by: John Hurt Allauigan, Josefina Macaranas and Mariah Angelica Tolibas
Ben, 17, now had to perform a delicate balancing act of having his efforts between studying and raising a family at a young age. His family, barely getting by with each and every day due to poverty, now had another responsibility added to their list of priorities aside from tending themselves and weathering the challenges of how to survive each day with just so little at their disposal.
Having a family of his own is no easy task for Ben. Once he was dreaming to be an engineer someday, but now he has to set his sights to the more immediate needs of his 2-month old baby and had to set aside his own future. Working on the double to provide for his child and to add support for his mom and his siblings.
At first, Ben was disappointed with what he had done to himself. “Having a family at this age?” He asked himself, but soon enough realized the weight that now rests upon his shoulders and began seeking jobs while at the same time, dragging himself to at least graduate senior high school in hopes of his education giving him more opportunities in the future.
“Module naman and senior high, nakakaya ko namang pagsabayin. Madalas ‘pag maaga ang out sa trabaho o kaya ‘pag day-off nakakapag-sagot ako,” he said.
On the other hand, his partner, also in her teens, has to sideline herself and focus on taking care of their newborn child and was unable to speak to TalariaLink. She gave up her education and let Ben finish his study first in SHS before proceeding to continue her own.
However, it seems that none in the family would yet to continue their studies into college, for now. His older brother, Binggoy, also had a family of his own earlier in the pandemic. They both had to focus their efforts on their young children instead of tending to their own kin and help break the cycle of poverty that has been strangling them.
Their experience is not unique and was all too common during the height of the pandemic with about 500 teenage girls giving birth every day in 2021, and most to teenage fathers according to the data by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), prompting then-president Rodrigo Duterte to sign an executive order that prioritizes solution to teenage pregnancies a “national priority”.
However, for Ben and Binggoy, their future is not for them to decide. Their situation, compounded by poverty, the struggle they had amidst high cost of living and related expenses in raising children, and their young age. As much as it should be the time for them to explore opportunities ahead of them with their choices already limited by poverty, and now all that was left of them now by being fathers was nothing for them to make a real choice, there was nothing much for them to do but rely on their own selves to survive.
In their neighborhood in Barangay Pulong Buhangin in Santa Maria, Bulacan, where poverty incidence was high among its residents, the local government unit only had so much to offer to help families like Ben and Binggoy. The two had to satisfy themselves on little opportunities that their community had in store for them to get by, because of that, they had to go places, away from their young partners and children, to work and earn enough money to provide their families with the necessities.
“May nakita naman ako na trabaho, sa Tagaytay, construction. Malaki kikitain ko roon, mga 500 din, sasapat na rin siguro iyon para makaipon ako para sa mag-ina ko,” Ben said on tape.
However, although earning well above the minimum wage’s lowest rate, the economy has not let many earners much headroom to save up. Although the poverty threshold stands at $3.65 (or as much as Php 202) or about P12,030 a month for a family of five in 2022 figures, the reality on the ground is often disappointing for many as the current inflation rate for November stands at a mighty 8.8% and that 500 pesos a day would not leave families with so much to desire as expenses continue to be inflated at astronomical prices.
As for families like Ben and Binggoy, their children, on average, would need P60k per month, at least, to cover the “essentials” alone according to e-commerce iPrice Group. Some estimates say that an average middle income family would spend up to a million pesos on their baby’s first two years, a shot to the moon for someone earning Php 500 a day or just around Php 12, 000 a month.
Meanwhile, asked what it feels like to be away from his baby and partner, he said that he has to endure it and do it or else, they would starve. “‘Pag naman nakikita ko sila, noon pa naman, ‘pagka-uwi ko galing trabaho, nakakawala ng stress at pagod na makita mo silang masaya.”
Despite having to shoulder such responsibility, Ben shared that he regrets nothing now and was looking forward instead to make ends meet and better their lives despite the challenges they face while also revealing that his partner’s mother decided that they should not live together under the same roof in fears of them having a second child.
