Teen Pregnancy Rates Decline in the US in Recent Years

Remove all ads!

I was listening to NPR this morning on the radio, and I heard a few interesting facts.

Since 2000, Birth rate for teens 15-17 has declined from about 40/1000 to 22/1000 in 2003.

Since 1990, pregnancy rates have gone from 80/1000 to about 50/1000 in 2003.

The greatest decrease, by ethnicity, is in the African-American population - something like 23%.

Most sources attribute these decreases to an increase in the practice of abstinence before marriage.

Thoughts on the subject?

 

I find this bit somewhat surprising. I would imagine that the increased usage of condoms would have a lot greater effect but then I don't know how usual the usage of condom is among the teenagers of US. Also in Finland the increase of enlightening teenagers about preventation and sexually transmitted diseases in schools has helped to decrease the numbers in here. I'm not sure what kind of education they have in US about sex so I can't say what kind of an effect it has had there.

I would imagine the development is quite similar in here, but the reasons are quite different than what you state. The young are more interested in progressing on their career than getting childern, also the costs of having a child are way too much for a studying couple. Today it's not even uncommon that couples have their first children at the age of 40, which in the past would have been quite exceptional. This is more a question about couples somewhere between 18-25 though but I imagine it has an effect on teenage pregnancies too.

Most teenage pregnancies are unwanted and probably caused by not using preventation and alcohol/drugs being involved. They are unfortunate cases since most teenagers simply are not ready to have a child and therefore end up aborting the pregnancy.
So I do consider the decrease of teenage pregnancies definently to be a good thing.

 

Impossible to generalize. Some places have the "okay, and this is how you put a condom on a banana" sorta education, while others have the "don't you dare have sex before marriage, because contraception doesn't work and you'll get pregnant and contract VD!" sort. Often depends on the state, but individual counties vary as well.

 

A teenage girl gets pregnant, her family have a hard time coping with their child as she usually does not take full responsibility for raising her own child.

The girls younger sisters and brothers make a vow, never to let this happen to them.

Next generation another teen girl gets pregnant as she did not realize how hard it is to raise a child... as her older brothers and sisters did not have a teen pregnancy.

Therefore this is something that will fluctiate with different generations, depending on the actions of pervious generations.

 

Maybe people come to SP and read my posts?

But seriously, there really seems to be a growing tendency actually to wait until marriage. The so called sexual revolution has created an artificial pressure to have sex and lose virginity early as if it were a burden. That was so much against nature that a rebound was doomed to happen.

People's minds, hearts, maybe even bodies, are revolting against the cultural imperative to put out at every opportunity and to show how progressive you are by being sexually open to crowds of people from various trendy backgrounds, minorities etc.

I'm not saying they actually want to or will wait until marriage, but they don't want cheap sex and they prefer to keep it meaningful. This is always some improvement. In the end, perhaps people will actually stick back to lifetime partnerships and view premarital relationships through that perspective. Maybe the artificial emphasis on sex will fade away.

 

Hard to say. It's not a very long period on which to base any conclusion (imagine a survey that said that pregnancy rates had decreased between 1971 and 1976 - you wouldn't put much emphasis on it a few years later).

What I'd rather know is the trend from 1985 - 2005, which would provide a better indication as to what might be happening.

Still, sounds positive.

 

I wonder if it counts as a teen pregnancy if you are married by 18 and give birth then? And then divorced at 22 with three children with no education and no job?

[ May 10, 2005, 15:40: Message edited by: joacqin ]

 

What if you are married by 18, give birth 9 months later and things work out?

 

In the U.S. sex ed generally focuses on abstinence first, and protection second. (Which is a logical progression, seeing as how success on the first negates the need to worry about the second.) While I never had an experience like AMaster states of being shown how to put a condom on a banana, they do inform you about protection methods. The general message from my experience (and this was coming from a small, conservative, catholic community) was abstaining from sex is best, but if you can't do that, at least use protection.

 

I think another factor has been so many years of Republican control of the government. I believe that consistantly the Republicans have been attacking, slashing, and eliminating welfare. Whereas before some people considered an additional child like getting a raise, now things are much tougher

 

He, he, someday in around fifty years, people will look back at those astonishingly high numbers and say what a wonderful thing teenage pregnancies were. At least they were pregnancies !

I personally think that sexual education has nearly no role impact on the number of teenage pregnancies. No matter what "goal" is taught, as long it's understood that it isn't the stork that brings babies, it has done all it can.

There way more important questions that have an impact on teenagepregnancies, mainly personal goals in life and the value that is given to education. I say, the more a society values education, the less teenagepregnancies there will be.

The most obvious pattern between pregnancies and young age that I see is: The worse the formation, the earlier the children.

So, in the years cited, did maybe the necessity to get some kind of decent education move more into the spotlight ?

It would most interesting to compare the numbers of teenpregnancies on this statistic with the way sexual education works in each country. To me, there seems to be no link of any importance to be there. And if there was, people should get rid fast of the teach about abstinence-nonsense.

CH
5.4

R
34

P
20,4

E
9,6

A
13

D
13,2

UK
26,8

S6

DK
6,2

NL
7,6

F
11

I
7

N
9,2

Can.
15

USA
43

http://www.svss-uspda.ch/de/schweiz/profil.htm

Edit: Oops, I forgot, that is teenagepregnancy/1000 and the numbers from 2002 and 2003