They call February “Heart Month,” pertaining to love, relationships, or one’s emotions.
In the past, the second month of the year was only significant for mainly two things: being the shortest month and, on the 14th, Valentine’s Day.
Nowadays, it is a whole “season” devoted to all things “love” — and not just the romantic kind.
In spite of the obvious commercialism of the season, its “expansion” into other kinds or forms of love has made it not just more inclusive, but also more meaningful. Love within families, for example, is highlighted in a world that has increasingly made dysfunction the norm.
When we speak of a generation gap, we can imagine wide, gaping spaces of disconnection, as the young are growing up in a vastly changed world and in transformative times.
We do not see all its effects on the younger generations until we are faced with numbers so glaring — so “alarming,” as some government officials had commented lately — that we are forced to look into the matter more closely.
Student suicides are on the rise. Child pregnancies are on the rise.
Just how disturbing these headlines are, sinks in when we encounter stories of families broken by such incidents. Any way you look at it, these reports reflect the kind of society we are living in today and how it is molding future humans.
Senator Sonny Angara, a father of three, called on his fellow government leaders to prioritize the issue of rising pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14. While statistics show that cases of teenage pregnancies among girls aged 16 to 19 have declined since 2016, the same cannot be said among much younger girls.
What disturbed the young solon more, I suppose, was the fact that “majority of the registered adolescent live births involved men who were three to five years older than the girls,” reports revealed.
One thing worth noting: kids today are growing up “too fast,” living in times of unlimited information and unfettered emotion.
To say values have changed is an understatement, with all kinds of information easily accessed, especially by these digital natives, and family bonds increasingly loosened by separation, whether by choice or circumstance.
Most of the youth today, once considered “of marrying age,” are averse to the idea of “getting hitched,” perhaps seeing the results of marriages gone sour, if not berserk, in their own sphere.
Their idea of love is not the same as that of previous generations if a recent study is used as a basis.
Geotagged tweets from 15 million users around the world revealed that Manila is a most “loving” city.
The study conducted by Crossword Solver based the results on tweets that included the word “love you” or “love u, even (heart) you” and heart emojis.
Indeed, love is present in many Filipinos’ hearts, no matter their circumstances. Still, the issue of poverty remains in the picture, especially in most cases of girls between 10 to 14 who find themselves becoming a parent when they are technically still just children themselves.
Many of these cases are among the poor, statistics show, and this is a cycle that will continue for them as many tend to quit school when it happens to them.
While stories such as this may sound like a telenovela to many and thus be easily dismissed, the truth is taken as a whole, numbers rising in this regard have an economic impact on the country.
A recent story on an investigative news site said: “The economic consequences of teenage pregnancy can be traced back to the sudden stop to a young parent’s education.”
Perhaps the Department of Education could look into providing education, whether later or through alternative modes, to very young parents who are pushed to drop out of school because of their situation.
DepEd Secretary Sara Z. Duterte may recall that this disturbing increase in adolescent birth rates may have led then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s temper to rise and declare “teenage pregnancy a national emergency on 25 June 2021 through Executive Order 141,” a report shows.
It is a national emergency, if we think about it. More than the rise in numbers, it is the future of young Filipinos that we hold in our hands today.