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U.S. Teen Pregnancy Rates Decline As Result Of Improved Contraceptive Use

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to a report by John Santelli, MD, MPH, department chair and professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The scientific findings indicate that abstinence promotion, in itself, is insufficient to help adolescents prevent unintended pregnancies.

Data from the report, "Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use" suggest that the United States is following patterns seen in other developed countries where increased availability and increased use of modern contraceptives have been primarily responsible for declines in teenage pregnancy rates.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Adolescent Pregnancy - Contraceptive Use
» Mailman School of Public Health

Teens Not Getting the Information They Need, When They Need It

The proportion of U.S. teens who had received any formal instruction about birth control methods declined sharply between 1995 and 2002, while the proportion who had received only information about abstinence more than doubled to more than one in five, according to “Changes in Formal Sex Education: 1995–2002,” by Laura Duberstein Lindberg et al., published in the December 2006 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Only 66% of males and 70% of females received formal instruction about birth control in 2002, compared with 81–87% in 1995. Black teens were even less likely than whites to have received any instruction about birth control methods

While the vast majority of Americans support a comprehensive approach to sex education that encourages young people to delay sexual activity but also provides medically accurate information about contraception, these findings suggest that schools have retreated from this approach. The authors analyze data from the 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males and the 1995 and 2002 National Surveys of Family Growth to examine changes in adolescents’ reports of the sex education they have received from formal sources such as schools, churches and other community groups. They find dramatic shifts in the type of information teens receive and when they receive that information.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: birth control - sex education - contraception

» Research Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, Dec 2006
» Media Release

Teen Pregnancy/Teen Birth Data: The teen pregnancy rate in the United States declined by 36% between 1990 and 2002

In addition, the teen birth rate has also declined by fully one-third between 1991 and 2004, according to final data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Previously, pregnancy data were available only through 2000, national birth data were preliminary for 2004, and state birth data were only available through 2003.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Teen Pregnancy - Teen Birth Data - National Center for Health

[PDF] Guttmacher report on teen pregnancy rates.
[PDF] NCHS report on teen birth rates (CDC).

RAND Health: Exposure to Degrading Versus Nondegrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior Among Youth

Multivariate regression analyses indicated that youth who listened to more degrading sexual content at T2 were more likely to subsequently initiate intercourse and to progress to more advanced levels of noncoital sexual activity, even after controlling for 18 respondent characteristics that might otherwise explain these relationships. In contrast, exposure to nondegrading sexual content was unrelated to changes in participants' sexual behavior.

Conclusion
Listening to music with degrading sexual lyrics is related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents, whereas this does not seem to be true of other sexual lyrics. This result is consistent with sexual-script theory and suggests that cultural messages about expected sexual behavior among males and females may underlie the effect. Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content could help delay the onset of sexual behavior.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Sexual Behavior Youth - Sexual Behavior Teens
» RAND Health

Reference
[PDF] Download Research Paper

New Research: Teens having babies costs U.S. billions

Teen childbearing in the United States costs taxpayers (federal, state, and local) at least $9.1 billion, according to a new report by Saul Hoffman, Ph.D. and published by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Most of the costs of teen childbearing are associated with negative consequences for the children of teen mothers, including increased costs for health care, foster care, and incarceration.

"This report makes clear that teen pregnancy and child-bearing have significant economic and social costs," said Sarah Brown, Director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "Making further progress in reducing teen pregnancy will benefit taxpayers and the economy, as well as improve the educational, health, and social prospects for this generation of young people and the next."

» [PDF] By the Numbers National Report

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Teen Childbearing - Teen Pregnancy - Teen Parenthood
» By The Numbers

Teen birth awareness ads to target teens and businesses

Campaign will feature phone messages from a young parent.

The United Way of Greater Milwaukee is launching an awareness campaign about the city's high rate of teen pregnancies, with two audiences in mind: the business community and the city's teens.

The campaign will begin the week of Nov. 13 and focus on informing the business community about the impact the city's teen birth rate, one of the highest in the nation, has on the region's economy. The campaign also will inform teens about the hard truths of having children too soon.

Milwaukee's teen birth rate impacts the ability of businesses to find qualified skilled workers, to stem rising health care costs and to attract new businesses to the city. A recent national study found that teen births cost Milwaukee at least $48 million in foster care, health care and lost tax revenue in 2005.

» The Business Journal of Milwaukee
» United Way

Drug exposure before birth could affect kids' decision-making skills.

The part of the brain responsible for making most decisions about how to behave seems to develop less quickly in children exposed to cocaine before they were born, University of Florida researchers have found.

Using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging, researchers compared 28 adolescents exposed to a mix of cocaine and other drugs in the womb with 25 children whose mothers did not use cocaine during pregnancy and pinpointed subtle differences in how the brain's frontal lobe developed. Researchers noticed that pathways in the frontal lobe, which connect to other parts of the brain to send information, were not as well-defined in children exposed to cocaine before birth, according to findings published this month in the journal Pediatrics.

The children exposed to cocaine also fared slightly worse on tests designed to assess skills linked to the frontal lobe, such as when to act and when to stop, said Tamara D. Warner, Ph.D., a UF research assistant professor of pediatrics and the study's lead author.

"We actually found that there is a relationship between the behavior and the brain," Warner said. "There were significant associations with how well children were able to do certain tasks and how well-developed the connections in the brain were.

Some of the children whose mothers did not use cocaine were exposed to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, but they did not exhibit the same subtle differences in the brain.

