Editorial: Fortunately, fewer teen moms
Photo from the season premiere of MTV's Teen Mom 3. Credit: MTV Photo/
It isn't often that a report on our changing society brings unequivocal good news, but it happened last week when the Centers for Disease Control announced that teen birthrates have been plummeting.
The numbers just came out for 2010, and at 34.3 births per 1,000 females aged 15-19, they show a 9 percent decline in babies born to teen mothers over the previous year. The current total is lower than at any time since 1946.
This isn't a blip. The rate dropped 44 percent from 1991 through 2010, across geographies and ethnic groups. Teen births fell in 47 states from 2007-2010, and fell for black, Hispanic and white females.
And the improvement isn't due to more abortions. The teen abortion rate has dropped almost 60 percent over the last 25 years, declining in every youthful segment of society.
It's a victory, and experts say it's the result of a variety of initiatives. Comprehensive sex education has helped by increasing the use of birth control, as has including meaningful lessons about abstinence in the curriculum. Programs showing kids the effects on both fathers and mothers of having a baby too young are also credited with changing behaviors.
Had the rate of teen pregnancies not declined as it has over the past two decades, another 3.4 million babies would have been born to teen moms. Such births disrupt and sometimes end educations, making parents out of people who are often just kids themselves and lack the skills to care for children. Studies have shown children born to teen mothers have poorer educational outcomes, lower incomes and less life satisfaction than those born to adult mothers.
If there's any bad news, it's that the United States still has a high teen birthrate compared with other industrialized nations. Clearly we have a long way to go.
But we've found programs that work. Now we need to redouble our efforts to help teens absorb all the reasons to avoid pregnancy, and all the ways to do so.
The trend is tremendous but there's still work to be done. We don't need any children raising children.
