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
