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International Journal of Adolescence and Youth

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Volume 17, Issue 4

Teen pregnancy
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International Journal of Adolescence and Youth
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Volume 17, 2012 - Issue 4

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Editorial Feature

Teen pregnancy
Alice Sterling Honig
Pages 181-187 | Published online: 27 Feb 2012

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 https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2012.655912

In societies where girls in their early teens are given by their parents to be married
to older men, teen pregnancy is not considered a problem. However, often, these
girls have too-early pregnancies that result in severe damage to sexual and internal
organs. The problem of teen pregnancy is also not as troubling in Nordic countries
or in the Netherlands where a strong healthcare system guarantees confidentiality,
a non-judgemental approach, and support. Among developed nations, the highest
teen pregnancy rates are in the United Kingdom and the USA and the lowest in
Japan and South Korea. In the United Kingdom, poverty is a prominent factor, as
about one-half of all teen pregnancies occur in the 30% most deprived families
while 4% occur among the least deprived (http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage/pregna
In this article 

ncy) In the USA 85% of teen pregnancies are unplanned Rape in war torn regions
ncy). In the USA, 85% of teen pregnancies are unplanned. Rape in war-torn regions
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is often a deliberate act of armed aggressors that results in teen pregnancy. In

South Africa,

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rape. Schooling suffers, as about 50% of US teen mothers get a high school diploma
by age 22, compared with 90% of girls who do not give birth. Costs to taxpayers are
in the billions each year as the children are more likely to be born prematurely, do
poorly in school, to drop out, and about 30% more likely to become teen parents
themselves (http://blog.rwjf.org/public health).

What other factors are associated with high teen pregnancy? What are the risks and
consequences for the mother and for the child? Are the risks of adolescent
pregnancy the same for all teen parents? What supports and social policies are
needed that could reduce rates of teen pregnancy? So many questions!

Media, peer, and family influences as risk factors

Media portrayals influence teen sexual behaviours. Glamorous television and

magazine shots of ‘famous’ pregnant teens influence teens to engage in sexual
activity and become pregnant themselves. Some teens decide to get pregnant so
they can drop out of school. Girls who have lived in foster care have double the teen

pregnancy rate of peers outside the foster care system. Girls whose fathers are in
the home as they grow up are less likely to become teen parents. Ignorance of
effective contraceptives leads to teen pregnancy. Some teens get pregnant in order
to force a sexual partner into more commitment. Some are defiantly rebelling
against what they perceive as overly strict parental rules. Some are engaged in
sexual behaviours but lack knowledge about how to obtain contraceptives to
prevent pregnancy, while others are pressured by their sexual partners not to use
condoms.

Thus, many factors are involved in teen pregnancy and many strategies need to be
considered in attempts to decrease rates (Honig, 1984). The biggest risk for teen
mothers is delaying prenatal care. In the USA, ‘7.2% received no care at all’ (Weiss,
In this article
2011).
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Some reasons for lack of care are teen denial of the pregnancy and fear of
telling parents. Very young teens have a higher chance of pregnancy and birth  
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complications. So do teens who smoke, since birth weights are lower for smoking
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mothers. In a UK study, mothers who smoked prenatally had children with lower
reading scores in the fourth grade; and the more packs smoked during pregnancy,
the stronger the difficulties later on. Drug use is another high-risk factor for
difficulties in birth outcomes for pregnant women. The Kaiser Permanente Early
Start programme in California helps women stop substance abuse during
pregnancy and estimates that such prenatal intervention programmes could save
$2 billion annually (http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/addiction/program-for-pr
egnant-women-at risk).

Vignettes of teen pregnancy

Betty, 15 years old, was never given much adult supervision. Her mother was busy
with her own life and boyfriends, who came and went in the apartment. One
summer night in a local park, Betty had sex with an older boy who said ‘Oh Baby,
you're the best. I'm so hot for you!’ Betty believed all the ‘wonderful’ sayings and
found herself pregnant while still in junior high school. Frightened, she hid the
pregnancy from her mother until it was too late. She felt totally unprepared to care

for a baby. One weekend, she left her baby at her mother's apartment and went off
with an older boy who had a car and promised her a good time. During that
weekend, someone raped the five-month-old. Social Services was called in. Nobody
would tell exactly what had happened, and the baby was removed into foster care.

Ginny had her baby while she was still in high school. Her worried parents did
everything they could to care for the baby so that Ginny could finish school and get
a high school diploma. Ginny resented their ‘taking over’ her baby, even though she
was in school all day and also had lots of homework assignments. Ginny longed for
a baby who would ‘love me more than anyone’. She became pregnant again and
explained defiantly: ‘This next baby will be mine, not theirs!’

