February 2, 2009 

Concerned health experts are scratching their heads trying to determine why the nation's teen birth rate suddenly increased after declining for about 15 years.

Various claims have put the blame on abstinence-only education; on comprehensive sex education; the media, including TV and movies, for glamorizing young mothers; and on demographic and cultural changes.

Most, however, seem to agree that pre-teens must become more aware about the consequences of teen pregnancy and births.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released national and state birth statistics for 2006 showing that the births for 15- to 19-year-olds had increased 3 percent from 2005 to 435,000.

In Florida, teen pregnancies increased 7 percent, with the 17th highest birth rate in the nation. More than half of all states reported significant increases in teen births in 2006.

The United States has the highest rate of teen births of any industrialized nation and the costs, socially and economically, are staggering.

Teen mothers, most of them unwed, are more likely to be undereducated and to live in poverty with their children. The sons of teen mothers are far more likely to end up in prison than the sons of older mothers. Daughters of teen mothers are more likely to get into abusive relationships and to also have children as teens.

It's a detrimental social and cultural cycle that must be broken.

Between 1991 and 2004, teen child births cost Florida taxpayers an estimated more than $8.1 billion. Much of that cost was the result of services needed for the young children.

Parents, churches, and programs as Healthy Start, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Clubs, and Scouting can have a major role in encouraging responsible behavior and the truths associated with children having children.

The economic costs are high, but so are the social costs as such births often rip apart the fabric of family life. For the United States to be so far behind others in the reduction of teen births is unfathomable and a disservice to this and future generations.

As a supposedly enlightened nation, state and community, certainly we can do better.

COSTS OF

TEEN BIRTHS

Teen mothers more likely to:

}• Drop out of school (only a third receive high school diploma).

• Remain unmarried.

• Live in poverty (80 percent of unmarried teens go on welfare).

Children of teen mothers more likely to:

}• Grow up poor.

• Live in single-parent households.

• Perform poorly in school.

• Experience abuse and neglect.

• Become teen parents.

• End up in prison.

National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy