Situaţia mamelor minore în România. Servicii, beneficii şi sprijin
The Situation of Underage Mothers in Romania. Services, Benefits and Support

Summary/Abstract: The phenomenon of underage mothers is well-known in Romania and is being treated with both sensationalism and normality, being normalized and integrated by society a long time ago as something that just happens. Religion is a significant cultural factor in Romania, where the child is perceived as a gift from God, young girls who become mothers too soon are being blamed by society because “they weren’t acting nice”. There is a tendency to also blame the parents/legal guardians for not supervising/ educating them properly. A mixed-method study was conducted in order to get information from specialists in the socio-medical field on working with teenage mothers but also from young students regarding the usefulness of sex education in schools and of the development of sex education programs in schools across Romania that are actually mandatory according to Law 45/2020. I conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with socio-medical professionals from 17 counties in Romania and a small survey with 83 young respondents aged 12-19 from 29 counties in Romania. One of the most important conclusions is that both specialists and young students agree that sex education will be of major help in preventing teenage pregnancies but also in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Other conclusions are that the creation of services for underage mothers/young pregnant women is essential and that there is another real phenomenon within this of teen mothers, namely that of grooming because most of the young women’s partners are often older than them, the age difference often being more than 5-7 years.

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