teenage pregnancy

[watervole]

temeres asked me to talk about teenage pregnancy.

I can't claim any direct knowledge in this area, but I guess even that is relevent data. (ie. I come from a well-educated family and never felt trapped in a particular area/job)

From what I've read, the relevent factors linked with a high teen pregnancy rate are:

1. Social and economic. Girls who do well at school and see a good future for themselves are less likely to become pregnant in their teens. This ties in with the area in which you live - if there's no prospect of a decent job, why not become a mother and get the social security?

2. Low self-esteem, which is often related to the above. "No one really cares about me, but a baby will love me."

3. Poor relationship with parents. Children who feel supported by their parents and who are able to talk freely to them about sex and other issues are also less likely to be teenage parents.

4. Poor sex education. Note that sex education has to be of a high standard to have much effect. Poor sex education has no impact on the pregnancy rates. (there was a recent article in New Scientist that discussed this issue)

5. Access to contaception. I haven't seen any reliable statistics on this one, so will merely quote both sides of the argument. Either, available contraception makes you more likely to have sex (and thus more likely to get pregnant as all contraceptives have failure rates). Or, girls will have sex when they make the decision to do so, regardless of the availablity of contraception and therefore contraception helps reduce the pregnancy rate.

The only solutions I have to offer are the obvious ones, namely better education in low-income areas and much better sex education (to be good, it must involve the pupils in the discussion as well as feeding them facts and should also include input from teenage parents who can explain first-hand what the problems are).

I'd probably plump on the side of making contraception available to underage children, though I'd swing if I saw convincing stats that it was creating more problems than it solved. I try and go with the data rather than my personal prejudices.

Comments

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

There have been recent studies up here showing that whenever and wherever the sex ed and the availability of contraceptives have been poor, teenage pregnancies have increased (the authorities were worried since things were looking up in the 80's and 90's--back then, we got sex ed at school when we were 12). AFAIK Holland and Scandinavia have the smallest rates of teen pregnancies and abortions in the world, and I can't see anything else but sex ed contributing to that. I'd be interested to know about the British statistics. I was surprised to notice the Pill was free of charge in the UK and yet there were so many teenage mothers in the (poor) suburb I lived in Southampton. I guess there has to be both education and contraception to make things work...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I suspect social stability and the smaller gap between rich and poor are also relevent in Scandanavia.

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

Whatever there was left of social stability, it went down the drain with the early 90's recession--it mauled every class at least in Finland. I think the fact that everyone irregardless of their class has to attend state schools (a thing *very* heavily enforced here by legislation) has been the most important thing above all else. They're so important and effective that the lazier/more prudish parents have come to rely on them to rear their kids for them, which is Not A Good Thing, IMHO. So when the schools fail in sex ed, it shows immediately.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

There were some stats in the Guardian a few days ago. Can't recall them off the top of my head, but Britain has the highest rate in Europe, Sweden the lowest. And it's not a narrow gap.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

I have the figures for Australia, which came up recently when the religious right tried to claim that teenage abortions were on the rise in Australia (they aren't).

The highest rate of teenage pregnancies in the world was the US, with 52 per thousand females and the lowest was South Korea with 3. The UK at 29 was about the same as New Zealand. Australia was somewhat lower at 17. The rate among indigenous Australians higher at 22. Finland, FWIW has 13.

In Australia, 10% of teenage mothers were married and another 30% were in de facto relationships. Fully 77% became pregnant deliberately.

I am far from convinced that there is any problem.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

In Australia, 10% of teenage mothers were married and another 30% were in de facto relationships. Fully 77% became pregnant deliberately.

I'd call that a problem. Those who are in relationships are okay, but the rest are likely to be struggling to bring up a child on a low income (teenagers are unlikely to have the income of a woman who choses to have a child alone in later life). The end result is likely to be either a child brought up in poverty, or the rest of society paying for that child's welfare through the tax system.