Teen Pregnancy Facts

In the past number of months we have spent literally 100's of hours researching the needs of pregnant and parenting teens. This entry is provided to share snippets of what we have learned.

Teen Pregnancy

Background

For almost all of human history, women began their careers as mothers when they were teenagers. Until the years preceding World War II, girls usually got married within a few years of reaching menarche (the first menstrual period), which occurred when the girls were 14 or 15 years old. Since there wasn’t any effective form of contraception, they tended to get pregnant soon after the wedding. Indeed, there were more teenage women who became parents in 1960 than there are now, but most of these women were married, or they got married while they were pregnant.

The major change in the situation has been the public acceptance of single motherhood along with recognition that women definitely need a complete education, at least through high school, if they are to be financially self-sufficient. Only about 25 percent of children grow up in a house with both birth parents these days, compared to more than 50 percent just 40 years ago. The increase in numbers of single parents due to divorce has led to a societal acceptance of single parenthood in general, with the consequence of societal acceptance of single teenage mothers as well, even if they’ve never been married. (Robert T. Brown, MD)

What have we learned about teen pregnancy?

· One million teens in the USA will become pregnant over the next twelve months. Ninety-five percent of those pregnancies are unintended. About one third will end in abortion; one third will end in spontaneous miscarriage; and one third will continue their pregnancy to term and keep their baby.

· More than half of them are 17 years old or younger when they have their first pregnancy.

· Approximately 40 percent of young women become pregnant before they reach 20 years old.

· The United States of America has double the adolescent pregnancy and birth rates of any other industrialized country.

· The poorer the young woman, the more likely she will become a mother.

· Less than one-third of teens who have babies before the age of 18 finish high school.

· Almost half of all teen mothers end up on welfare.

· Less than 25 percent of births to teens occur within wedlock.

· The birth rate for teens has been declining in recent years.

· Between 22 and 30% of teen mothers under age 18 have a second baby within two years after the birth of their first baby.

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What are other consequences of teenage pregnancy?

• Life may be difficult for a teenage mother and her child. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school than girls who delay childbearing. Only 40 percent of teenagers who have children before age 18 go on to graduate from high school, compared to 75 percent of teens from similar social and economic backgrounds who do not give birth until ages 20 or 21 .

• With her education cut short, a teenage mother may lack job skills, making it hard for her to find and keep a job. A teenage mother may become financially dependent on her family or on public assistance. Teen mothers are more likely to live in poverty than women who delay childbearing, and more than 75 percent of all unmarried teen mothers go on welfare within five years of the birth of their first child .
• About 78 percent of children born to an unmarried teenage high-school dropout live in poverty, compared to 9 percent of children born to women over age 20 who are married and high school graduates . A child born to a teenage mother is 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade in school and is more likely to perform poorly on standardized tests and drop out before finishing high school .
  

What are the health risks to babies of teen mothers?

A baby born to a teenage mother is at higher risk for certain serious problems and death than a baby born to an older mother. Babies of teenage mothers are more likely to die in the first year of life than babies of women in their twenties and thirties. The risk is highest for babies of the mothers under age 15. In 2004, 17.1 out of every 1,000 babies of women under age 15 died, compared to 6.8 per 1,000 for babies of women of all ages . In 2004, 9.9 percent of mothers ages 15 to 19 years had a low-birthweight baby, compared to 8.1 percent for mothers of all ages. The risk is higher for younger mothers :

11.6 percent of 15-year-old mothers had a low-birthweight baby in 2004; 18,274 babies were born to girls this age, with 2,124 of low birthweight

9.4 percent of women aged 19 had a low-birthweight baby in 2004; 164,045 babies were born to these women, with 15,376 of low birthweight

Low-birthweight babies may have organs that are not fully developed. This can lead to lung problems, such as respiratory distress syndrome, bleeding in the brain, vision loss and serious intestinal problems.

Very low-birthweight babies (less than 3 1/3 pounds) are nearly 100 times as likely to die, and moderately low-birthweight babies (between 3 1/3 and 5½ pounds) are more than 5 times as likely to die in their first year of life than normal-weight babies . (March of Dimes)