Research Prospectus

For my research prospectus, my research topic will be that parents who are divorced increase the likelihood of underage pregnancies. Questions that I may ask might be how might this topic relate to a specific academic field?   This topic certainly involves the general field of psychology or sociology.  It delves into how people deal with divorce, especially children and shows that all members of a family that are going through a traumatic experience like this need counseling to deal with their feelings on what led to the divorce as well as how to deal with it and move forward.

A teen pregnancy occurs which can have different outcomes.  The child has an abortion (which there is a huge debate on), the child puts the baby up for adoption (which we are already overloaded with unwanted and unadopted children) or the child keeps the baby and you now have a child raising a child.  This leads to additional welfare costs, frustration on the young parent who has not had an opportunity to grow up and wants to party, is not prepared for the responsibility of caring for a baby, and possible teen marriage which eventually almost never works out which leads to another divorce and everyone is back in the same cycle again.  

This topic is very important to me because not only does it correlate with my major which is Sociology but by bringing awareness to this subject, it is possible that married couples will not be so quick to pull the trigger on the divorce option.  Years ago people worked it out and couples stayed married 30, 40, 50, and 60 years.  It really was “ ‘til death do us part”.  Now, more than half of all marriages end in divorce.  Most of those end within the first seven years.  Hopefully more couples will learn to have more understanding for each other and work things out which will lower the divorce rate, lower the abortion rate and lower the number of teen pregnancies, teen parents and single parents.  It would lower the number of unadopted children and lower the already burdensome strain on welfare.  A debate or problem will it would solve would be for starters, the abortion debate , although ongoing and continuing will not be as prominent because abortion rates would definitely decrease.  It would lower the rates of teen pregnancies, unadopted children, and the amount of people on welfare.  It would lower the divorce rate and possibly raise the graduation rate as the children would be more likely to stay in school, graduate and possibly go to college instead of having to leave school to work and take care of a child.  Then later find out that without an education it is very difficult to get a good enough job to care for a family which leads to frustration and then divorce and the cycle starts again.