Lessons for unwed mums?

Recently I came across an interesting article entitled “Lessons for unwed mums” which appeared in the Review Section of The Straits Times. This article brought up the issue of how the lack of education especially among the poor and broken homes is one of the main factors contributing to the complex phenomenon of young and unwed mothers. The author believes that the effective way to deal with this issue is by providing girls a good education as it serves to delay motherhood and marriage until they are emotionally and intellectually as well as physically ready, However, this made me wonder - is lack of education the sole reason ? Or maybe the question really is whether girls’ education alone can amount to a complete solution? Firstly, I disagree that if one is highly educated, she would not fall for the category of “unwed mothers” and if one is ignorant to education, the chances of her being an unwed mother is high. My argument here is simply – can education be the only measure? The author proves his point by offering us statistics depicting more than half of the 458 Malay mothers aged 15-19 last year, married and unmarried, had not gone or had gone only to primary school. The figures literally translates that their young age and lack of schooling are of concern and show what needs to be done. Nevertheless, is this really the case? Where I was schooling back then in Malaysia, there were many cases of young girls having to stop their education temporarily due to the fact that they were pregnant. And may I remind you, these cases happened in my SCHOOL, a secondary school. So, there you go. They were educated for sure, but such cases still happen. Puzzling? Clearly, proper education may not give one the self assurance to resist peer pressure and to say “no” to boys wanting sex. You do not have to be highly educated to know that getting pregnant before marriage is a wrong thing to do. It is a general fact
The author argues further that child development specialists observe that an educated mother will do her best to ensure her daughters are educated at least up to her level of schooling and that it is a consequence that should help break the cycle of one generation of young unwed mothers giving birth to another generation of the same. True for the part that educated mother would provide their child with adequate education. Not true however that this would eventually break the cycle. Instead, I feel that lack of education is just a general stereotypical view which everyone blames upon when something is not right. Try looking at the core of the issue – what really is the problem? A question that leaves us all to ponder.