Many American families display forms of dysfunctionality. In one family the father may be a workaholic and the mother an alcoholic. In another, the father maybe an alcoholic and the mother an enabling codependent who never touches a drop. Regardless of the specific affliction, children being raised within dysfunctional families are deprived of what is needed to become happy, healthy, and well-adjusted adults. One of the most pervasive effects of this deprivation is teenage pregnancy. In the case of a family where one parent, the father, is an alcoholic, the affected parent.

             turns to alcohol as a remedy for some personal shortcoming. This parent has little to offer a young girl seeking the approval and admiration of her father. .

             More often than not, the child is viewed as a nuisance by the parent, and the resultant irritation is hard to disguise. The child learns to either accept the irritation as the price for that parents.

             affection, or rejects the cost and seeks the attention of the other parent. The other parent, if healthy, is carrying the weight of the alcoholic partner's disease and the tasks required to make a house a home. At best she has her hands full; at worst she is as.

             mentally incapacitated as the father. Consequently, the young girl grows up under-nurtured, under-valued and lonely. Similar to craving carrots when the body needs vitamin A, the young woman's mind will seek the means to fulfill the void left by the.

             dysfunctional parent.! .

             When the deprived young woman reaches puberty, she finds a seemingly endless well of attention, often mistaken as affection, in the young boys she has grown up with. Unbeknownst to her, the young men, dealing with the onslaught of pubescent hormones, are trying to fulfill a completely different set of needs. And thus, the groundwork has been set for a teenage pregnancy. The least complex enticement for an adolescent female to become pregnant is the fantasythat the expected child will fulfill her need for love and affection.