Teen pregnancy rate is at an all-time low

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.)

Editor’s note: The following is the fourth part of a continuing series detailing the well-being of children in Warren County, as was determined by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth in its recent publication “Kids Count 2002: The State of the Child in Tennessee.”

While Warren County’s overall teen pregnancy is at an all-time low, the pregnancy rate of the county’s 15-17-year-old population has seen an increase and is significantly higher than the state rate.

According to the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth in its recent publication “Kids Count 2002: The State of the Child in Tennessee,” the county’s teen pregnancy rate (per 1,000 girls ages 15-17) in 2000 was 53.3, a 5-poiant increase over the previous year’s data and over 11 points higher than the state rate.

Correspondingly, the county birth rate for the same demographic was 45.7, a difference of about 6.5 points between it and the pregnancy rate. The state birth rate in the same category was 33.4.

According to Alan Guttmacher Institute, 13 percent of all births in the United States are to teens, 78 percent of whom are not married. The fathers of the babies born to teenage mothers, they continue, are likely to be older than the teens. In fact, about one in five infants born to unmarried teens are fathered by men five or more years older than the mother.

Of the consequences of teen motherhood, most are less than positive, the commission reports. Half of all single mothers currently on welfare were teens when they had their first child. Additionally, fewer than one-third of teen mothers ever finish high school, leaving them unprepared for the job market and more likely to raise their children in poverty.

On a related subject, the rate of county teens with STDs has dropped to 11.0 per 1,000 of teens age 15-17, down from a rate of 13.2 the year before. The state’s rate also declined, from 18.4 to 16.9.

Recent estimates indicate there are 15 million new STD cases in the U.S. every year. Approximately one-fourth of these are teenagers.

The commission places teens in a high behavioral risk for acquiring most STDs. Teens and young adults, the say, are more likely than older age groups to have multiple sex partners, to engage in unprotected sex and, if young women, choose sex partners who are older than themselves. As a consequence, young females are biologically more susceptible to chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV.