Pregnant Teens: American Trends in Teen Pregnancy

In June 2008, Time Magazine reported that a group of teen girls in Gloucester, MA, made a "pregnancy pact" with one another to get pregnant and have their babies at about the same time. Since that time, it's been unclear whether or not the girls had a formal "pact" to get pregnant together, but they were certainly all at risk for teen pregnancy long before the purported pact.

Should American parents in other parts of the country be worried about their own teens getting pregnant? In the 1990s and early 2000s, teen pregnancy rates were at all-time lows. However, in 2006, teen pregnancy rates rose for the first time since 1991. With movies like Juno that have been accused of "glorifying" teen pregnancy, and Britney Spears' sixteen year-old sister Jamie-Lynn recently announcing her own pregnancy, it certainly seems that teen pregnancy is on the rebound.

Is teen pregnancy in America trending up or down?

The 1990s and early 2000s saw an overall drop in teen pregnancy in America. In 2004, rates of teen pregnancy across different age brackets and different ethnic backgrounds had dropped by an average of about 50% since 1990. (Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy)

But in 2006, the teen pregnancy rate went up. Is this just an anomaly, or are teen pregnancy rates back on the rise in America? Stephanie Ventura of the Centers for Disease Control suggested that perhaps attitudes about sex are changing for teens, while Bill Albert of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy postulated that "the focus on teen pregnancy and teen births has lessened, because the news has been so consistently good since 1991." Regardless of the reasons why, both experts agree that it's too early to tell if the rise in teen pregnancy in 2006 is just a blip or the beginnings of an alarming trend. (Source: US News and World Report)

Another possible source of the increase in pregnant teens is that more pregnant teens are opting not to abort their unborn children than before. The Guttmacher Institute, a think tank focusing on sexual and reproductive health issues, reported that by 2002, the abortion rate had dropped 50% from its peak in 1988. (Source: The Guttmacher Institute)

Whether the teen pregnancy rates in America are trending up or down, the fact remains that the United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate of all western, industrialized nations. In other words, compared to what the teen pregnancy could be, America still has room to improve.

What are the underlying causes of teen pregnancy?

Risk factors of teen pregnancy include: drug and alcohol use, multiple sexual partners, not using contraceptives, and the teen mother being sexually abused as a child.

But as Janet P. Realini, M.D. points out in the journal American Family Physician, "Adolescent pregnancy is not just about sex; it is a symptom of young people taking risks... many nonsexual risk factors and protective factors affect adolescents' sexual risk-taking. Typically, teenage pregnancy and childbearing reflect low expectations. Young people who see bright futures for themselves, who feel connected to parents and school, and who have many positive factors in their lives take fewer unhealthy risks of any kind and are less likely to experience a pregnancy." (Source: American Family Physician) Parents wishing to prevent their daughters from becoming pregnant, or their sons from causing a pregnancy, should take Dr. Realini's observations to heart.

What works to prevent teen pregnancy?

Research from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2002 showed that teens who received comprehensive sex education were 60% less likely to get pregnant than those with no sex education. Sex education for teens was shown to slightly reduce the likelihood of teens engaging in sex at all. (Source: ScienceDaily.com).

Risks in a teenage pregnancy

Studies of pregnant teens have shown that teenage mothers are less likely to gain an adequate amount of weight during their pregnancy, leading to low birthweight for the infant - a cause of sickness and even mortality for infants. (Source: WomensHealthCahnnel.com) Pregnant teens are also less likely to receive prenatal care, either because they are trying to keep their pregnancy a secret for as long as possible, they're too embarrassed to seek medical attention, or they cannot afford the care. Pregnant teens also face a higher risk of high blood pressure during pregnancy, going into labor early, and unknowingly passing along STDs to their infant. (Source: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp103.cfm)

Once the child is born to a teenage mother, the child is less likely to benefit from a healthy diet and is more likely to grow up in poverty. Perhaps as a cumulative result of these risk factors, children born to teenage mothers are also more likely to suffer from developmental delays, such as speech delays and learning disabilities.

Conclusion

The 2008 quadrupling of the teen pregnancy rate in Gloucester, MA, may not have been a few "wild" girls with an intention to get pregnant together. Rather, Gloucester may turn out to be the "canary in the coal mine"; as an economically depressed town well before the current economic crisis, Gloucester may be demonstrating what happens to teens when they feel that they don't have a bright future to look forward to and feel the weight of family stress beginning to bear down upon them. Will the teen pregnancy rate in America continue to rise? Time, and perhaps the access and availability to a viable future for young people, will tell.