Teen Sex and Pregnancy

Sexual Activity (Loss of Virginity)

• Most younger teenagers have not had intercourse: 8 in 10 girls and 7 in 10 boys are still virgins as age 15.
  
  
• 1 in 5 young people never have intercourse as teenagers.
  
  
• The younger a girl is when she first had intercourse, the more likely it was involuntary (rape) - 7 in 10 of those who had sex before age 13.
  
  
• The majority (61%) of young women's first voluntary sexual partners were either younger, the same age or no more than 2 years older. 27% were 3 - 4 years older and 12% were 5 or more years older.
  
  
• 50% of females and 56% of males will have had intercourse by age 17-19.
  
  
  Contraceptive Use
  
  
• A sexually active teenager who doesn't use contraception has a 90% chance of pregnancy in the first year.
  
  
• Up to 22.8% of teens who rely on condoms alone will become pregnant within one year, 34.8% within 2 years.
  
  
• By 1995, 78% of teens used contraception during first intercoure; 2/3 or them used a condom.
  
  
• 9 in 10 sexually active women and their partners use a contraceptive method, although not always perfectly.
  
  
• About 1 in 6 teenage women practicing contraceptioon combine two methods, primarily the condom with another method.
  
  
• The method most relied on by teenagers is the pill (44%) followed by the condom (38%). About 10% rely on the injectable, 4% on withdrawal and 3% on the implant.
  
  
  Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD's)
  
  
• Every year 1 in 4 sexually experienced teens acquire an STD.
  
  
• A 15 year old sexually active female has a 1 in 8 chance of developing pelvic inflammatory disease.
  
  
• Chlamydia is more common among teens than among older men and women; in some settings 10 - 29% of sexually active teenage girls and 10% of teenage boys tested for STDs have been found to have chlamydia.
  
  
• The rate of chlamydia infection for women with an infected partner is 44% for diaphragm users, 35.7% for condom users, 37% for oral contraceptive users, and 44% for those who used no contraception.
  
  
• According to one researcher, a second infection of chlamydia carries a 50% sterility rate.
  
  
• Teens have higher rates of gonorrhea than do sexually active men and women aged 20 - 44.
  
  
• In some studies, up to 15% of sexually active teenage women have been found to be infected with the human papilloma virus (genital warts), many with a strain linked to cervial cancer. (Your cervix is the opening of your uterus, girls)
  
  
• Teenage women have a higher hospitalization rate than older women for acute pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which is most often casued by untreated gonorrhea or chlamydia. PID can lead to infertility and ectopic pregnancy and in rarer cases, death.
  
  
  Teen Pregnancy
  
  
• 78% of all teen pragnancies are unplanned, accounting for 1/4 of the total number of unplanned pregnancies.
  
  
• 6 in 10 pregnancies occur among 18 - 19 year olds.
  
  
• 14% of all teen pregnancies end in miscarriage, 31% end in abortion and 55% end in live birth.
  
  
• Among sexually experienced teens, 8% of 14 year olds, 18% of 15 - 17 year olds and 22% of 18 - 19 year olds become pregnant each year.
  
  
  Teenage Childbearing
  
  
• 13% of all U.S. births are to teenagers.
  
  
• The fathers of babies born to teenagers are likely to be older: 1 in 5 births to unmarried minors are fathered by men 5 or more years older than the mother.
  
  
• 76% of births to teens occur outside of marriage.
  
  
• Teenagers account for 30% of all nonmarital births.
  
  
• 1/4 of teenage mothers have a second chid within 2 years of their first.
  
  
  Teen Mothers and their Children
  
  
• In 1993, 3.8 million mothers aged 15 - 44 received welfare or Aid to Families with Dependant Children (AFDC); 55% of these wmen became mothers when they were teenagers. Only 5% were currently teenage mothers and 83% of these - 159,000 - were aged 18 - 19; young teens (those aged 15 - 17) accounted for 32,000 of all mothers on AFDC.
  
  
• 7 in 10 teen moms finish high school but they are less likely to go on to college than women who delay childbearing.
  
  
• In part because most teen mothers come from disadvantaged backgrounds, 28% of them are poor in their 20s and early 30s; only 7% of women who first give birth after adolescence are poor at those ages.
  
  
• 1/3 of pregnant teens recieve inadequate prenatal care; babies born to teen moms are more likely to be low birth weight, to have childhood health problems and to be hospitalized than are those born to older moms.
  
  
  Abortion
  
  
• Nearly 4 in 10 pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. There were about 289,000 abortions among teens in 1994.
  
  
• Since 1980, abortion rates among sexually experienced teens have declined steadily in part because more are using contraceptiona and partly because more pregnant teens have chosen not to have abortions.
  
  
• The reasons most commonly given by teens who have abortions are: Concern about how having a baby would changer their lives, feeling that they aren't mature enough to have a child and having financial problems. (Note: Adoption can also solve all of these problems)
  
  
• 29 states have mandatory parental involvement laws in effect for a minor seeking an abortion: AL, AR, DE, GA, ID, IN, IO, KS, KY, LA, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, NE, NC, ND, OH, PA, RI, SC, SD, UT, VA, WV, WI and WY.
  
  

Sources of Data
Most of the data are from research conducted by the Alan Guttmacher institute, Family Planning Perspectives, the 1994 AGI report Sex and America's Teenagers, the Center for Disease Control, the National Center for Health Services and The Power of Abstinence.


Back Home

You are visitor number since October 28, 1998.




Accurate as of October, 1998

Visit Geocities and get a Free Homepage!!