America has the highest teenage pregnancy rate of the developed world; we also have the highest teen abortion rate, at nearly 17 per 1,000 (1.7%) Nearly eight in ten of teenage pregnancies are unintended and the mothers are unmarried.
Yea, we’ve gotten better since the 90’s, but we still have work to do.
I’ve spent years telling my girls about the negative effects of teenage pregnancy, and they’re only eight and nine! But a self-reflective parent knows that there’s always two sides to a coin. Now I find myself questioning, what if I’m wrong? What if, in a best-case scenario, 17 and pregnant turns out to be a good thing?
Case in point: I know a young lady who is 17 and currently with child. I find myself at odds with how I discuss her case with my girls; they know her very well. Sometimes, I’m totally happy for her; she is mature, forward thinking, and has been given essentially the same kind of realistic, secular parenting that I try to give my girls, and yet she CHOSE motherhood.
I cap my letters because it’s true: her parents talked with her exhaustively about birth control, safe sex and the like. She knew where the local planned parenthood was, and she’d even counseled a friend who had become pregnant at her school.
She, at 17, is taking college classes and essentially done with high school–>having graduated one of the top in her class. And yet, she gave all that up to be a mommy in short order.
So then, does 17 and pregnant mean that life is over? I’ve always told my girls the answer is yes. Yes, if you get “knocked up” as a teen-ager, life will be more difficult:
* your free time will be gone–infants OWN their parents
* deciding that you no longer want the responsibility (that extends well beyond the 18 years our law mandates) is not an option–without SERIOUS consequences
* traveling–out of the question
* social life–non existent
* college?—> Not the first year, if you value sanity
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And then there are the outliers, the ones that make us believe it is possible to be have a wonderful, joyous life, young and pregnant. The young lady I know is a perfect example.
But outliers are just that, they lie outside the norm. Yes, you can be 17 and pregnant, and have
it be a good thing for the mother and father in question. There are dozens of cases where a young girl hunkers down at 16 or 17 with her high school sweetheart, they have a truckload of kids, and generally they live happily ever after.
Should we tell our young girls about these outliers…should they count?
Of course they should, and they do.
Outliers give useful information to young people; they let them know that if they are hell bent on making a decision that goes against modern wisdom, results can sometimes favor the gambler.
But I’ve made it clear to my girls, don’t be fooled by the Bill Gates’ of the world: deciding against college, not graduating high school, getting pregnant young, or jumping headfirst into other dangerous territory usually backfires.
The odds are stacked against the teenage mother. I certainly wish my young friend all the best of luck and happiness in life; she is brilliant, strong-willed, and able to persevere should times get rough–and I gather they might.
Nevertheless, I told my girls that teenage pregnancy was a path that I would advise against; ultimately though parents, the choice rests with them—
Why? Chances are, we won’t be around when they decided to “become a woman”. We have to trust that we have given them the best possible information, and secured for them the most current options on all fronts. From there all we parents can do is watch.
The Secular Parent 
I am glad to see your well-balanced coverage of this issue.
One aspect I didn’t think about so much before, is how beneficial it is to women’s health to have our first child earlier rather than later.
I married and had my first pregnancy at age 35 — and on the one hand, I feel very good about how child-led breastfeeding has greatly reduced my risk for reproductive cancers (my combined total of more than 8 years of breastfeeding, for 2 children, is greater than that of some mothers of many, LOL) …
But I remember looking into it further, and learning that waiting ’til after age 35 for my first pregnancy, may have actually INCREASED my cancer-risk more than all those years of breastfeeding has DECREASED it.
Yeah, I got to finish college. And I got to go to Europe, Mexico, and Macua, South China … so maybe these memories will be adequate compensation if I have to lose my cervix, uterus, and/or ovaries down the line. Or, even worse, die from cancer that wasn’t detected in time.
But I’m not sure it would compensate for my children’s loss if I died while they still needed me. And since they won’t be grown ’til I’m near 60, that’s a greater risk … whereas a mother who started earlier and then had a later-in-life baby, at least has some comfort in knowing that her older children will be there for her youngest, should she die before her youngest is a mature adult.
Of course, maybe I can beat all the odds and NEVER get any cancer in spite of being in a somewhat high-risk group.
Either way, whether we start our families at 17 or 47, I think it’s best to look on the bright side. I think the positives CAN offset the negatives, if we make up our minds to love our kids to the fullest.
You made an oops! The US teen abortion rate is NOT 54% even according to the link you provided. I’m afraid what you did was misread the chart. See it says 54.4 for live births BUT not only is that for live births but it’s not a percentage it’s 54.4 per 1,000 so that would be 5.44 percent of all US female teenagers (age 15-19) give birth. The next column is for abortions: 17 per 1,000 so that means 1.7% of all US female teenagers (age 15-19) have abortions. These numbers are huge compared to the rates for Germany, the Netherlands or France, but no where near 54%. Of course part of the reason these numbers are so small is because it is out of all US female teens aged 15-19, as opposed to only those who get pregnant.
But, to see the numbers for only those who get pregnant just scroll up from the chart and you see: “Of teenage pregnancies, 14% end in miscarriages, 31% end in abortions, and 55% end in birth.”
So only 1.7 of American teen girls (15-19) have abortions because most of them do not become pregnant in the first place, but out of only those who become pregnant 31% have an abortion (55% carry to term, and 14% miscarry.)
So depending on whether you mean all American teen girls or just those who get pregnant, the abortion rate is either 1.7 percent or 31 percent.
