Factors associated with pre-marital teenage pregnancies and child-bearing in Kiambu and Narok Districts

Abstract

This study is on pre-marital teenage pregnancies and childbearing among the Kikuyu of Kiambu and the Maasai of Narok districts.The main goal of the study is to investigate the factors that explain why more girls become pregnant and remain unmarried after child-bearing in Kiambu District as compared to Narok District. This is in view of understanding the factors that contribute to pre-marital teenage pregnancies and child-bearing in Kenya. The objectives of the study included looking into the dynamics of pre-marital teenage sexual and reproductive behaviour as well as an attempt to explore the teenagers' individual, social and cultural factors that predispose them to becoming pregnant and remaining unmarried in the two districts.A total of 235 teenagers and 68 key respondents were interviewed in both districts. The study used qualitative research methodology with a combination of methods in data collection. These included Indepth Interviews, Focused Group Discussions, Observation and Review of Ethnographic Data. The study was based on two assumptions: that pre-marital teenage pregnancies were explained by teenage personality factors and secondly, that the apparent absence of these pregnancies among the Maasai as compared to the Kikuyu was explained by lower levels of sexual intercourse among the Maasai youth. The study reviewed extensive literature on the theories of human sexuality and factors associated with teenage sexual and reproductive behaviour. The theoretical framework was guided by Biological, Psychoanalytic, and Symbolic Interaction Theories. The latter, Symbolic Interaction Theory, was adopted in the study because of its unification of the other theories in defining sexual and reproductive behaviour as a function of the interplay between biological, social and cultural factors. The study came up with the following findings. That the teenage individual characteristics as well as levels of sexual intercourse are similar in both communities and cannot, therefore, on their own, account for the differences in levels of pre-marital pregnancies. Pre-marital pregnancies are therefore explained by an interplay of individual and socio-cultural factors within the contexts of the communities in which the teenagers live. The extent to which the community directly intervenes in the regulation and management of sexual and reproductive behaviour of the general population and teenagers in particular, is found to be a crucial factor in determining whether or not the pregnancies occur. On the basis of the findings, the study recommends that the communities become more involved in assisting the state in the management of teenage pregnancies, through measures that are not only punitive and condemnatory but more sympathetic and humane. These include community, parental and peer involvement in the provision of meaningful sex education programmes, as a preventive technique of unsafe sexual involvement and pregnancies; sympathetic government policies that do not expel girls from school without prQviding alternative opportunities and community support systems for girls affected by pre-marital pregnancies.