By Patricia Mukhim
The teenage years known as adolescence are the best years of life. They are years when one is aware of one’s sexuality, sexual desires and the first flush of romantic love. Unfortunately these are also years when teenagers mistake infatuation for love. Research suggests that the average duration of adolescent romantic relationships increases throughout the teen years. By age 16 youth report that relationships typically last for six months, and by 18, relationships often last a year or more. But this again is subjective. In Khasi society we are familiar with the term ‘ialang samla’ meaning that a girl and a boy are dating or seeing each other. The fatal flaw is that among Khasis (there is no data yet on this) there is a tendency for the two to become close and have sex after which the girl gets pregnant. That sexual encounter happened in a fit of emotional outflow of passion which young people call ‘love.’ The girl often tends to believe that having sex will cement the relationship but that does not usually happen. And woe behold if the sexual encounter leads to pregnancy. The boy, himself a teenager, is in no position to take on the responsibility of fatherhood. Even if he is deeply in love with the girl, the very idea of settling down is daunting, especially if he is in high school or college. So what happens? The girl and her family members are left holding the baby.
This is a society where sex is not openly discussed as if it is a sinful thing. Hence teenagers go through that period of stress and storm without understanding the consequences of unprotected sex. Now when we talk of protected sex it means among other things that the boy uses a condom before the sexual act. If the boy refuses to do so and the girl who is so in love with him is ready to compromise, then she has to use the “Morning After” pill which is an emergency contraceptive pill to avoid pregnancy. If the two are in a long term relationship and the girl has to have these contraceptive pills over a long period, medical science says there could be complications. Any which way we look at it, it is the girl who always has to pay the price for casual sex. Usually, if a teenage girl gets pregnant she and her partner are too scared of approaching a doctor for advice and to get an abortion done in case the two are not ready for motherhood and fatherhood. I am sure that genteel society will frown at this suggestion of abortion but will those same people come forward and help to look after the child who will be born to the girl-mother? And I am addressing especially church elders here who ferociously preach that abortion is ‘sin’ but who will not lift a finger to help bring up a child born to a teenage girl whose parents are destitute and are barely able to support themselves. The same set of preachers will also not consider educating that child so that it does not fall into a cyclic trap and repeat what its parents have done when faced with a similar situation.
We live in a society where open conversation between children and parents is all but absent. There is a studied silence around sex hence adolescents learn about sex from their peers or their mobile phones where pornography is rife. If the adolescents stop short of experimenting with sex and only watch pornography that may be fine but which adolescent today will refrain from having sex. If we think this is absurd we are living in cloud cuckooland. As parents and elders we need to get real and to be prepared to accept that our adolescents are experimenting with sex and the safest thing to do is to discuss sex at home in an open atmosphere and point out the consequences of unprotected sex, especially for the girl who must always pay the price of sexual indiscretion.
Studies have shown that the level of closeness and support adolescents have experienced with their parents and siblings influences the quality of their romantic relationships. If communication between parents and children is positive and supportive in early adolescence the youth are more likely to interact positively with romantic partners in late adolescence. But such conversations cannot be expected in rural households where the sex organs are all “bad” words. It’s easy to use the word ‘vagina’ when we are conversing in English but that’s a swear word in Khasi. This is the problematic part about sex education in Khasi. I have said this in the past and will reiterate that we need to come up with words for sex organs and popularise them so they are no longer taboo.
In Meghalaya it’s almost a cyclic order that a teenager drops out of school for any number of reasons and before long she is in a romantic relationship, has sex and becomes pregnant. The man/boy who impregnated her is unsure if he wants to settle down and become a father. In the first place he has no job and is still dependent on his parents. This is the point of conflict. The boy takes the easy way out and leaves the girl to bear the burden alone. Now did the girl here know of protected sex? Did she know of contraceptive pills? If she is from a village it is certain she would be ignorant about both but also would be too naïve to suggest that the boy wear a condom during the sexual act. And about the morning after pill – she might have been brought up in a culture that says, “every child comes from God,” hence having a morning after pill would mean preventing pregnancy and therefore a sin.
This is Meghalaya’s dilemma where teenage pregnancy has raised the total fertility rate (TFR) and hence its population. That the TFR is high particularly in rural Meghalaya where women still give birth to 10 or more children is not surprising because in the city and among educated couples the birth rate has come down.
Now what is a matter of concern is the trauma of a pregnant girl whose partner either refuses to claim that the child is his or he has abandoned her before childbirth. Have we ever considered the mental state of that young girl and how she would cope with the prospect of having to look after the child single-handedly, only with the support of her parents and siblings? Think also of another scenario where a woman with four kids is abandoned by her husband/partner without him looking back to check on his kids; forget about providing maintenance for them. Think of an uneducated woman who suddenly has to fend for herself and 3-4 kids? Who is helping her to overcome her trauma and build her resilience?
It is important to deconstruct the word ‘resilience’ here. Resilience is the ability to anticipate disruptions to one’s life; adapt to such disruptions and quickly recover from challenges and move on by applying lessons learned to meet future challenges. Do we see the long process here? Does any woman anticipate that she would be abandoned by her husband/partner? The greatest disruption in any woman’s life is a “broken” marriage and in matrilineal societies for the woman to be left to handle the offsprings single-handedly without any maintenance since most relations are based on cohabitation (living together) and the relationship is not registered. So where are the institutions to help women recover from the trauma of divorce? Who or what institution will help them gather the pieces of their lives so they can move on. It’s a long and traumatic process and mental health is the first casualty. But for the longest time we have left women to cope with their own heartbreaks.
Teenage pregnancy is not a subject to be dealt with by the Health Department only. The Social Welfare and Education Department in particular have the onus of providing space for young women to get answers to questions related to sex, unwanted pregnancies and a support system for young girls who become pregnant due to casual sex encounters. An institution combining all the above Departments is the need of the hour. Such institutions need to be accessible especially in rural areas.
Teenage pregnancies followed by single-parenthood and that by a woman alone is a societal burden that cannot be reduced to some academic discussion with little or no outcomes!