Teenage pregnancy

[Ghazala]

Appeal to parents on teenage births

We need help to contain problem says minister

Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian

The government has reached the limits of its ability to contain the UK's high rate of teenage pregnancy and can go no further without the help of parents, the new children and families minister warned yesterday.

In her first interview since her post-election return to the government, Beverley Hughes told the Guardian that ministers had "reached a sticking point" where their efforts could not by themselves solve the problem of teenage pregnancy. Figures on under-16 pregnancies released today are expected to show the government is failing to make enough progress to meet its target of halving teenage conceptions by 2010.

Ms Hughes said that parents had to take the initiative by putting aside any embarrassment and starting a dialogue about sex with their children. When this takes place, young people had sex later and were more likely to use contraception, she said.

Parents would be given support and advice through government-funded helplines and advisers in Sure Start centres, but would not be told to give particular guidance.

Despite a huge government campaign, and a goal of halving the rate of conception among under-18s by 2010, the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe, standing at 42.8 conceptions for every 1,000 girls under 18 in 2003. That is five times the rate in the Netherlands, twice that of Germany and three times that of France.

The problem is particularly concentrated in poor areas. In some inner city boroughs more than one in 10 teenage girls becomes pregnant.

The issue of teenage pregnancy has been highlighted this week by the case of three sisters in Derby. One became pregnant at 12, and the others at 14 and 16. The girls' mother has blamed lack of sex education in school, but their case, dubbed by the press a "baby factory", has been seized upon by some commentators as a further sign of a culture of disrespect.

Ms Hughes described the sisters' case as "a tragic loss of opportunity".

The government will face strong criticism over its failure to get to grips with the problem, though it will argue that it has made some progress because the under-18 conception rate for England declined by 9.8% between 1998 and 2003. The 2002 figures for the under-16 conception rate show an 11.2% reduction since the start of the government cam paign. Ms Hughes insisted that the government, through its £40m-a-year teenage pregnancy strategy, had "done all the right things", including investing resources and developing a clear strategy.

But she added: "I don't think there is any magic bullet from the government side and local authority side and all the partners on the ground that we can identify that is going to now take another substantial step forward."

All the evidence showed that "we really need parents to now see themselves as making an absolutely unique and vital contribution to this issue ... It is a contribution that I don't think anyone else can actually make". Three pieces of evidence demonstrated the importance of parents' influence over their children's sexual behaviour, said Ms Hughes, who is the mother of two adult daughters and a son.

A 2001 survey found that 85% of parents believed that there would be fewer teenage pregnancies if parents talked more to their children about sex, relationships and contraception. Yet, according to another poll, taken in 2003, around half of young people said they had received very little or no information on the issues from their parents, even though they said their mother and father would be their preferred source of information.

Third, and "crucially", according to Ms Hughes, a 2002 study found that, where parents did engage in open discussions about sex and relationships with their children, their offspring had their first sexual experience later and were more likely to use contraception when they became sexually active.

Ms Hughes said that she thought parents were "absolutely critical to this agenda" and could make a difference. She added: "The move to put parents at the heart of the teenage pregnancy strategy was not an effective admission that the government had lost control of teenage pregnancy.

"What you are talking about here is not just changing people's attitudes, but often behaviour that will be decided on a spur of the moment in a situation where people for one reason or another don't think through the consequences."

Ms Hughes also declined to blame schools, saying that they were already being targeted to improve personal, social and health education for the most vulnerable young people in "hotspot" areas - though the subject will remain non-statutory.

Ministers stress that they will not present parents with a "birds and bees script" to run through with their teenagers, nor encourage parents to advocate abstinence. But they suggest that parents could start by asking their young sters about sex education lessons at school, and perhaps discussing peer pressure about fashion, or talking about their friends. Ministers believe that holding open discussions like that is an effective route towards delaying youngsters' sexual experimentation.

Ms Hughes acknowledged that initially she felt uncomfortable discussing sex and relationships with her children, partly because her daughters were so much more informed about sex than her own generation through information gathered from sources such as teen magazines.

She declined to condemn the magazines - attacked by some critics as over-explicit and apparently encouraging early sex. She said that technology and a wide range of publications meant that youngsters could now access information in a wide range of ways.

SEE ALSO:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/childr...492765,00.html

[-theTruth-]

What do you expect from this society where morals are no existant? or like a lady puts in for me couple of years ago( lets dumb our partners and go on saucy holiday and when i said what about our Partners?she said who cares?)

Morals are at its lowest because there is no control.
if we want to have a society where young teenage girls are dissuaded from having reckless sex and getting pregnant, we must try to do so by fighting for the increase of moral values in our society. And I believe in fighting for those values is the key issue.But the state and religious institutions must play a role in this realm in the context of enforcing laws that will negate some free will and punish transgressors without over steping the choices that young women make, and that all humans make, about their own private ethical and social behavior must ultimately be made by them within the laws of society.
Islam is the only religion that gives that total freedom and keep morals high. because In Islam, sexuality is considered part of our identity as human beings. In His creation of humankind, God distinguished us from other animals by giving us reason and will such that we can control behavior that, in other species, is governed solely by instinct based on an understanding of Qur'an and hadith, sexual relations are confined to marriage between a wife and husband. Within this context, the role of a healthy sexual relationship is extremely important. Having and raising children are encouraged among Muslims. Once a child is born, the parents are expected to care for, nurture and prepare the child for adulthood, with a goal of imparting Islam so that the indivdual is equipped with knowledge and willingness to accept and practice Islam and thus become a productive member of society. no a liability

[HOUDA-K]

Hasn't Britain got the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe ?

So what does the Government do about sex education ?

Encourage schoolkids to experiment with oral sex as they say it's the "most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates".

[Ghazala]

I think it does yes. You only have to look to the parents a lot of the time & you can see why

[HOUDA-K]

Possibly, but it won't discourage them to engage in full intercourse though.

[-theTruth-]

what makes it worst is the drug and Alcohol that is freely available to them. and we all know what happen when they are stoned and drunk

[voltaires_priest]

I think this is all utter nonsense.

Sex education programmes in schools do not deal with the issue of teenage pregnancy by "encouraging kids to have oral sex". That simply isn't true, and peddling myths like that does a disservice to the thousands of teachers in the UK who are trying (usually with greater success than churches or mosques) to tackle a difficult issue in a humanitarian fashion.

Right-wing political and religious blow-hards may rant and rave about a "lack of morals" in the UK, or think that hard-line absetentionist religious syllabuses will stop teenage pregnancy. In fact there is no credible evidence, whatsoever, that this is the case. In fact, some evidence from the USA suggests that the reverse may be true.

As for introducing prohibition laws banning alcohol sales, I think you'll find that didn't stop teenage pregnancy in 1920s America, and it hasn't stopped it in contemporary Iran either.


V