Black teenage pregnancy: a sociomedical approach

This article is based on a literature and descriptive empirical investigation into the incidence of, and other factors associated with black teenage pregnancy in Africa and South Africa. The research survey was conducted in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. A sample of 145 black teenagers, between the ages of 12 and 17 years, who gave birth during four months in 1990 was interviewed. Socioeconomic, biographical and medical data were obtained. All of which point to an urgent need for a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to age-related sex education for adolescents of both sexes and their parents; socio-economic problems facing the family; ways of preventing school drop out and further unplanned and unwanted pregnancies among teenagers.