Teen Birth Rate Rises for First Time in 15 Years

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by jojapeach

That's the angle I took. I'm also going to blame the economy. With all of the adults being forced to take the fast food, etc. jobs that teens normally take, the teens can't find jobs and find other ways to be (re)productive. I'm sure things are even worse in the smaller towns.

I'm not going to blame the economy because Mississippi, New Mexico, and other states are ALWAYS scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to this sort of thing. Even 3-4 years ago, when the economy was doing really well--teens in Mississippi were reproducing at a faster rate than NYC subway rats. Perhaps in their communities, single parenthood is seen as "okay." Maybe poverty isn't that big a deal. Maybe they don't read condom boxes, BCP instructions, or they don't listen to their teachers.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

Perhaps in their communities, single parenthood is seen as "okay."

This is very true. In some communities, every girl on the block has a kid (sometimes 2) that they had before before age 19. If you're a young girl growing up in that community, you don't think anything of it. It's normal.

Same with poverty. If you've lived on this block all your life, where every girl is a HS drop out with a baby and on public assistance, you don't look at them as people in poverty because this is what you perceive as normal.

[AGDee]

There is nothing that says that these teens are single parents. I would be interested to see statistics on how many of them are married. In Mississippi, female teens can get married at 15 with parental consent. That's shockingly low to me. These statistics also include 18 and 19 year olds. I would really want to see it more detailed by specific age and marital status.

[nittanyalum]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

BITCHES WANNA BANG!

MOSTLY IN THE DEEP SOUTH APPARENTLY

LOL.

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

Finally! Mississippi tops a list for SOMETHING!

LOL!

Originally Posted by ISUKappa

Didn't Brandi Rae contribute to that statistic, or was sweet little DartmouthCornellYale born when she was 20?

LOLOLOLOL!

[madmax]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

This is very true. In some communities, every girl on the block has a kid (sometimes 2) that they had before before age 19. If you're a young girl growing up in that community, you don't think anything of it. It's normal.

Same with poverty. If you've lived on this block all your life, where every girl is a HS drop out with a baby and on public assistance, you don't look at them as people in poverty because this is what you perceive as normal.

You mean the inner cities where the Dems live?

[madmax]

Originally Posted by AGDee

There is nothing that says that these teens are single parents. I would be interested to see statistics on how many of them are married. In Mississippi, female teens can get married at 15 with parental consent. That's shockingly low to me. These statistics also include 18 and 19 year olds. I would really want to see it more detailed by specific age and marital status.

Do you know many married teenagers?

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by madmax

Do you know many married teenagers?

Almost everybody in my high school class who didn't go to college got married within a year or two of graduation and had a few kids by the time of our 5 year reunion, so yes, there are married teenagers out there.

I hunted down some statistics, although it was difficult to find. The best I can do is 2000 census data:
There were 891,000 married 15- to 19-year-olds in 2000, up from 598,000 in 1990, when married teens comprised 3.4 percent of all 15- to 19-year-olds. The increase came after a steady decline since 1950, when 9.5 percent of teens were married.
From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in528755.shtml

I couldn't find any that broke it down by state though.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Almost everybody in my high school class who didn't go to college got married within a year or two of graduation and had a few kids by the time of our 5 year reunion, so yes, there are married teenagers out there.

I hunted down some statistics, although it was difficult to find. The best I can do is 2000 census data:
There were 891,000 married 15- to 19-year-olds in 2000, up from 598,000 in 1990, when married teens comprised 3.4 percent of all 15- to 19-year-olds. The increase came after a steady decline since 1950, when 9.5 percent of teens were married.
From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in528755.shtml

I couldn't find any that broke it down by state though.

So it's rare?

[DSTRen13]

All this really shows is that teens are more likely to give birth - it doesn't compare actual rates of teen PREGNANCY. Those numbers (while pretty much impossible to accurately collect) might be more evenly spread across state lines ...

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

BITCHES WANNA BANG!