Tanisha started to have sex quite early in high school.

In this article  However, she and her
boyfriend were using condoms Yet when a condom broke Tanisha became
boyfriend were using condoms. Yet, when a condom broke, Tanisha became
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care for a baby, Tanisha decided to have an abortion and she prayed that her
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mother would give consent.

Carol had her baby while in high school and felt lucky that during the day there was
a nursery right on the school grounds that cared for babies of students and of
teachers. Carol lived with her boyfriend but complied bitterly that she had to ‘get
after him’ all the time because he would not change diapers or get up at night to
give the baby a bottle. They fought a lot and her boyfriend went out most nights to
drink beer with friends and escape what he called her ‘nagging’. The relationship
was rocky. A school programme for pregnant and parenting teens was helpful in
giving Carol more ‘talking tools’ to learn how to communicate her needs and the
baby's needs with her boyfriend.

Alana and Hugo had been dating in high school. She got pregnant a few months
before graduation. Because her parents were supportive, Alana was able to get help
with her baby and enrolled in a community college as well as working in a part-time
job. She felt fortunate, because Hugo had already gone off to college and met
another lady to love.

Mary, age 20, told me that years ago her mother had said she ‘would kill me if I got
pregnant.’ Mary revealed that she did not know as a very young teenager that the
‘fooling around’ she and her boyfriend were doing could cause pregnancy. And she
had a baby at 13 years. Mary's mother had never told her about human sexuality or
pregnancy. She could have explained about sexual matters calmly to her daughter.
She might have lightened her talk with a humorous observation that human
females are so often fertile, unlike a baboon. This primate nurses her baby for two
years and does not develop the large red rear end that signifies to a male baboon
her fertility and readiness for mating until those two years are completed.

What aspects of adolescent thinking lead to unplanned

In this article
pregnancy?
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Piaget theoretically explained that, by the age of puberty, adolescents are capable of
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operating at the stage he called ‘formal operational thinking’. Piaget defined this
stage as one where a person becomes increasingly capable of engaging in logical
thought, able to make hypotheses, able to think about abstract ideas as well as
concrete objects, able to classify symbols now as well as objects, and able to reason
hypothetically, such as: ‘If I give in and have unprotected sex with Jim, then I might
get pregnant’. Adolescents in this stage should be able to look ahead and think
through multiple outcomes to a given course of action, and this should enable them
to make wiser choices.

Yet many adolescents are far from being able to engage in formal reasoning about
their sexual lives and urges or their social interactions. They spend hours on tweets
and twitters and send frequent text messages. Teens struggle to adjust to the
amazing sexual changes in their bodies as the voice deepens, hair grows near the
genitals and sexual fantasies and interest in sexual ventures pervade thoughts daily.
The Kinsey report years ago taught that the peak age for orgasm for males is during
the late adolescent years, although the peak age for females was reported as age
29. A disconcerting difference!

Further, egocentrism takes centre-stage in adolescent lives. A teenager agonises over

some pimples on his face while believing that the whole world is noticing these and
will be laughing at him. This fantasy of an ‘Imaginary Audience’ is particularly strong
during the teen years. A girl might obsess about her weight or her breast size; a boy
may spend hours re-combing his wavy locks in front of a mirror. A teen may feel
that other people are as concerned or even more interested in his or her
appearance as is the teen. Obsessed about being a ‘Queen bee’ in her school, one
girl explained that she wanted to have sex with the guys in her school who are sport
‘jocks’, as she would then be the envy of all the most glamorous girls in her school.

Another teen fantasy is called ‘The Personal Fable’. Teens think of themselves as
impervious to the ills of others. They can show off and take risks, both physical and
In this article
sexual,

that lead to distressing, dangerous, even fatal, consequences. And yet teens
still believe that they are invulnerable. They drink and then drive fast without  
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believing that they would ever be killed in a car crash. Teens assume that sexually
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pregnancies
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others but not to them. They feel invincible and invulnerable.

What can parents and schools do?

Provision of sexuality information

Children need ‘askable’ adults in their lives! From an early age, parents often avoid
even labelling sexual parts. Sitting in the bath tub, young children hear parents label
face, tummy, arms and toes as they are washed. But the parent neglects ever to give
a name to a child's testicles, vulva, nipples, penis, or scrotum as body parts. From an
early age, children should become comfortable with the names of all their body
parts and also become comfortably knowledgeable about body part similarities and
differences between boys and girls (Gordon, 1983; Honig, 1978).