Because the mothers of children exposed to cocaine used multiple drugs, how these drugs interacted was likely a big part of the problem, Warner said. The mothers had taken cocaine and varying combinations of alcohol, marijuana and tobacco, and the interactions among these drugs often are complicated, sometimes producing additional toxic substances, Warner added.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Pediatrics - Children Cocaine - Children Alcohol
» University of Florida

Hispanic teen pregnancy rate is high

Latina teenagers are more likely than not to get pregnant before their 20th birthday. Fifty-one percent of Hispanic girls become pregnant at least once before age 20, compared to 35 percent of all adolescent girls, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. The overall teen pregnancy rate has declined by more than one-third over the past decade, and the campaign has set a goal of cutting that by another third by 2015.

» Search Baby-Specific Tags: Latina Teenagers - Teen Pregnancy
» newsobserver.com

Generation Y and the Baby Boom

With nearly 78.2 million baby boomers driving our economy and 330 of them turning 60 each hour, there's clearly a transition on the horizon with fiscal implications all around. Soon, a generation of parents will become a generation of geriatrics, and this means different things for different companies. These demographic trends will be providing a lot of great investment opportunities for younger generations -- the Xs, the Ys, and any other nicknames they're giving generations nowadays. So we've sought out the insights of two twentysomething analysts (Nick, 22, and Katrina, 23) here at the Fool.

via: The Motley Fool

Sexually charged music directly impacts teenage sexual habits, new study says

Teen-agers who listen to sexually degrading music, including some forms of popular rap music, are more likely to be sexually active than are other teens, a new study says.

The study by RAND Corporation surveyed 1,461 adolescents ages 12 to 17 and followed them for three years, conducting interviews in 2001, 2002 and 2004. At each interval, they asked the teens about their music and sexual habits.

via Christian Examiner

WANNABABY from San Bernardino, CA

I'm a 16-year-old high school student, and I want to have a baby. The last time I got pregnant, my parents talked me into having an abortion. I regret that decision, and have been thinking ever since about trying again. I can't see why I have to wait. I want to move in with my 18-year-old boyfriend, who also wants a child. Because I think I love him, I might marry him after I have the baby. What do you think?

Use the comments link to respond:

Cutting Sex Risk: High school students are reducing their risks of getting sexually transmitted diseases.

Listen: cuttingsexrisk.mp3

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's finding was in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Over about 15 years, high schoolers who ever had sex decreased by 13 percent. Among those who were sexually active, those using condoms increased by 36 percent.

The CDC's Howell Wechsler says a lot of causes could have led to the improvements – from the young people themselves to the influence of educators, youth leaders, government and media campaigns, and parents. But he says too many still put themselves at risk of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV.

Wechsler advises parents: "You need to know what's going on in the lives of your children, and express clearly, forthrightly and with love the values that you want to transmit to them."

Talking Parents, Healthy Teens: A Worksite-based Program for Parents to Promote Adolescent Sexual Health

Parents play an important role in the sexual health of their adolescent children. Based on previous research, formative research, and theories of behavioral change, we developed Talking Parents, Healthy Teens, an intervention designed to help parents improve communication with their adolescent children, promote healthy adolescent sexual development, and reduce adolescent sexual risk behaviors. We conduct the parenting program at worksites to facilitate recruitment and retention of participants. The program consists of 8 weekly 1-hour sessions during the lunch hour. In this article, we review the literature that identifies parental influences on adolescent sexual behavior, summarize our formative research, present the theoretical framework we used to develop Talking Parents, Healthy Teens, describe the program’s components and intervention strategies, and offer recommendations based on our experiences developing the program. By targeting parents at their worksites, this program represents an innovative approach to promoting adolescent sexual health. This article is intended to be helpful to health educators and clinicians designing programs for parents, employers implementing health-related programs, and researchers who may consider designing and evaluating such worksite-based programs.

Introduction

As documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), many adolescents engage in behaviors that increase their risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unintended pregnancies (1). Most efforts to promote healthy adolescent sexual development and reduce risk have targeted adolescents through community- or school-based programs (2-5). There has been much less focus on the protective role parents can play in raising sexually healthy adolescents.
continued...

Karen L. Eastman, PhD, Rosalie Corona, PhD, Mark A. Schuster, MD, PhD
via: CDC / Download this article as a PDF

News Alerts

Cumberland gets grant to help reduce teen pregnancy
On Monday afternoon, an 18-year-old city resident walked into the Martin Luther King Outreach Center in Vineland and asked program specialist Gene Kelley for help. “This young woman was without a diploma,” he said. “Her baby's father isn't working. What's she going to do?” It's a question that's been plaguing Cumberland County for years now, Kelley said, and many programs to help teenage mothers have had little success. That, he hopes, is about to change. The center was awarded a three-year, $325,000 grant for part of a two-sided approach that area health-care professionals said will try to change the way many young women and men think about having children.

Teenage pregnancy
Reaching Out: An Action Plan On Social Exclusion. Some of the measures include:

 
• The creation of 10 parenting support "demonstration projects'' from pre-birth to age two, aimed at identifying children most at risk of growing up into lives of poverty, addiction, underachievement and crime.    
 
• The Government has also pledged to work with midwives and health visitors to improve their skills in tackling the needs of families most at risk. Commenting on the new measures, Minister for Children Beverley Hughes said: "Teenage pregnancy hot spots with vulnerable neighbourhoods and groups of young people would be the focus of fresh efforts to reduce teenage pregnancy rates.

Parents will be encouraged to talk to their children about sex

The government wants local councils to embark on a drive to further reduce the conception rate of under-18s.

Since the nationwide strategy aimed at tackling the spiralling issue of teenage pregnancy was introduced in 1999, there has been an 11.1 per cent reduction in national teenage pregnancy rates.

Some local authorities have reduced rates by 35 per cent, while rates have increased in others.

The minister responsible for young people, Beverley Hughes, has now urged councils to work to meet the standards of the best.
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