Teenage Pregnancy

For more information go to the Resource Ccenter for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention website at http://www.etr.org/recapp

Nowadays, teens are faced with a lot of choices. Among those choices is whether they want to have sex or not. Teenage pregnancy has become a serious problem in the United States. About one million teenage girls get pregnant each year, costing about seven billion dollars.

In the next 24 hours 2,795 teenage girls will become pregnant.

Statistic from Teen Pregnancy Information

Teenage pregnancy affects a particular subset of adolescents more than others. Black and Hispanic teens are more likely than other ethnic group to become pregnant. Today Hispanic teens hold the highest rate of teenage pregnancy.

Warning Signs that suggest that a teen may be likely to become pregnant:

1. A lack of interest in education

2. Girls with poor self-efficacy and an external locus of control

3. Parents' uninvolvement/absence

Preventing Teenage Pregnancy

Prevention programs usually attempt to delay the initiation of sexual activity, reduce frequency of sexual intercourse, promote the use of contraception, prevent STDs, or/and prevent teenage pregnancy.

The following are prevention approaches:

1. Providing comprehension sex education. http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/sexeducation.htm

2. Offering information about contraception, as well as offering the contraception. http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/news/press/060900.htm

3. Designing parent workshops that will enable them to talk to their teens effectively about sex. http://teenpregnancy.org

These approaches have been proven to work because they offer accurate, balanced, and realistic sexuality education, as well as youth development, and confidential and low-cost access to contraception.

http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/coststudy/index.htm

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