How many teen girls in the U.S. get pregnant each year?

750,000 teen girls get pregnant each year. 31% of young women get pregnant at least once before they turn 20. Each year the federal government alone spends about $7 Billion to help families that began with a teenage birth.

Aren’t teen pregnancy and birth rates declining?

The overall U.S. teen pregnancy rate declined 36% from its all time high in 1990 to 2002 (the most recent year available), from 117 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19, down to 75 pregnancies per 1,000 women.

For 2004, the teen birth rate for girls aged 15-19 was 41 per 1,000. This is down from 42 in 2003 and 62 in 1991. While the teen birth rate declined between 2003 and 2004 (1%), it was at a slower pace than previous declines. Overall, teen birth rates decreased 33.5% between 1991 and 2004.

Does the U.S. have a higher teen pregnancy rate than other countries?

Yes. Although rates here are declining, the U.S. still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion in the industrialized world. In fact, the U.S. teen pregnancy and birth rates are nearly double Canada’s, at least four times those of France and Germany, and more than eight times those of Japan.

Are younger teen girls more sexually active than they used to be?

While teen sexual activity is down among most teens, it has risen among girls younger than 15. In 1995 (the most recent year for which data is available) almost 1/5 (19%) of teen girls reported they had sex before age 15. The younger teen girls are when they first have sex, the more likely they are to report that sex was unwanted or non-voluntary.

Can you get pregnant if you use birth control?

Yes. Even if used perfectly, all methods of birth control have a failure rate, ranging from 0.05% for Norplant to 9% for the sponge and calendar rhythm. The only way to ensure you won’t get pregnant or get someone pregnant is to not have sex.

You can’t get pregnant the first time, right?

Wrong. Teen girls can get pregnant the very first time they have sex, and every time after that. A couple that doesn’t use birth control has an 85% chance of pregnancy within one year.

What happens to teen mothers?

Only 41% of teen mothers complete high school and only 1.5% obtain their college degree by the age of 30.

Many teen mothers go on to have more children – about 1/4 of teen mothers have a second child within 24 months of the first birth.

A 1990 study shows that almost 1/3 of all teen mothers and 1/2 of unmarried teen mothers go on welfare within the first year of the birth of their first child. Within five years after the birth of their first child, almost one-half of all teen mothers and over three-quarters of unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare.

What happens to the children of teen moms?

Children of teen mothers are more likely to be born prematurely and at low birth weight, which raises the chances of blindness, deafness, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and other disabilities.

Children of teen mothers are 50% more likely to repeat a grade. They also perform much worse on standardized tests and ultimately they are less likely to complete high school than children of mothers who waited to have a baby.

The daughters of teen mothers are 22% more likely to become teen mothers themselves. The sons of teen mothers are 13% more likely to end up in prison.

Who are the fathers, and where are they now?

Nearly 40% of the fathers of children born to teen mothers are age 20 or older. Only 20% of the fathers marry the teen mothers of their first children. On average, the remaining 80% pay less than $800 annually for child support.

(information from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, teenpregnancy.org)

Cohabiters experienced more difficulty in their marriages with adultery, alcohol, drugs, and independence than couples that had not cohabited. Apparently this makes marriage preceded by cohabitation more prone to problems often associated with other deviant lifestyles—use of drugs and alcohol, more permissive sexual relationships and abhorrence of dependence—than marriages not preceded by cohabitation.(1)

• Compared to married couples, cohabiting couples have less healthy relationships. They have lower relationship quality, lower stability and a higher level of disagreements.

• Cohabiters are much more violent than married couples, the overall rate of violence for cohabiting couples is twice as high as for married couples and the overall rate for “severe” violence is nearly five times as high. (2)

• One of the most respected studies in the field of psychiatry, conducted by the National Institutes of Mental Health, found that women in cohabiting relationships had rates of depression nearly five times higher than married women, second only to women who were divorced.(3)

• The National Sex Survey reports that cohabiting men are nearly four times more likely than husbands to have cheated on their partner in the past year and while women are generally more faithful than men, cohabiting women are eight times more likely than wives to cheat.(4)

• Research strongly and consistently indicates that marriage is a wealth building institution. Married people typically earn and save more than their unmarried counterparts.(5)

(5) Waite and Gallagher, 2000. p110-123

21 Reasons Why Marriage Matters

(provided by The Institute for American Values: www.americanvalues.com)

1) Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children.

2) Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.

3) Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likelihood that children will themselves divorce or become unwed parents.

4) Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.

5) Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.

6) Married couples seem to build more wealth on average than singles or cohabiting couples.

7) Married men earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories.

Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children’s risk of school failure.

9) Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college and achieve high status jobs.

10) Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms.

11) Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk of infant mortality.

12) Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and substance abuse for both adults and teens.

13) Married people, especially married men, have longer life expectancies than do otherwise similar singles.

14) Marriage is associated with better health and lower rates of injury, illness and disability for both men and women.

15) Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological distress and mental illness.

16) Divorce appears to significantly increase the risk of suicide in both parents and adolescents.

17) Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do single or cohabiting mothers.

18) Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.

19) Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime.

20) Married women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women.

21) A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.

How Marriage Impacts Children

Incarceration

Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still have significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds.

Crime

A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency.