Teen pregnancy

Former Member

story

So, why is it so low there, and so high here, and so high here in comparison to the rest of the EU?

Former Member

well theyre more 'religious' if youd call it that, and the churches there spread quite a lot of myth about how masturbation etc causes blindness

its more due to making teens feel responsible in my opinion, and combining sex and relationships

however

the USA still has the highest rate of teen pregnencies, and the abstinence programs, have a 80% failure rate, and cause of the lack of education amongst those who take those vows, theres more disease and pregency amongst ones who are sexually active

we should look at the european system more, you wont see any changes initially, probably a rise for a year or 2, but what it brings about is a social change over 5-10 years....

and it isnt lack of sex education either, its lack of sex and relationship education

Former Member

Re: Teen pregnancy

Originally posted by Fiend_85
So, why is it so low there, and so high here, and so high here in comparison to the rest of the EU?

Firstly, it's not "so low" there. The teenage pregnancy rate in the US is not quite double the rate in the UK. The UK leads Europe on teenage pregnancies but New Zealand is also reasonably high, so it is obviously an attitudinal issue.

Some European countries have much stronger family ties whereby 3 generations may live together. If you are going to have a close-knit family, you don't get single parents and teenage mothers.

Also, not all teenage pregnancy is bad. It may be that some of those in the statistics were planned.

As for why teenagers are falling pregnant, I dug this out...

From a British Medical Journal editorial 1999
“The government’s Social Exclusion Unit says that young people ‘see no reason not to get pregnant’. They have low expectations of employment; ignorance about what to expect in relationships and about contraception; and they receive mixed messages from an adult world that bombards them with sexual messages but turns away when they need advice, ‘at best embarrassed, at worst silent’. The result is not less sex, but less protected sex.”

There's a lot of truth there.