teen pregnancy
“epidemic.”?????????
The teen birth
rate is, and has been for many years, much lower today than it was in the 1950s
an
1960s, when many
teens married and began their families young.
Since the early
1970s, the proportion of all teenage mothers who conceived their children out
of wedlock, but got married before the birth, has dropped from 47 percent to 16
percent.
About ten percent
of 15-19 year olds become pregnant each year. More than 40 percent of our teenagers will become pregnant
before they reach their 20th birthday
.
About 28 percent
of younger teenagers (and 23 percent of 18 and 19 year olds) who are sexually
active either do not use any method of contraception or use it only
sporadically
Nearly half of
first-time adolescent mothers become pregnant again within two years.”
It is certainly
true that the proportion of unmarried teenagers who have had sex has risen
dramatically. The proportion of 16-year-old girls who had ever had intercourse
increased from about 8-9 percent
during the 1960s
and early 1970s to about 21 percent during the mid-1980s. In the years 1958
through 1960, only about 27 percent of 18-year-old women had ever had
intercourse, and many of them were married. By 1970-72, about 35 percent of 18
year-old women were no longer virgins. But by the mid-1980s, despite a rapid
drop in teen marriage rates, the majority of 18-year-old women were sexually
experienced urrently, about a quarter of U.S. young women, and about one-fifth
of men, remain virgins through their teen years.
YOUNG ADULT women
having children is not a new phenomenon. The number of women who had their
first child during their teen years was almost the same in the early 1970s as
in the early 1990s. But the proportion of teen moms who conceived their first
child out of wedlock has increased significantly, rising from about 65 percent
in 1970-74 to 89 percent in 1990-94. The single biggest change in recent
decades has been the declining proportion of pregnant single teens who marry.
Over the past 30 years, two larger social trends have affected teen
childbearing. First, higher ages at marriage, combined with earlier initiation
into sex, have led to an increasing number of single teens exposed to the risk
of premarital pregnancy for longer periods of time. The second trend is the decreased
likelihood that a single teenager will either “legitimate” her pregnancy by
marrying or giving the baby up for adoption
.
Until the late
1960s, the almost universal response to teen pregnancy in public schools was
expulsion. Although expulsion reflected the strong social stigma attached to
premarital sexuality and unwed childbearing, the general policy also typically
applied to married students as well as to teachers who were pregnant and
beginning to “show.” But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of large
urban school districts, as well as a handful of states, were overturning this
policy, taking concrete steps to keep pregnant students enrolled in school.
Moreover, by 1973,
more than 200 local school systems in the United States had created programs to
encourage school-age pregnant girls and young mothers to continue their
education, obtain prenatal care, and engage in group counseling “to help solve
problems that either may have led to or been caused by the pregnancy.” Most of
these programs offered young mothers a “regular educational program in a
special setting.
Resources:
Gallegher, M. (n.d.) The Age Of Unwed Mothers; Is Teen Pregnancy The Problem? Retrieved on Feb 26, 2013 from the Americal Values. Org website: http://www.americanvalues.org/Teen.PDF
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