She got over the shock in a week, and then Jamie Lynn, ever conscientious, notified the press that she would be having, keeping and raising the baby with her mama in Louisiana. “I’m just trying to do the right thing,” said the star of Zoey 101. Only a few days earlier, the film Juno had been released to instant and unanimous applause from such diverse sources as The New Yorker, Christianity Today and Film Freak Central. Suddenly the heroine of a hit movie — a comedy no less — could be a smart, motivated, white, middle-class girl, just 16, who matter-of-factly chooses to have a baby and an open adoption rather than an abortion.
No big deal. Unplanned pregnancy is now a pop-culture staple. Movies like Knocked Up and Waitress, and celebrity moms including Nicole Richie and Jessica Alba, are part of a trend that’s sweeping teen culture along with it: American Idol star Fantasia Barrino became a mom at 17, and the last season of Degrassi: The Next Generation ended with Emma realizing she might be pregnant. “The media is awash in it,” says David Landry, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a non-profit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health.
Even Grey’s Anatomy had a teen pregnancy storyline last year, and just last week so did Gossip Girl. “As an idea, teen pregnancy is more socially accepted,” says Andrea O’Reilly, a women’s studies professor at York University in Toronto, and director of the Association for Research on Mothering. Evidence of a less outraged reaction was best summarized by Hollywood’s most sought-after paparazzi muse, Lindsay Lohan: “Why does everyone think it’s such a big deal? ” she replied when asked what she thought of Jamie Lynn’s ituation. Then came the statistical data confirming that something — something real — was happening: in 2006, for the first time in 15 years, the teen birth rate in America actually increased, said a report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a branch of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control. Meanwhile, in England, the number of pregnancies among females under age 18 also rose in 2005 — to the highest point since 1998, according to the U. K. ‘s Department for Children, Schools and Families.
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So far, the numbers aren’t rising in Canada, but our statistics are a couple of years old — from 2005. Some experts say that when data does become available, we’ll see the same rise as our neighbours. “Overall trends for these three countries tend to mirror each other,” says Alex McKay, research coordinator of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada. “If we’re seeing an increase in the teen birth rate in the U. S. and the U. K. ,” he continues, “it is quite likely we may see the same thing occur in Canada. “
In an era when not getting pregnant should be easy, explanations for the jump in births among teens are speculative, if not elusive. Data on abortion rates or contraception use are outdated, so there’s little way of knowing for sure how much of the increase is due to a rise in unprotected sex or a possible decline in abortion rates. Some experts say it’s just a blip, a statistical aberration we’ll see corrected next year. Others believe the problem is institutional, that ineffective abstinence-only programs are to blame in the U. S. Or that we may have simply maxed out how much teen pregnancy can be prevented. Whenever you try to improve things it’s easiest in the beginning,” says Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, based in Washington. Those who see the signs of something more profound offer a range of explanations: a celebrity culture that downplays the hard work of motherhood; ever-changing family structures that normalize non-traditional arrangements; children who live at home longer than ever with parental support and aren’t expected, if they have kids of their own, to marry the father. Invariably though, it seems teen pregnancy has become more accepted.
The Essay on Decrease Of Teen Pregnancy Rate
The overall teen birth rate has declined by 16 percent from 1991 to 1997. "All states are recording a decline and it is the sixth year in a row that the teen birth rate has declined," stated Donna S halala, HHS secretary of U. S. Newswire. Although the birthrate among teens is decreasing and the percentage of teenagers who have had sexual intercourse is declining, it is a multi-faceted problem ...
A Denver high school is considering implementing a four-week maternity leave for students so they can recover and get used to the baby without penalties for missing class. In Canada, there is a recognition that teen moms should receive more help too: “Schools try to offer flexibility to young mothers,” says Marcia Powers-Dunlop, chief of social work with the Toronto District School Board’s northwest region. Consequently, many girls don’t drop out, she’s observed, “because there isn’t the stigma that there once was. ” Jamie Lynn, for her part, was photographed recently toting a GED study book to get her high-school equivalency degree. There’s a redefining of motherhood,” says O’Reilly. “Teen moms are saying, why can’t I be a mother now? ” She believes that as older women are gaining acceptance as new mothers, adolescent girls are claiming their maternal rights too. “Before, the time of motherhood was so restricted. Now it’s okay at 48. So why not at 18? ” The feminist motherhood movement, as O’Reilly refers to the growing show of support for moms of all ages, has people questioning societal expectations about when is the right time to have children. “It’s part of a larger revisioning of motherhood: queer mothers, old mothers, young mothers.
