Statistics can hurt

[maymie]

i come from a kinda small town in scotland and when i was at school there was 3 girls in my year that were all teenage mothers. now my sister is in high school and the is a girl there aged 13 pregnant. i have to say in the defence of these girls the sex education is very poor. we weren't told about much contraception methods at all. also just to add one of the girls i went to school with that got pregnant is expecting again and in reference to all of the above our local council rehoused all these girls and gave them their own flat and a health visitor daily (except the 13 year old her whole family get loads of extra cash to care for the child) but i heard on many occasions girls talking amungst girls about home life ie pissed of with parents etc and actully went out with the intention to get 'up the duff' (pregnant) so that they could get a house.

 

[CharleyH]

Yesterday our local TV news announced that:

Britain has the highest number of teenage mothers per 100,000 births in Europe. I didn't catch the exact figures but I think Britain had 40% of Europe's total teenage mothers.

The County of Kent has the highest number of teenage mothers per 100,000 births in Britain.

The town of Maidstone has the highest number of teenage mothers per 100,000 births in Kent.

The Parkwood housing estate in Maidstone has the highest number of teenage mothers per 100,000 births in Europe, Britain, Kent and Maidstone.

Of course, in the UK sex and marriage is legal at 16 but many of the Parkwood mothers had babies before their 16th birthday.

I would like to add some comments but I think the statistics say it all.

Og

All I want to know is if you all heard the word condom before? You may just be on par with the USA who thinks "Get a rubber," means a pencil end. Joking, of course.

I would like to hear your comments on these stats, Og?

 

[rgraham666]

If our kids had frequent contact with explosives, we'd make damned sure they learned all about explosives.

Sex is like explosives. We don't teach our kids much about sex. So there are accidents.

 

[CharleyH]

If our kids had frequent contact with explosives, we'd make damned sure they learned all about explosives.

Sex is like explosives. We don't teach our kids much about sex. So there are accidents.

Well, true, but whats the failing? Me and my friends learned about sex at an early age (funny storry - lol) from our parents and again thru grades 8 thru 13. What is the failing? There should be no accidents these days and if there is? The question is HOW HAVE WE failed as parents, teachers, culture?

 

[maymie]

i dont think anyone has failed as such the way i see it is at my mum told me everything i needed to know but told me not to do it. school told you nothing and made it out to be dirty and bad so when your 14 or 15+ if you are told not to do something or think that something is bad you wanna do it more

 

[Retrieval]

Uh, double standard alert, double standard alert!

Care to elaborate SEVERUSMAX?

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Care to elaborate SEVERUSMAX?

Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. God forbid those young women should have sex outside of marriage! They should accept the consequences for their "immorality"! A double double standard, in fact. It's okay for boys and okay for growm people to fornicate, but evidently not for teenage girls.

3 words:

GET A RUBBER.

 

[Equinoxe]

Well, this turned out to be very long.

I can't speak to the issue of rates of pregnancy in girls under the age of 15, because I don't have those statistics (and don't really feel like looking them up), but according to statistics coming from various places in the UN (these statistics include married women, which is significant for reasons to be addressed later), 20 out of 1000 births in the UK are to women between the ages of 15 and 19. This is 2/3 the rate of Russia and less than 40% that of the US, but, excluding the former Soviet bloc, there is only one European country with a higher rate -- Iceland. If compared with the Commonwealth, the UK fares generally better, it even has a lower rate than New Zealand (though not Australia, nor Canada).

The lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialised world, and subsequently in the world as a whole, are in South Korea and Japan, at 3 and 4 per thousand, respectively. Countries which are generally considered to be very liberal, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, have much lower rates than the UK, with Sweden having 7 and the Netherlands 5 per thousand each. Likewise, some countries which are often perceived as more conservative, such as Ireland, have a lower rate of teen pregnancy, with Ireland having 15 per thousand births to mothers between 15 and 19. This reminds me a bit of that joke about diet and disease in different countries ("... apparently, it's speaking English that kills you.").