As an aside – 14% miscarry! WOW! The rate of clinical miscarriage in general is at only 8% (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage#cite_ref-epl_29-1) so that is another reason to wait until you are older.
Big oops! changing it now….
Study after study shows that kids are better off having two parents in an intact home.
Sure, that may not always (or even often anymore) be the case, but lets not claim that changes the fact that they would be better off with the two parents.
I agree! When I look at my girls, I realize that life without my husband would have resulted in children with very different dispositions and behaviors. This little post wasn’t designed to say that single parenting is the way to go either….
interesting….you assume that ALL teenage moms are single parents……mostly, you are right. But this post is about the “Outliers.”
J.D., I agree that it’s usually best for children to grow up with both mother and father in the same home. I say “usually” because of course there are those toxic situations in which it really is healthiest to have a certain kind of parent NOT be in the home.
But I also agree with secular parent that teen pregnancy doesn’t always have to result in single parenthood. Some “outliers” actually have the maturity to make marriage and parenthood work at a young age.
My girls are very close to their daddy — so this is an issue I’ve talked about some with my oldest, who is 9, when the subject of teen sex and pregnancy comes up. She feels pretty strongly that she wants to be married when she has a baby.
That said, I don’t think single parenthood has to be treated as a tragedy. If one of my children ever found herself in such a situation, I’d want her to feel my full support, and to feel good about what she is doing in giving life and love to her child, even if it has to be as a single parent.
After all, sometimes people get married, have children together, and then unexpectedly one spouse dies and boom they are a single parent family. But they’re still a family, and happy times are still ahead.
Susan,
Excellent point! Not only circumstances change in parenting by our choices but also by things outside our control – spousal abuse, medical tragedies/incapacitation, military deployment.
The same goes for another side of the coin – transsexual spouses, younger/older spouces, step children/parents, new/dissloved marriages, etc. etc. etc.
The plethora of changes is mind boggling. Musing over “pastoral” past in the Biblical terms to me is absolutely irrational. Moving on with life is rational.
Actually, Iggy, I think single parenthood was sometimes a lot more tragic in Biblical times. Some parents even sold themselves or their children into slavery to make ends meet.
Susan, imagine if the invention of “steam engine” by a famous Alexandrian inventor and scientist Heron would take hold over 2,000 years ago before Jesus? Imagine if religion (Xianity) woudl be a cult like scientology otday and not a major religion that inhibited the world in the dark ages and threw us back 300-500 years?
Industrial revolution of the 17,18,19th century propelled us to where we are today. In 100-200 years our lives are unrecognizable. Imagine the quantum leap of technogly and morality today?
Maybe we would not even worry about “single” parents today? – all babies would be born “out vitro” under controlled circumstances and nobody would worry about single parents because it would be a norm or the “whole village/scoiety” woudl be responsible for it or whole family or whatever.
Sure, there would be problems like all the time, but look at the issue of raising kids from “The Venus Project” perpsecitve and I hope you’ll understand.
MOrality today would be completly diffeernt than before.
Of course, with the Venus Project they’re all for keeping families together — not raising the kids in institutions like some “brave new world” scenario.
The main difference between that and what we have, is everyone having access to the resources they need. I get the impression that parents would still be the ones raising their children — they’d just have a lot of support and everyone would have access to a range of educational options, whereas now many people with lower incomes can’t even consider certain options.
Susan, I gave an example of the “Venus Project” as a “quantum leap” of “new bird’s eye view of the world” on “how” morality could be changed over time and in the future and offer “new” understanding of where we are heading.
“Morality” in my opinion is “never” bad. It just “is”. “Immoral” aspects of it are “universal” in every society and there is deviation in some aspects, e.g Spartans would leave weak and deformed babies outside in cold night to die or just throw them off a rock. Weird, but moral to them.
The same goes for Aztecs and their massive sacrifical rituals of thousands of enemy prisoners ripping their hearts out for the glory of gods.
The same approach can be traced to “raising kids” – a new approach – doesn’t matter if you are a single parent or not, gay or straigh, it is just “is” and nothing can be changed – unless some crazies want to stop someone from adopting, having or rearing a baby on your own or in an unusual situation – e.g. 90 year old father and 20 year old mother.
Iggy’s idea about a future where all babies are born “in vitrio” is not new. Aldous Huxley wrote a book about it, Brave New World, that we read in English class this past semester.
It provided a basis for total totalitarian control of all aspects of life, and a Eugneically ordered society.
A real nightmare. I am not suprised, given Iggy’s background (which I don’t think he can ever get over) that he favors it.
And I see that Iggy wishes technology had developed faster.
But without corresponding moral advance, it only means that we might have had nuclear weapons 500 years ago, used them, and be back in the stone age by now.
And that remark about the Spartans is very revealing. The fact that he does not see them as morally reprehensible just means he is uncaring.
For a guy who thinks morals are relative, he sure makes a lot of judgments on people.
Iggy’s use of quotation marks is also very unnerving. Not to mention he was starting to sound like a certain Delores person with the crazy future in vitro clone helpmeet stuff.
But seriously, you do know the difference between accenting certain words for emphasis by using _underline_ or CAPITALIZATION, and using “quote marks” that imply you only “kind of” mean what you’re saying or that you mean the opposite?
For example, a “new” understanding would be an old one that maybe was forgotten. When you say “raising kids” in quotes like that, it says to me that you think the kids are not being raised.
I know this comment has been somewhat pedantic, but it irks me when people try to communicate and instead just confuse everyone as to what you really mean.