Children do not become sexually active earlier from knowing the correct names of
body parts and functions. Indeed, they seem to accept those names as naturally as
they accept the names of other parts of the body. An example: once, while caring

for a friend's older toddler and after I had put her to bed, the child climbed out of
her crib and came into the living room. She informed me indignantly ‘I hurt my 'gina
climbing out!’. I soothed her feelings, said I was sorry she had hurt her vagina,
explained it was bedtime, and helped her to get back to sleep peaceably.

Alcohol and teen pregnancy

Heavy drinking can lead to teen pregnancy. Teachers in a health course for teens
need to explain clearly how different the brain is when a teen drinks heavily.
Weekend drinking contests are frequent for some teens. The teenage brain seems
to be less reactive to alcohol's short-term effects. Yet, for teens, alcohol impairs the
memory system in the hippocampus and severely limits the ability of the frontal
lobes to carry out thoughtful and logical thinking.
In this article  ‘Without mature frontal lobes,

l l bl t i h ti d i hibit i l i
young people are less able to weigh negatives consequences and inhibit impulsive
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behavior like binge drinking … Binge drinking can lead to unsafe sex and unwanted
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the beer party they had attended a few weeks before where they had more than 12
beers each would affect the embryo of an early pregnancy they now found
themselves facing, a few weeks after that party.

Adolescent hormonal changes

As children approach puberty, adults need to talk with them honestly about the
surges of hormones they experience, the strong emotions and sexual feelings and
thoughts that feel so invasive at times. Schools need to develop honest and matter-
of-fact courses on human relationships that include sexuality topics. Such courses
can become a vehicle for helping to decrease the rate of adolescent unwanted
pregnancies. In these classes, respect for each person's ‘private parts’ and personal
decisions would be emphasised along with specific information about sexuality and
pregnancy.

Seduction techniques

Young teens believe seductive ‘lines’ that lead to unprotected sex. Teachers in
health and in social studies classes need to discuss openly the ‘lines’ (which may well

be lies) that a teen gives a peer to pressure her for unprotected sex (e.g. ‘Baby, show
me that you really love me’). Youth need to role play how to respond to such
pressures. Teens also need clear and specific understandings of how the
reproductive system works, what contraceptives are, and what is the efficacy of
each contraceptive method. This teaching can be done in a climate where teachers
do not speak either for or against premarital sex, but do present knowledge that
every concerned and responsible citizen should know.

Teachers need to answer questions about masturbation honestly. Some parents

have told kids that they will ‘go blind’ if they masturbate. Dr Alfred Kinsey, who
pioneered books on sexual behaviours of adults in the USA, related, in his
autobiography, the sadistic ways his father had treated his body in response to
In this article
finding
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out about young Kinsey's masturbation. Teachers need to make clear that
masturbation is natural, ubiquitous, and a far safer way to relieve sexual tensions
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than casual unprotected sex. Of course, teachers and mentors also need to be alert

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to the finding that compulsive masturbation may well be a signal of children having
been sexually violated earlier (Honig, 2002).

Attention is required for teen fathers

Teen fatherhood is rarely discussed. Many adolescent fathers do not stay with the
teen mother. This leads to an aching void in the lives of many children who feel the
longing for a father's nurturing presence (Honig, 2010). Even more worrisome is the
finding, in the USA, that for almost two-thirds of teen births the father is an adult
man 20 years or older. Some programmes do address the problem of teen
fatherhood (National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy, n.d.).
Teachers need to choose a course name that is attractive to adolescent males as
well as females. One teacher called her class ‘How to keep a bachelor pad’. That title
attracted males as well as females into the class.

Early sexual abuse and later teen pregnancy

Sexually abused children are more likely to become pregnant as teens. Some
children, long before puberty, have unfortunately experienced sex from pressuring

and predatory older adults who threaten them to secrecy. One client told me that
her older cousin had sexually abused her from age five to 11 and threatened her
never to tell her parents or they would be harmed. Her parents were educated, kind
people. But her fear and ignorance kept the child from telling of those violations for
years. Teachers of young children would do well to select appropriate book
materials that explain sexual differences in boys and girls (Gordon, 1983; Gordon &
Gordon, 1974b). They also need to select books that can help children who may
have been violated sexually find the courage to ask for help from trusted adults,
such as a school nurse (Gordon & Gordon, 1974a).

