Judging by the headline “U.S. Teen Birthrate Rises, Reversing Trend” you’d expect that this was some unique and threatening turn for the worse in our culture.
The findings are “remarkable” and “statistically significant,” said Stephanie Ventura, chief of reproductive statistics at the NCHS, a federal agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Some people may speculate there’s ‘prevention fatigue’ out there. Perhaps teens aren’t paying attention anymore to prevention programs, or have changed their attitude. Maybe prevention programs need to change. But we don’t have any statistics about that,” she said.
Hmmm…Chief of Reproductive Statistics. Who knew we had one of those? And under the CDC at that. I’ll bet it’s that Sarah Palin effect. You know, the one some of the Left and the goofy radio preachers have been talking about, how her lax and accepting attitude toward her own daughter’s unwed pregnancy will further destroy the culture. Oh wait. These stats are from 2006.
”Nevermind.”
“The number of births to teenagers 15-19 years rose 5 percent to 435,436 in 2006, compared with 414,593 in 2005. This was the largest single-year increase in the number since 1989-1990,” the report said.
Would it be raaacisst of me to point out another stat?
The teen birthrates were highest among Hispanics females, followed by blacks, American Indians, whites and Asians.
Draw your own conclusions from that. Personally, I think women are just having more babies, period. After a generation of women did the 1.7 children thing, being vey careful to only reproduce themselves, it appears to me that folks are just having more kids again, whether they’re married or not, or teens or not. The article didn’t give us any stats for that and I haven’t had enough coffee this morning to go searching those gory details out for you, but that’s my two-bit guess. Even older women are part of the change.
Among women in their 40s, the birthrate has tripled since 1990. A record 105,539 women in that age group became mothers in 2006. Births to women 50 and older increased 18 percent in 2006, to 494, up from 417 in 2005 - and 144 in 1997.
Oh my. What were they thinking?
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January 12th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Last I heard (and I didn’t check to see if it’s still the case), they count any baby born to someone that is 20 or less as being a “teen pregnancy” since they *probably* were 19 when they got pregnant. Personally, I think they ought to only count 75% of the 20 year olds having babies.
Besides, they do not care whether or not the mother was married, even if the marriage was 9+ months before the birth. Yes, technically, it is still a “teen pregnancy”, but they are using these as scare figures and those ones really shouldn’t count.
This is why states like Utah tend to have higher than expected teen pregnancy rates. Lots of females getting married at 18 or 19 and starting a family right away. With Hispanics having a very pro-family attitude, it might even be a contributing factor to their making #1 on the list.
There has always been more of an unplanned pregnancy rate among the poor, however.