TEENAGE PREGNANCY

Teenage pregnancy



Teenage pregnancy

Teen pregnancy is commonly defined as a pregnancy by a woman who has not reached the age of majority in her country. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world at 143 per 1,000 women, while South Korea has the lowest at 3 per 1,000 women. The United States has the highest teenage birthrate in the developed world at 53 per 1,000 women and also has a high rate of teenage abortion.

Teenage pregnancy has always occurred, but in recent years, many in the United States have defined it as a serious problem. Teen pregnancy is associated with negative outcomes for both mother and child. It is also associated with contested political and moral ideologies. The history of the concept of teenage pregnancy, the outcomes of teen pregnancy, and social policies all inform how U.S. society treats the issue.

Historical Constructions of Teen Pregnancy

Teenage pregnancy was, in fact, more common in the United States before 1950 than it is today. Though teen pregnancy in the United States has decreased since 1950, with a sharp decline since the 1990s, it has been increasingly defined as a social problem, with lawmakers and citizens convinced that something needs to be done to reduce the number of children born to teenagers and unmarried women. In many societies around the world, marriage is a primary measure of whether a woman is “ready” to have a child. In societies in which the average age of marriage is younger, teenage pregnancy is not seen as a social problem, since most pregnant teenagers are married. In the United States, people now delay marriage well beyond the teenage years. Thus, what is considered an acceptable age for pregnancy has continued to rise. Also fueling the concern is the association between teenage pregnancy and poor women of color. African Americans and Latinas have higher rates of teenage pregnancy; they are also more likely than white women to contend with racism, poverty, and the stigma attached to teenage pregnancy. Despite these social inequalities, individual explanations and remedies for this problem predominate political discourse. Structural understandings and solutions to these racial and class disparities receive much less attention.

Prevalence Rates

Based on reports from AGI, more than 800,000 to 900,000 adolescents become pregnant each year, with more than half of those pregnancies leading to adolescent parenthood (AGI, 1994, 2004). For example, in the year 2000, 33% of pregnancies among 15- to 19- year-old girls ended in abortion. However, teen pregnancy rates and abortion rates vary considerably by ethnicity and by state. Among U.S. adolescent girls, 15% of all African American girls, 14% of Hispanic Americans, and 7% of European Americans become pregnant (AGI, 2004). The disproportionately higher incidence of adolescent pregnancy for young women of color is even more dramatic at younger ages. In 1997, 1.1 per 1,000 European American females younger than 15 years of age became pregnant compared to 3.9 per 1,000 Hispanic girls and 7.7 per 1,000 African American ...