Teen pregnancy rates fall; credit better sex education

Kids raising kids is not a good idea for many reasons. That’s why it’s significant that a new state report shows pregnancies among Blount County teens has been declining in recent years.

In 2015, the pregnancy rate among 15- to 17-year-old girls in Blount County was 11.7 per 1,000, compared to 18.4 in 2010, the Comptroller’s Offices of Research and Education Accountability shows.

Most of the pregnancies are among 18- and 19-year-olds. In 2013, for example, Blount County had 6,279 females ages 10-19. Of the 140 pregnancies, 103 were among 18-to 19-year-olds and 35 among girls 15-17.

And the difference it makes? Anecdotal examples would suffice, but let’s go with the scientific method, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• In 2010, teen pregnancy and childbirth accounted for at least $9.4 billion in costs to taxpayers for increased health care and foster care, increased incarceration rates among children of teen parents, and lost tax revenue because of lower educational attainment and income among teen mothers.

• Pregnancy and birth are significant contributors to high school dropout rates among girls. Only about 50 percent of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by age 22, compared to about 90 percent of women who do not give birth during adolescence graduate from high school.

• The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement and to drop out of high school, have more health problems, be incarcerated at some time during adolescence, give birth as a teenager and face unemployment as a young adult.

These effects continue for the teen mother and her child even after adjusting for those factors that increased the teenager’s risk for pregnancy, such as growing up in poverty, having parents with low levels of education, growing up in a single-parent family and having poor performance in school.

It’s unbelievable in 2017 that there are even college students who don’t know condoms can prevent pregnancy. We know that because Karen Beale has first-hand knowledge from her job as associate professor of psychology at Maryville College, studying sex education and teaching courses on human sexuality and women’s sexual health.

She also knows it doesn’t have to be that way. Beale recently received a grant to travel to the Netherlands, which has age-appropriate sex education starting in kindergarten. The result: The Netherlands has one of the lowest rates of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and unplanned pregnancies, as well as fewer abortions than other countries.

Don’t be bashful about biology, after all it’s all about life - generation after generation after generation.

The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement ...