Teen violence and pregnancies are on the rise in the country.

Parents in South Africa have to work to put bread on the table. This results in many latchkey kids who often have to make their own rules and monitor their own behaviour.

They increasingly break taboos because they can and because they think they will not be caught. Bored teenagers have discovered sex as a way to pass the time.

The risk to our moral fibre when children become adults too soon is incalculable. As is the social and health ramifications to the future fiscus.

The old method of leaving education and mores to teachers and the church no longer applies. The nation has to engage with teen pregnancies, violence and alcohol to protect the children from themselves.