Citrus: Campaign puts out word on trials of teen pregnancy

Campaign puts out word on trials of teen pregnancy

By Times staff writer

Because May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, the Citrus County Health Department has distributed a series of informational items from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. The Citrus Times will publish edited portions of the installments throughout the month.

Here is the first one:

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, organized in 1996, is based on the concept that reducing the nation's rate of teen pregnancy is one of the most strategic and direct means available to improve overall child well-being and to reduce persistent child poverty. Teen pregnancy has serious consequences for the teen mother, the child and society in general.

Despite the recently declining teen pregnancy rate, four in 10 teenage girls get pregnant at least once before they reach age 20, resulting in more than 900,000 teen pregnancies a year. At this level, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the fully industrialized world.

(In Citrus County, 15 percent of the babies born in 2000 had mothers younger than 20. That's up from 13 percent in 1995. The statistics don't indicate whether those mothers were married.)

Teen pregnancy is bad for the mother because:

Future prospects for teenagers decline significantly if they have a baby. Teen mothers are less likely to complete school and more likely to be single parents. Less than one-third of teens who begin their families before age 18 ever earn a high school diploma.

There are serious health risks for adolescents who have babies. Young adolescents (particularly those younger than 15) experience a maternal death rate 2.5 times greater than that of mothers ages 20 to 24. Common medical problems include poor weight gain, pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, sexually transmitted diseases and cephalopelvic disproportion. Later in life, adolescent mothers tend to be at greater risk for obesity and hypertension than women who were not teenagers when they had their first child.

Teen pregnancy is closely linked to poverty and single parenthood. A 1990 study showed that almost half of all teenage mothers and more than three-quarters of unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare within five years of the birth of their first child. The growth in single-parent families remains the single most important reason for increased poverty among children during the past 20 years, as documented in the 1998 Economic Report of the President. Out-of-wedlock childbearing, as opposed to divorce, is currently the driving force behind the growth in the number of single parents, and half of first out-of-wedlock births are to teens. Therefore, reducing teen pregnancy and child bearing is an obvious place to anchor serious efforts to reduce poverty in future generations.

Teen pregnancy is bad for the child because:

Children born to teen mothers suffer from greater rates of low birth weight and related health problems. The proportion of babies with low birth weights born to teens is 28 percent greater than it is for babies whose mothers are ages 20 to 24. Low birth weight increases the probabilities of infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation, mental illness and cerebral palsy. In addition, low birth weight doubles the chances that a child will later be diagnosed as having dyslexia, hyperactivity or another disability.

Children of teens often have insufficient health care. Despite having more health problems than the children of older mothers, the children of teen mothers receive less medical care and treatment. In his or her first 14 years, the average child of a teen mother visits a physician and other medical providers an average of 3.8 times per year, compared with 4.3 times for a child of an older mother. And when they do visit medical providers, more of the expenses they incur are paid by others in society. One recent study suggested that the medical expenses paid by society would be reduced dramatically if teenage mothers were to wait until they were older to have their first child.

Children of teen mothers often receive inadequate parenting. Children born to teen mothers are at higher risk of poor parenting because their mothers, and often their fathers, are typically too young to have mastered the demanding job of being a parent.

Still growing and developing themselves, teen mothers often are unable to provide the kind of environment that infants and very young children require for optimal development. Recent research, for example, has clarified the critical importance of sensitive parenting and early cognitive stimulation for adequate brain development.

Given the importance of careful nurturing and stimulation in the first three years of life, the burden born by babies with parents who are too young to be in this role are great.