Teenage pregnancy / report by the Social Exclusion Unit ; presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister by command of Her Majesty, June 1999.

  • Great Britain. Social Exclusion Unit
Date:
1999
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Teenage pregnancy / report by the Social Exclusion Unit ; presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister by command of Her Majesty, June 1999. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    4. WHY ARE RATES IN THE UK SO HIGH? The UK’s relatively high rates of teenage pregnancy have many causes. Contraception use amongst teenagers is low by international standards. Social and economic factors also have a role to play. The UK and other countries with high rates of teenage pregnancy tend to be characterised by: high levels of income inequality; poor educational achievement; high percentages of lone parents; and benefit systems that do not require lone parents to be available for work until their children have left school. “They are aware but just can’t be bothered.” “| think younger ones aren’t aware that you can get it.” “They aren’t aware of how easy it is to get pregnant and how hard it is to look after a baby.” “It depends what area they’re living in again, because if it’s somewhere like [...] they’ve not really got things to want to give it up. If you’re in somewhere like [...] you’d probably want to go to University, so you wouldn’t want a baby would you? But in [...] you’ve not really got anything like that.” “People were thinking, ‘Oh, she only did it to get a council flat’. | had to wait ages for my flat. | cried when | saw it because it was so disgusting and dismal. It was utterly horrible. A complete tip. There was damp, mould, old furniture and broken glass.” “If I‘d known what it was like, | would have waited another six years.” 4.1 The UK’s high rates of teenage pregnancy result from many factors, including ignorance, low expectations, mixed messages and a history of neglect. Planned or unplanned 4.2 Most pregnant teenagers are pregnant because of accidents. Surveys find that around three-quarters of teenage mothers say their pregnancies are unplanned, and that the older teenagers are when they get pregnant, the more likely it is that the pregnancy was planned.°®°,7° In practice, the first conscious decision that many teenagers make about their pregnancy is whether to have an abortion or to continue with the pregnancy. Why so many accidents? 4.3 The average age of first sex in the UK is not markedly out of line with other European countries, which have lower rates of teenage pregnancy than the UK, or with the US, which has falling rates.