Teen Pregnancy Rates

Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collectio n

In case you missed it, May was National Teen Pregnancy Prevention
Month.
Many prominent officials, including President Clinton, used the occasion
to
trumpet some good news: Nationally, teen birth rates have fallen 18
percent
since 1991.

Here's what the President had to say: "Today we are seeing real
reason
for hope and optimism in our national campaign to prevent teen
pregnancy...
Teens in every state, across ethnic and racial groups, are making more
responsible life decisions. As a nation, we can be proud of these
encouraging trends."

Declining teen birth rates are, indeed, good news -- but they are
only
half the story. The other half of the story is not such good news.

While the teen birth rate has been declining, the number of children
born
out-of-wedlock has been increasing. According to the National Center
for
Health Statistics, 1,293,567 babies were born out-of-wedlock in 1998 --
the
highest number ever reported. This number represents 33 percent of all
births, including 41 percent of Hispanic and 70 percent of
African-American
births.

What's going on? How can it be that the teen birth rate is going
down,
yet the overall out-of-wedlock birth rate is going up?

In part, the answer lies in the fact that the steepest decline in
births
to teens has occurred among married teenagers (mostly 18- and
19-year-olds).
According to Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family,
Religion and Society, births to married teenagers fell from 289,000 live
births in 1980 to 107,103 live births in 1997. The drop in the birth
rate to
unmarried teenagers has been far less dramatic.

The other part of the answer lies in the fact that, contrary to media
stereotypes, most out-of-wedlock births are to women in their 20s, not to
teenagers. In sharp contrast to what is happening to the teen birth
rate,
the rate at which unmarried women in their twenties are having babies
continues to climb.

That this is so should be no great mystery, for while we have grown
increasingly clear about the problems associated with having a baby while
still a teenager, we remain fuzzy about the importance of getting married
before having a baby.

Indeed, as has been pointed out by Maggie Gallagher of the Institute
for
American Values in an important report entitled, "The Age of Unwed
Mothers:
Is Teen Pregnancy the Problems?" most teenage pregnancy prevention
programs
never even mention the word marriage. Rather, the predominant message is
this: The teen years are no time to become pregnant. Wait until you are
older.

What does this "wait until you are older" message mean? Does it mean
having a baby out-of-wedlock is a bad idea at 19, but a good idea at 20?

Hardly. While it is certainly true that having a child
out-of-wedlock
while still a teenager is a fast track to welfare dependency and poverty,
having a child out-of-wedlock in your 20s is no picnic, either. Studies
consistently show that women who bear children out-of-wedlock are much
more
likely to be poor compared to those who wait to have children until they
are
married.

Yet, by assiduously avoiding the use of the word marriage, we send
the
message to teens that the only thing wrong with having a baby without a
husband is doing it at too young an age. Little wonder a recent survey
found
a majority of teens agreed that people who decide to raise a child
out-of-wedlock are either "doing their own thing and not affecting anyone
else," or "experimenting with a worthwhile alternative lifestyle."

Does this mean we should give up on trying to prevent teen pregnancy?
Of
course not. Teens need to know the problems associated with having
children
at too young an age. But they also need to know the problems associated
with
being an unwed parent, no matter what the age.

To accomplish this, teenage pregnancy prevention programs need to
modify
their messages to be clear that when it comes to having a baby, age is
not
the only thing that matters; marriage matters as well.

Teens need to know, for example, that children growing up in
two-parent,
married households, compared to those reared in single-parent households,
are
less likely to be poor, to have an emotional problem, to fail at school,
to
commit crime, to become teen parents themselves, or to commit suicide.
They
also need to know that married adults -- both men and women -- are
happier,
healthier, and wealthier than their unmarried counterparts, and
communities
with higher marriage rates experience less crime and other social
dysfunctions than those with lower marriage rates.

The good news is this: When given a clear message and good
information,
teens are more likely to make good decisions. But they also need
complete
information. Saying teen pregnancy is a bad idea is good information;
but it
is also incomplete information.

It is time we start to give teens the complete information. Teens
need
to know that while bearing or fathering a child is a wonderful thing, one
should wait not just until you are older, but until you are married.

If we begin to give that message to teens now, five or 10 years hence
we
might have something truly spectacular to celebrate: an increase in the
number of children growing up with their two, married parents.

Dr. Wade F. Horn is President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, a
clinical child psychologist, and co-author of several books on parenting
including the Better Homes and Gardens New Father Book (Meredith, 1998)
and
the Better Homes and Gardens New Teen Book (Meredith, 1999). Send your
question about dads, children or fatherhood to: The National Fatherhood
Initiative, 101 Lake Forest Blvd, Suite 360, Gaithersburg, MD 20877, or
e-mail him at NFI1995@aol.com.

| Smart Marriages Archive | New Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog | Older Divorce Statistics Collection Archive |