Introduction

| |- Was passing through the streets of social media and I saw an interesting post that sparked a lot of discussion on the the internet. https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/01/23/22/pregnant-2568594_1280.jpg [source](https://pixabay.com/photos/pregnant-woman-maternity-motherhood-2568594/)

> A 16-year-old girl came home, confessing to her mum that she was pregnant No tears. No panic. Her mother didn’t scream the roof down. Didn’t quote scriptures. Didn’t beat her. Didn’t call for a family meeting. She just asked casually, “Do you want to keep it?” The girl replied, “No.” Next, an appointment with a doctor was booked, the abortion was done safely. The next day, she was back in school. As it should be.

Different view, same topic

| |- That closing line ***“ as it should be”,*** was what sparked uproar. The comment section was crazy. Not even because she got pregnant or the abortion. But because she didn’t suffer. No punishment. No public shame. No dragging.

In a country like Nigeria where religion is not just a belief system but a way of life, where some parents still find it hard to allow their grown up daughters to were trousers because they believe is a sin, that kind of response is almost unforgivable. For a lot of people, such comments is trying to normalize abortion and encourage her to keep having sex at that tender age without any fear of the consequences.

***Some commenters were outraged:*** > “She just taught her that there are no consequences.” “If it was HIV she brought home, would you remove it too?”

In our society, the lesson isn’t considered taught unless it hurts. So for this set of people, carrying that pregnancy is a way of learning her lesson for having premarital sex at such age because she will be ridiculed and have to go through labor pains.

But some set came up with their own different view > a lady shared a story of how a teenager got pregnant while in secondary school and in a bid to teach the girl a lesson, the mum insisted she keeps the baby. Guess what, after giving birth to the baby, in few months time, she got pregnant again. Now she has two kids as a teenager.

In this situation, we can say no lesson was learnt—just another child raising children.

While everyone was tearing themselves apart in the comment section between who is right and wrong, some ladies asked the question:

> “where is the boy in all this? Why is he not suffering the same judgement and shame the girl is going through??

Until parents learn to teach the boy child to be accountable, taught responsibility, respect boundaries, and consequences—we're only fighting half the battle.

No one is actually supporting teenage pregnancy here but if we’re been sincere, Nigerian society isn’t kind to teenage mothers either. They ridicule them, isolate them and use them as examples to describe badly behaved teenagers.

Yet we expect this young girls to raise kids, attend lectures and somehow learn there lessons. Maybe been a parent isn’t about watching your kids suffer just to feel holy. It’s about preventing further damage.

The real win

| |- What really stood out for me in this post isn’t the abortion but the little girl’s ability to open up to her mum about her pregnancy without fear of been thrown out from the house or beaten. This is a privilege a lot of kids don’t have. They’ll rather die in silence than to face the humiliation that comes with telling the truth.

That is the kind of parent I want to be. I will definitely teach my kids about abstinence and also protection but more importantly, I’ll make sure that no matter what happens, my kids are comfortable coming to me first to discuss because sex isn’t the enemy, silence is.