'Babies having babies' still headache for American parents

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-08 17:13

LOS ANGELES -- "Babies having babies" is an old problem in the United States but still remains a headache for many American parents.

As the United States marked its National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on Wednesday, figures showed that the national teen birth rate increased 5 percent between 2005 and 2007, and many states reported statistically significant increases in early childbearing.

The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, which is twice as high as in Britain or Canada and eight times that of the Netherlands or Japan, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Three out of 10 teenage girls in the US get pregnant at least once before age 20, that amounts to 745,000 teen pregnancies each year, according to statistics.

The statistics also showed that two-thirds of all teen pregnancies occur among 18 to 19-year-olds, yet almost half of them have never considered how a pregnancy would affect their lives. Parenthood becomes the leading reason why teen girls drop out of school. Less than half of teen mothers ever graduate from high school and fewer than 2 percent earn a college degree by age 30.

California State Assembly member Ted Lieu said that unplanned teen pregnancies have serious negative consequences and pledged that he would continue to fund and promote comprehensive, appropriate, and evidence-based programs designed to reduce unplanned pregnancies at state, local and community levels.

According to experts, teenagers need to be educated to practice abstinence and to use contraceptives as the two basic ways to prevent teen pregnancies.

Not having sex at all is the only 100 percent effective way to prevent teen pregnancies, but sex among teens cannot be totally controlled, they said.

In the United States, the law prohibits adults from having sex with teens, but there is no law to ban sex among teens. Parents and educators can educate the young to practice abstinence but they cannot force them to do so.

Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, said a decline in sexual activity and an increase in contraceptive use among teens was responsible for a steep fall in teen pregnancies in the early 1990s, but not today. In fact, between 2005 and 2007, sexual activity increased and contraceptive use by sexually-active teens decreased among high school students.

Observers believe that concern about HIV and AIDS had helped make young people, particularly young men, more cautious about sexual activity and more vigilant about contraceptive use, and that these concerns contributed to the decline in teen pregnancies and births over many years.

However, a recent survey of 18 to 29-year-olds who said they were personally very concerned about becoming infected with HIV declined 30 percent in 1997 to 17 percent today. And among high school students, those who said they had been taught about HIV and AIDS had decreased from 92 percent in 1997 to 83 percent in 2007.

Abstinence should be stressed as the first and best option for teens and is also widely supported by parents. But educators said emphasis on abstinence-only education in the United States in recent years may not have provided young people with adequate information about contraception or enough encouragement for sexually-active teens to use contraception consistently and carefully.

Worries are also aroused about funding for teen pregnancy prevention campaigns in the current economic climate.

A survey by the National Campaign conducted in December 2008 found that in half of the 20 states in the United States that responded, teen pregnancy prevention programs received cuts in funding from public or private sources, while others reported flat funding.