MOSTLY IN THE DEEP SOUTH APPARENTLY

This really made me laugh. Something about the use of "apparently."

This is actually a big improvement for Georgia in terms of relative rankings, I think. Back in the 90s I think we were typically one of the top three all the time.

And you know, no one took away the condoms, people. Even if your school had an abstinence only program funded by the feds, that doesn't actually prevent a different program from offering comprehensive sex ed. I bet you could count on one hand the number of schools who actually gave out condoms before who quit doing, if you could find any.

What I'm guessing this reflects is some sort of relaxation of fears about HIV in that age group. I think HIV scared a generation of teens to the point that sex without a condom was practically unthinkable, but I guess they've all grown up and there haven't been any high profile heterosexual infections lately.

And I think that what KSUviolet says applies some too. At my first job teaching, I had one girl who had her second baby before she was a senior in high school. The problem wasn't knowing where babies came from or having access to birth control. It was just that if she saw herself working in the local K-Mart distribution center all her life, it wasn't that big impediment to her plans to have a kid or two and she loved them.

[UGAalum94]

This may sound racist and classist and I'll just take the heat, but I suspect that for the most part rates are steady for different demographic and economic groups across state lines. Some states are just blessed with more diverse populations that others. ETA: looking at more data, I've got to say, I'm probably wrong. I can't really tell though because for some states, I think the economic situation may explain a lot and I don't have data for that. The south must just be that much more fertile.

ETA:http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
It's from 2006.
This has more info, even of the type that DSTren notes.

"Fifty percent or more of teenage pregnancies end in abortion in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia."

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And I think that what KSUviolet says applies some too. At my first job teaching, I had one girl who had her second baby before she was a senior in high school. The problem wasn't knowing where babies came from or having access to birth control. It was just that if she saw herself working in the local K-Mart distribution center all her life, it wasn't that big impediment to her plans to have a kid or two.

Exactly. For example, in my community, almost everyone is college-bound (or headed to some form of higher ed) after HS. So having a baby is a pretty big impediment to that. It's also true that most of their parents are also college grads (or have some form of post-HS education), so that's what they see as the norm. Having a baby in HS or soon afterward is just not the norm.

In contrast, there are communities in which most girls aren't thinking college or higher ed after school. Their parents and friends had babies in or shortly after HS. They also didn't go to college or anything and just work at *insert local place in town where everybody works here* So having x number of kids and working at ______ is the norm.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

So it's rare?

4.5% of all teens in 2000 but it was on the rise from 1990. It surprised me that it was on the rise. The pregnancy rate was 6.84% in 2006. It's not enough information to make any assumptions, really. We don't know how much overlap there was between those groups.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

This may sound racist and classist and I'll just take the heat, but I suspect that for the most part rates are steady for different demographic and economic groups across state lines. Some states are just blessed with more diverse populations that others. ETA: looking at more data, I've got to say, I'm probably wrong. I can't really tell though because for some states, I think the economic situation may explain a lot and I don't have data for that. The south must just be that much more fertile.

ETA:http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
It's from 2006.
This has more info, even of the type that DSTren notes.

"Fifty percent or more of teenage pregnancies end in abortion in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia."

I think it has a lot to do with class first, and then race. Even in poor areas (like Mississippi!), the teen pregnancy rate is probably split pretty evenly among black and white. When I was in HS, some girls got pregnant, but only the poorer ones--black and white--kept the kids. Part of it was that they probably figured that their parents, who were younger and less educated, "did fine," so why couldn't they do just as "well"?

Also, despite the fact that the Gloucester teen pregnancy pact was a hoax in that they didn't agree to get pregnant en masse, it's still an economically depressed town with a stark rich/poor divide. Those girls were all white, but they still didn't think they had any other options, so keeping a pregnancy was more palatable to them then it would have been to a girl on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

BITCHES WANNA BANG!

MOSTLY IN THE DEEP SOUTH APPARENTLY

Well, the heat and humidity does make a lot of things more sexy.