That wasn’t possible 20 years ago. ” Suffice to say, the rising American teen birth rate in 2006 is something of an eye-opener. Between 1991 and 2005, the United States saw a 34 per cent decrease in the birth rate among those aged 15 to 19. But in 2006, that relatively steady decline was reversed. Suddenly, among 15- to 17-year-olds, the rate was up three per cent to 22 babies per 1,000 females, and 18- and 19-year-olds jumped four per cent to 73 births for every 1,000. “That took us by surprise,” admits Stephanie J. Ventura, head of the reproductive statistics branch at NCHS.
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Indonesia is located across the equator and stretch from Sumatra in the west to Iranian Jaya in the east, or from Sabang to Merauke (Dari Sabang Ke Merauke). Its geographic coordinates are 5 00 S, 120 00 E. The total area is 1, 919, 440 sq km. But interestingly only 20% consists of land, the rest is water.The number of islands in the Indonesian archipelago is disputed, but a commonly cited figure ...
And the rise was spread over almost every ethnic group except for Asians; births among black, native, Hispanic and white teenagers rose. While no specific data was collected on the income of teen mothers, Albert says that with three in 10 girls getting pregnant by age 20, “you realize this is not [just] ‘poor folk. ‘ The problem is spread wide. ” In England and Wales, the birth rate per 1,000 females under age 20 rose to 45. 5 in 2006 compared to 44. 8 the year before. Not a huge leap, but it’s already one of the highest rates in the developed world.
The United Nations’ last comprehensive tally of G8 countries, from 2004, showed the U. K. has the third-highest teen birth rate, with 26. 8 births per 1,000, slightly lower than Russia (28. 2) and well above Japan (5. 6), France (7. 8), Italy (6. 7) and Germany (11).
The U. S. soars above them all, at 41. 8 per 1,000 females. Canada ranks exactly in the middle, with a teen birth rate of 13. 4 per 1,000 as of 2005 (or 14. 5 in 2003, as stated in the UN report), but that’s still down 45 per cent over the last decade. Domestically, we’ve come a long way. In 1995, teens aged 15 to 19 had 24. 3 births per 1,000.
And among the under-15 age group, the number of births per 1,000 plummeted nearly 60 per cent between 1995 and 2004. (Teen births, of course, are not the same thing as teen pregnancies, which include births and abortions and therefore capture the broader picture of how many adolescents are actually dealing with pregnancy, one way or another. Like birth rates, pregnancy rates also showed declines through the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s in the U. S. , the U. K. and Canada, but the latest numbers are between two and five years old. ) What no one knows in Canada, for now, is what’s been happening in the last couple of years.
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THE BIRTH RATE DECREASE PROGRAMS EFFECTS (OUTLINE) I. In any modern society, the importance of birth controlling has been approved. In fact, for prevailing welfare, it seems obligatory to control the number of births and prohibit numerous children within a single family. As a result of understanding the mentioned importance, Iranian government has used policies for controlling birth rate. These ...
McKay suggests Canada should consider rises in other countries as foreshadowing of what could be happening here. “Although there are profound differences between Canada and the United States,” he says, “both countries have seen a persistent long-term decline in teen pregnancy rates over the last quarter-century. ” That both our southern neighbour and England have seen reversals means “there’s a fairly big probability we will see the same,” he continues. Adds David Quist, executive director of the Ottawa-based Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an arm of Focus on the Family: “Often Canada follows the U.
S. in trends like this. ” And the U. S. , before seeing the jump in its teen birth rate in 2006, first witnessed a flattening out. “The rate of decline had slowed in the last few years,” explains Ventura, “so maybe that was an early indication that it was about to reverse. ” Similarly, England’s birth rate has barely budged since 2000. In Canada, the declining teen birth rate has also levelled off — from 14. 9 births per 1,000 in 2002 to 13. 6 in 2004 to 13. 4 births one year later. So what if this isn’t a blip? It could be that teens are just following what is really a nationwide trend in the U.
S. Across all ages (from 15 to 44) the birth rate is up, according to the NCHS. Between 2005 and 2006, more women had babies than had since 1961 — in excess of 4. 2 million. And the 2006 fertility rate was the highest it had been since 1971. Explanations for the overall increase are as elusive as for the rising teen birth rate. “The short answer is none of us really know why the rates went up,” says Albert. For teens, many blame the rise on abstinence-only programs, which have bloomed in the U. S. since 1996 with more than $1 billion in federal funding.
