Our Interview Sessions
Interview I (ft. Ms. Faye Simanjuntak)
Faye is a young children's rights activist who we were fortunately able to interview for this project. She's a famous activist in Indonesia and for more information about her, click here. We chose to work with her because of her inspiring stories from her chapel session at Sekolah Pelita Harapan Lippo Cikarang. She's also working on an issue where it's linked with our topic and we figured out that she's experienced with such things because she dealt with many cases of adolescent pregnancy.
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What did we learn from her?
We've learned numerous things from her not only about the particular issue but also about the struggles of each individual mothers and others involved inside the problem. According to Faye, this is a big issue that came from a lack of awareness. It is when children are oppressed until the point where they're not brave to stand up for themselves is truly when the problem escalates.
"It is the result of kids not realizing that they're being exploited. Some don't have the guts to talk about it as well." - Faye Simanjuntak
The lack of education and awareness can also be a factor of unsafe sexual intercourse which results in pregnancy.
Nevertheless, those are not the only integral aspect of this issue. Culture can also play a major role on this issue in various ways that she mentioned.
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1) It can be through the particular individual's mindset of what their faith in life would be like or how they will live their life.
2) In some cultures, parental pressure can be an aspect of why adolescent pregnancy cases happens. This happens because of child trafficking which basically means the parents sale their child or daughter (usually) in order to provide for themselves or for the other. In Faye's experience, she had to deal with a case in which the parent sold their two daughters right after their first period for the sake of providing for the only son.
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Despite all of that, her main concern isn't in the past but her main concern is the mother's health and the newborn's. The complications can be so bad because of how young and unready they are. Not only that but to make things worse, the baby is hugely impacted as well causing them to be born with a condition.
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Unfortunately, this is one relentless issue. The problem doesn't stop there. Socially, the mother might even be the one who's to blame for over the problem an individual might be undergoing.
What can we conclude?
It is safe to say that this issue goes beyond just one factor. This issue comes from a lot of aspects in one's life and it can happen to anyone except a person with good education and awareness. This is exactly the reason why we made this website in order to elevate awareness through information. It doesn't only damage the mother's life but also other's around her. This is why we must take actions upon this issue for the fact that it takes a huge toll on an individual's life and future.
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Interview II
ft. Dr. Budi Ibrahim
He is a family doctor or better known as a general practitioner. He started his career at around 1962 and until now, he still loves his job as a doctor who helps families to deal with their medical problems.
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We got to know and interview him because Chris (one of our member) is close with the doctor since he was a young child. He took care of him and family medically. Nonetheless, here are things that we got from the interview that he fortunately was able to feature in.
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So he divided the impacts into a couple of major categories. The first one being physiologically and the second and last one is psychologically. In simpler language, physical and mental aspect of it.
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Physical:
He divided this section into two, one's for the conceiving mother while the other for the infant. This is important to know because not only does it affect the mother but we must also know that it impacts the baby in a fetus/newborn stage tremendously.
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According to Dr. Budi Ibrahim, a young mother's uterus isn't a fully prepared and matured uterus yet. It is still growing and so is the other organs in her body. Overall she's still at a growing stage. As a result, one of the most common things is conceiving a newborn prematurely. This is due to the uterus being underdeveloped causing it to not be able to contain the baby for long. In addition, the pelvis still needs further maturation. And to end it all, after the baby is born, there's still a responsibility for the mother to provide and breastfeed.
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As she's growing, her body demands much more from her. She'll need much calcium and other nutrients in order for the mother to grow at a healthy rate. This is a problem for the baby however because it means that their bodies must fight for nutrients in order to grow optimally. Unfortunately, oftentimes it is not just merely about optimal growth but it is rather about surviving and it is very grieving that the fact is this things still happens around us. Not to mention that the mother might have some more turbulence due to her being at risk for a severe hypertension or preeclampsia. And calcium deficiency is very possible because of the need of the baby from the mother's milk.
On the molecular level however is not far from being devastating. Not only is the uterus underdeveloped but in many cases, the egg cell of a young mother is too. This will ultimately cause a crushing defect to the infant. On many occasions, this may have caused a staggering trauma for the mother that has delivered the child.
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Mental:
He said that in this case, it is about the vulnerable soul of the mother in which is so sensitive to a couple of factors. One of them can be due to the fact that the society of the individual might not being supportive towards the young mother let alone blaming the mother for the circumstances she may be undergoing. Dr. Budi Ibrahim is certain as well that depression is a guarantee that comes with mental problems. The mental unreadiness that the mother might experience might lead to severe as well, not to mention that this is very common for them.
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Mature mothers also know the importance of proper knowledge before delivering a new life. Unfortunately, it is common that young mothers have a lack of knowledge about pregnancy and mothership according to Dr. Budi Ibrahim. Even worse, certain individuals are just simply not ready to be a guardian of a child whether that is physically or mentally. This can cause even more issues.
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So, what is the best way to avoid it?
Dr. Budi Ibrahim needed only one word to answer this question. "Education", that's his answer. He stated that it is the greatest way to resolve this issue, being aware about it whether that's through sex education or proper knowledge.
Is Indonesia getting better in handling this issue?
Dr. Budi Ibrahim said that the education here is going up nationally, even though it is not much but it is still a step forward. However it is very lamentable that the fact is, Indonesia is still having cases such as this one in a high rate. More tragically, these things happen in places we don't even know. It often occurs in small villages and other things.
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So what we can conclude...
We can see that from a person in the medical field, to the activist that led a successful organization, we can see that the information given just correlates. The results and horror of adolescent pregnancy doesn't only come from one factor. In fact in comes from multiple factors that attacks an individual in every aspects of her life. It is really crushing that when we think about it. When both internal(physical, mental, etc.) and external(nationally, socially, etc.) effects are combined, devastating isn't even a word that can describe how tragic this problem is.
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