The ages of those responsible for teenage pregnancies in the “Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2022” report are missing.
Besides, it relays what looks like competition of counties in the rate at which underage girls lose their virginity. It puts the age of first pregnancy for Samburu at 15.6 years and Kisumu 16.1 years with Kericho, Migori, Nyamira, Siaya and Narok in-between.
For every teen pregnancy there is some immature boy or irresponsible man to whom it can be attributed. That means for every loss of a girl’s virginity is a similar action on a boy or perpetration of sexual exploitation of a minor by an adult male.
We live in a society of boys and girls, and men and women. Policy or programming based on the recent findings as reported in the KDHS 2022 would be deficient. The report has no evidence relating to the age range of the perpetrators of early sexual debut.
Society is already struggling with the challenge of absentee or deadbeat fathers. It then follows that a proper response to this social problem would be a creative policy and programmatic engagement with teen fathers and those adult males involved in sexual activity with minors, especially since a legalistic response only goes so far.
This can only be possible if the KDHS is intentional about capturing the demographics of the boys and the men who are involved in sexual activity with teenage girls.
For instance, if the question was framed thus “When did you have your first sexual experience?” the follow-up query would be the age then of the person with whom the respondent had their first sexual encounter.
Social workers, development workers and counsellors would benefit from a quantification of such a demography. Community-based initiatives or faith-based interventions at scale would be crafted around the need to respond to this challenge.
– Mr Kakeeto, a lawyer, is a lecturer at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). [email protected]
