls between the ages of 14 and 18, which is grades 8th through 12th.
For this article was mostly concentrated on the female gender, hence female pregnancy. The gender in South Africa has some comparisons and also some differences in the female gender compared to the United States. Women in South Africa are looked to at as the primary caretaker. The role definitely has changed in America over the past couple decades, but women are still looked at as the homemaker and primary care taker for the kids. One difference of growing up in South Africa for females compared to America is, the females do not usually have a job. They are at home cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children. In America, most families are dual income families, which means both parents are working. Not having dual income families in South Africa leads them into poverty, which affects other aspects of their life. Children in South Africa do not have the opportunities like American children have. For an example, since poverty is so high in South Africa, you do not see children their going to the mall or movies on their free time. They are at home helping around the house.
I believe that sexuality in South Africa is quite different than sexuality in America. In the article did not really mention much about sexuality. Although, in South Africa, adolescents are not taught about safe sex. I believe that this could be the cause of why their teenage pregnancy rate is so high over there. Also, I believe that girls are getting pregnant much earlier in South Africa compared to girls in America. For the study in the article, they were starting their research with girls at the age of 14. You do not hear of many 14 year olds in America getting pregnant at that age. Also, gay and lesbian is looked down upon. They follow their religion in South Africa very strictly and gay and lesbian is not allowed in their religion. So growing up as a gay or lesbian in South Africa you would definitely not be able to express yourself.
After reading this article and the pieces for class made me realize how fortunate I am living in the United States. For an example, after reading Persepolis and understanding how coming of age is so different in different countries. For Marji, her coming of age experience as being a female was especially hard. Women were treated so poorly in Iran and had hardly any privledges. So growing up there would make everything so much harder for adolescents. Luckily in America, men and women have equal rights.
Like I stated earlier, there really is no “coming out” process in South Africa. Gay and lesbians are frowned upon in that country. You would definitely not see an organization like It Gets Better Project. People in America are fighting for equal rights for everyone. In South Africa, you would never see people trying to stick up for people who are trying to come out or sharing their stories to help their coming out process. We are fortunate in the United States to have all these rights to make our coming of age experience more enjoyable.
