pulitzercenter: Young Motherhood in the Dominican...

By: vivian on quarta-feira, setembro 16, 2015

pulitzercenter:

Young Motherhood in the Dominican Republic

“Don’t be with too many boys,” 18-year-old Maria Luisa Rodriguez recalls her mother telling her. “After 7 p.m., stay at home.”

But that was the extent of sexual education she received before becoming pregnant at the age of 16. Now, she is five months pregnant with her second child.

“Before I got pregnant, I did not know anything about sex,” said 16-year-old Pamela Pinales, who is seven months pregnant with her first child.

This is considered common advice in the Dominican Republic, where more than one in 10 teenage girls became pregnant in 2013, according to the United Nations Population Fund. That’s double the world average and triple the United States average.

See more work from Jennifer Gonzalez and Luke Nozicka’s project “Teenage Pregnancy in the Dominican Republic,” here. 

Related post