Teenage Sex and Pregnancy by Peggy J. Parks

Interestingly, teenage motherhood was perfectly acceptable before 1960, when men age 20 and older fathered 90% of births by teen mothers. A large majority of the impregnators of school-age girls are adult men, not school-age boys. Girls who, in politically sanitized parlance, “initiate” sex before age 15 overwhelmingly had been victims of rape. Research also shows pregnant teenagers typically suffered chaotic homes and childhood abuses. Abortion and miscarriage gaps are even larger. Wealthy San Mateo and Marin counties are like Sweden. In terms of “teen” birth rates, California’s impoverished Tulare and Kern counties resemble Myanmar. It actually makes sense for some poorer young women to have babies earlier in life, when their health is best and extended-family members can help with childraising.Ĭonversely, where American teenagers enjoy low poverty rates like European and Canadian teens, they have low European- and Canadian-level pregnancy and childbearing rates. The only important factor in “teen pregnancy” is poverty. What schools teach and preachers preach don’t matter. The ensuing 40-year squabble pitting sex education (which at best has marginal effects on pregnancy rates) versus “abstinence-only” preaching (which is completely worthless) suppressed crucial realities surrounding what interest mislabel “teen pregnancy.”Īs the culture war over sex-versus-abstinence education intensified in the 1980s, poverty and birth rates among teenagers reversed their previous declines and increased markedly. Conservatives countered with fabricated sex-ed horror-tales and pushed sexual “abstinence.”įrom then on, it has been lie versus lie. Unfortunately, liberals chose to promote sex education by slandering young people, who had cut their birth rates 50% on their own, as ignorant and irresponsible. The liberal solution? Sex education, which should be a basic human right, not a cure-all pushed with fear tactics.

Then, 1970s liberals, aping Republicans’ fear-mongerings over crime, drugs, and racial integration, launched their own phony moral crusade branding “ teen pregnancy” a new “epidemic.” That’s how “win-win” public policies succeed. Young women’s college enrollments rose by 130%.Great Society programs sharply reduced youth poverty.Two factors explain why 1960s teenagers reduced childbearing dramatically: Not sex education, which barely existed back then. The teen birth decline was well underway before California legalized abortion in 1967. In 1960, one in 10 California women ages 15-19 gave birth.

Teenage Sex and Pregnancy by Peggy J. Parks