“Wala naman na akong pinagsisisihan kasi unang-una, wala na eh, nandyan na iyan. Kailangan ko na lang din kayanin kasi ito ‘yung napili namin eh. Tingnan na lang to na “blessing” sa amin kumbaga,” Ben lamented.
Looking in-depth: Philippines’ teenage pregnancy woes and its implications
In our culture and society, the young men and women were often told by the elderly to “grow up and start a family”, it even became a running joke among Roman Catholics when a mass ends and the priest would tell “humayo kayo at magpakarami” (“Go forth and multiply”) as if we were all meant to be a parent to a child someday.
But was it the way to move forward with our society? With inflation rates coming shooting up the roof, most adolescents (especially among the “millennial” age group; ages 26-41) seem to care less about parenting a child as they, themselves, were stuck in a vicious cycle of living from paycheck-to-paycheck with almost nothing to spare. And that begs a question among them “why have a child and let them live in this miserable world?”
But among third world countries, like here in the Philippines, there seems to be a glitch in the system. Although more and more surveys and accounts were published among the media that “Filipino men and women are less likely to have a child/to become parents” due to reasons such as rising costs to support a child; fees getting more expensive; free education not being accessible; and most recently, rising inflation rates.
And contrary to what many believed, the country almost faced a looming crisis due to uncontrolled spike of teenage pregnancy among teens during the span of the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic and many young teens became vulnerable and subject to socio-economic woes as a result of teenage pregnancy and early parenthood at a very young age.
As pregnancy rates among properly aged individuals lower across the country as the result of our pandemic woes, teenage girls and some boys, on the other hand, become victims to such awful fate of having to bear and take responsibility to a child and have their remaining childhood forcibly taken away from them and forced to face a situation no one (not even experienced parents) had expected and that at an early age and without proper education and jobs, the odds just heavily stacked up against them.
It was also no-brainer that most of them come from impoverished backgrounds, and to add insult to injury, most teenage parents in the country would get stuck in a cycle of poverty with their children being unable to live their lives rightfully.
Now, let’s look at some data, as cited by UN Women.org (Asia-Pacific) from a report from University of the Philippines Population Institute and the United Nations (UN) Population Fund, around 102, 000 Filipino adolescents gave birth during the height of pandemic lockdowns in the country.
It is not uncommon for teenage pregnancy rates to rise during times of crisis or disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The Philippines has seen a significant increase in teenage pregnancies during the pandemic, with data showing that the number of teenage pregnancies rose by nearly 50% in the first six months of the pandemic compared to the same period in the previous year.
According to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), there were 26,488 reported cases of teenage pregnancy in the country in the first half of 2020, compared to 17,749 in the same period in 2019. This represents a significant increase of 48.6%.
There are several factors that may contribute to the rise in teenage pregnancy in the Philippines during the pandemic. One factor may be the disruption of access to education and reproductive health services due to lockdowns and other measures put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, the pandemic may have led to increased stress and anxiety among young people, which can in turn lead to risky behaviors such as unprotected sex.
It is important for the Philippines to address this issue and provide young people with access to education and reproductive health services, as well as address the underlying social and economic factors that may contribute to teenage pregnancy.
Advocates of reproductive health and sex education in the country have cited that the government had continuously neglected other health concerns by pooling so much resources on curbing the spread of Covid-19 albeit through questionable methods. It was revealed that during the pandemic, the government, surprisingly, only allotted 189.76 billion pesos to the Department of Health while police and military spending stood at 213.78 billion pesos and 190.69 billion pesos respectively.
And now, the government seem to add another crisis to its belt now that they have to support the needs of these 100, 000 new and young families through social aids and welfare programs which also needs a lot of funds, already straining our capability to sustain our ambitious social welfare ambitions and also the system that has been long riddled with corruption.
With the government entities pushed to the limit, Ben and Binggoy had nothing left on their plates but to rely on the good’ol “diskarte”. As we transition from a post-pandemic recovery and weathering an economic crisis that left most of us scramblin for every penny we could save, we can all hope for the best for their future. We hope Ben fulfills his dream of becoming an engineer and may he also lead his children towards the future that was rightfully theirs.
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