Early prevention: encourage early parental nurturing care

Nurturing,
In this article affectionate relationships between very
 young children and their special
d lt id i f iti lf th (H i 2002) Child h
adults provide an inner sense of positive self-worth (Honig, 2002). Children who
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for and had their distress signals promptly and accurately

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pressures for unwanted/ unsafe sex. Secure early attachments to parents and other
special adults protect children against later feelings that lead them desperately to
seek ‘love’ from casual sexual encounters that may result in pregnancy. Teens need
to feel loved just as much as younger children! Feeling unloved, with too-busy
parents, a teen may readily accept the advances of a male seeking a ‘hook-up’ – as
teens often call a ‘casual’ sexual occurrence – and then she may find herself with an
unwanted pregnancy. The growth of a trusting relationship with open
communication between children and parents makes it easier for a child to share
worries about pressures for early sex or unwelcome behaviours by others.
Newspapers and magazines often have columns addressing concerns of lovelorn
adults. They also need columns advising parents to keep open genuinely caring
communication channels with children at all ages. Teenagers who have open
communication with their parents are more likely to delay the onset of sexual
activity, more likely to use birth control, and to have fewer sexual partners (National
Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2003).

The media and promotion of teen sexuality

Cyberspace access has increased worrisome behaviours. Bullying of teens in

schools over sexual orientation or actions has led to teen suicide and coercions for
sex (Garbarino & DeLara, 2002). In some schools, girls are targeted in texting as
‘sluts’ and worse. Fake nude photographs are sent to smear some teens by female
as well as male youth. Yet in that same school, girls who circulate these vicious text
messages may engage in fierce competition for who can sexually entice ‘hot’ male
students. Double standards are rampant! School principals need to enforce firm
anti-bullying codes with specific attention to actions of sexual bullying.

Conclusions
In this article 
Work to prevent and decrease teen pregnancy needs to be multifaceted This work
Work to prevent and decrease teen pregnancy needs to be multifaceted. This work
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Changes in
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vanguard of awakening teen understanding of the power of television, Facebook,
Twitter, and other electronic communication modes to glamorise promiscuous
sexuality. Students can bring into class examples of television shows that seek to
promote ‘fabulous’ sex without a hint of the heartbreak of unwanted pregnancy.
Students can role play creative communication techniques that could keep them
safe in dating relationships. They can learn specifics about body functions and
contraception in biology and health classes. Invite teens to think about personal
future plans and the ways they could work toward those career goals better if they
are prudent about teen pregnancy. In one intervention project, teen mothers who
realised that they did not want their babies to suffer the same inappropriate
parenting as they had experienced in childhood, were able to become more
nurturing toward their own infants. Reflectivity helps (Brophy-Herb & Honig, 1999c)!
Invite Planned Parenthood clinic counsellors and school district nurses to provide
outreach work in classes to discuss prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and
to discuss options for unwanted teen pregnancies. Promoting awareness,
understanding, and dialogue are jobs that trained adults such as nurses,
psychologists, and social workers can carry out with adolescents (Brophy-Herb &

Honig, 1999a, 1999b). A bit of humour helps. Dr Sol Gordon created a comic book
called ‘Ten Heavy Facts About sex’ that has characters with visual appeal for
teenagers.

Courses that include knowledge of developmental norms for infants and young
children are important particularly when a school establishes a childcare facility to
serve parenting teens attending the school. Many teens have no clue about stages
of child development. They do not realise, for example, when sphincter control
becomes possible. Some enraged parents severely beat a young toddler who has a
toileting accident or they slap a loudly crying baby hard, creating brain damage
(‘shaken baby syndrome’).

Invite a volunteer parent on a regular basis to bring

In this article  a baby into school, so that teens
learn how to babble delightedly back and forth with a baby how to diaper a baby
learn how to babble delightedly back and forth with a baby, how to diaper a baby,
 
how to sing
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with appropriate
and games. The
video‘Oh, Boy, Babies!’ depicts how successful this effort was in a private school for

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teen boys. A sleeping baby looks adorable. But childcare is hard work and many
teens have no realisation of how intensive and all-consuming is the job of parenting.

Government and private agencies need to reach out actively and join together with
Parent Involvement programmes. The first line of prevention is to support parental
skills. Preventing teen pregnancy needs to be a multifaceted societal collaboration.
Agencies that coordinate their services can best ensure that pregnant teens receive
early and excellent prenatal care and ongoing, sustained support for nurturing
babies and young children. Major collaborative efforts are needed for teen
pregnancy prevention. Also, major collaborative efforts are needed to assist
pregnant and parenting teens with healthcare, provision of jobs, housing, education
continuance, and psychological supports for their life decisions.

References

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