As an interesting note, if we look at the rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialised world (ignoring the developing world), there is an interesting trend in how the statistics match, when considered by the legal system of the nations in question -- Common Law and former Socialist Law countries tend to have a higher rate of teen pregnancy than Civil Law countries, with the exceptions of Iceland and Portugal at 25 and 17 births per thousand born to mothers between 15 and 19, respectively. Ireland has, as mentioned above, a rate of 15 per thousand, Canada and Australia 16 per thousand, the UK 20, New Zealand 27, and the US 53. As for the former Soviet bloc, Poland has a rate of 16 per thousand, the Czech Republic 17, Hungary 21, Slovakia 24, and Russia 30 -- I don't know about other states, the Ukraine or the Baltics, etc. To compare, Germany and France have rates of 11 and 9 per thousand each, the rate is 11 in Norway, 8 in Finland, 7 in Sweden and Denmark, 6 in Italy and Spain, and 5 in Switzerland -- in addition to the previously mentioned rates of 5 in the Netherlands, and 3 in South Korea and 4 in Japan. Of course, these rates vary within each country: for example, in some parts of the US (generally the rural parts), there are as many as 127 births per thousand to women between 15 and 19 -- which is about 10% higher than the general rate in Afghanistan, for comparison. None of that is to imply that the Civil Law prevents teen pregnancy, of course, just that I found it interesting -- especially considering some of the perceived differences between Civil Law and Common Law countries with regards to "collectivism" and how each perceives the government.

Having said all of that, I am not in the least bit surprised that the highest rates in the industrialised world are found in countries like Russia and the United States and the lowest rates in countries like Japan and South Korea. As for why teen pregnancy rates vary so much in the industrialised world, I think there are a whole host of reasons -- though here we enter the interpretation and speculation part in full. I, for example, do not think it is coincidence that Japan is at the bottom end of the scale and is also considered a "conformist" and fairly top-down country with little emphasis placed on ideas of "sexual morality", while the United States is at the top of the scale and is considered a more "individualist" society with a general distrust of government and great emphasis placed on "sexual morality". Likewise, I do not think that it is a coincidence that countries, like those in Scandinavia and much of Continental Europe, which have comprehensive sexual education programmes that encourage the use of birth control and make it available have lower rates. I do find it interesting that Iceland is the odd man out in Europe; it's a Nordic country, having much cultural similarity to Scandinavia, but it is also a much smaller nation -- it is also considered by some to be more individualistic than other Nordic countries, and while I don't know if that's true, it would be very interesting to me if it were.

Now we come to why the inclusion of married women ages 15 through 19 is important -- there has never really been a historical stigma against teen pregnancy in Western society; if I may borrow a quote from William Shakespeare to illustrate this point:

Capulet: But saying o'er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made.

The stigma has always been against unwed mothers. This is generally true throughout the world: the rate of births by 15-19 year olds in Afghanistan (which was hinted at earlier), for example, is 111 per thousand -- suffice it to say, these are generally births to married women. Likewise, I would imagine that many of the births in those parts of the United States which have very high rates, by the standards of the country as a whole, are often to women who married at a young age. To a great extent, in modern Western society, the stigma of unwed pregnancy has been reduced -- it's no longer as shocking as it once was, but I think that, in combination with fairly modern ideas of adolescence and when adulthood is reached, the stigma has largely just shifted to teen pregnancy. It would seem, in general, that countries with strong centralised regimes of teen pregnancy prevention have lower rates of teen pregnancy.

P.S. There are no such thing as accidental pregnancies* -- only people ignorant or ignoring of the consequences of their actions.

* Exceedingly bizarre incidents potentially conceivable notwithstanding.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Well, this turned out to be very long.

I can't speak to the issue of rates of pregnancy in girls under the age of 15, because I don't have those statistics (and don't really feel like looking them up), but according to statistics coming from various places in the UN (these statistics include married women, which is significant for reasons to be addressed later), 20 out of 1000 births in the UK are to women between the ages of 15 and 19. This is 2/3 the rate of Russia and less than 40% that of the US, but, excluding the former Soviet bloc, there is only one European country with a higher rate -- Iceland. If compared with the Commonwealth, the UK fares generally better, it even has a lower rate than New Zealand (though not Australia, nor Canada).

The lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialised world, and subsequently in the world as a whole, are in South Korea and Japan, at 3 and 4 per thousand, respectively. Countries which are generally considered to be very liberal, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, have much lower rates than the UK, with Sweden having 7 and the Netherlands 5 per thousand each. Likewise, some countries which are often perceived as more conservative, such as Ireland, have a lower rate of teen pregnancy, with Ireland having 15 per thousand births to mothers between 15 and 19. This reminds me a bit of that joke about diet and disease in different countries ("... apparently, it's speaking English that kills you.").

As an interesting note, if we look at the rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialised world (ignoring the developing world), there is an interesting trend in how the statistics match, when considered by the legal system of the nations in question -- Common Law and former Socialist Law countries tend to have a higher rate of teen pregnancy than Civil Law countries, with the exceptions of Iceland and Portugal at 25 and 17 births per thousand born to mothers between 15 and 19, respectively. Ireland has, as mentioned above, a rate of 15 per thousand, Canada and Australia 16 per thousand, the UK 20, New Zealand 27, and the US 53. As for the former Soviet bloc, Poland has a rate of 16 per thousand, the Czech Republic 17, Hungary 21, Slovakia 24, and Russia 30 -- I don't know about other states, the Ukraine or the Baltics, etc. To compare, Germany and France have rates of 11 and 9 per thousand each, the rate is 11 in Norway, 8 in Finland, 7 in Sweden and Denmark, 6 in Italy and Spain, and 5 in Switzerland -- in addition to the previously mentioned rates of 5 in the Netherlands, and 3 in South Korea and 4 in Japan. Of course, these rates vary within each country: for example, in some parts of the US (generally the rural parts), there are as many as 127 births per thousand to women between 15 and 19 -- which is about 10% higher than the general rate in Afghanistan, for comparison. None of that is to imply that the Civil Law prevents teen pregnancy, of course, just that I found it interesting -- especially considering some of the perceived differences between Civil Law and Common Law countries with regards to "collectivism" and how each perceives the government.

Having said all of that, I am not in the least bit surprised that the highest rates in the industrialised world are found in countries like Russia and the United States and the lowest rates in countries like Japan and South Korea. As for why teen pregnancy rates vary so much in the industrialised world, I think there are a whole host of reasons -- though here we enter the interpretation and speculation part in full. I, for example, do not think it is coincidence that Japan is at the bottom end of the scale and is also considered a "conformist" and fairly top-down country with little emphasis placed on ideas of "sexual morality", while the United States is at the top of the scale and is considered a more "individualist" society with a general distrust of government and great emphasis placed on "sexual morality". Likewise, I do not think that it is a coincidence that countries, like those in Scandinavia and much of Continental Europe, which have comprehensive sexual education programmes that encourage the use of birth control and make it available have lower rates. I do find it interesting that Iceland is the odd man out in Europe; it's a Nordic country, having much cultural similarity to Scandinavia, but it is also a much smaller nation -- it is also considered by some to be more individualistic than other Nordic countries, and while I don't know if that's true, it would be very interesting to me if it were.

Now we come to why the inclusion of married women ages 15 through 19 is important -- there has never really been a historical stigma against teen pregnancy in Western society; if I may borrow a quote from William Shakespeare to illustrate this point:

The stigma has always been against unwed mothers. This is generally true throughout the world: the rate of births by 15-19 year olds in Afghanistan (which was hinted at earlier), for example, is 111 per thousand -- suffice it to say, these are generally births to married women. Likewise, I would imagine that many of the births in those parts of the United States which have very high rates, by the standards of the country as a whole, are often to women who married at a young age. To a great extent, in modern Western society, the stigma of unwed pregnancy has been reduced -- it's no longer as shocking as it once was, but I think that, in combination with fairly modern ideas of adolescence and when adulthood is reached, the stigma has largely just shifted to teen pregnancy. It would seem, in general, that countries with strong centralised regimes of teen pregnancy prevention have lower rates of teen pregnancy.

P.S. There are no such thing as accidental pregnancies* -- only people ignorant or ignoring of the consequences of their actions.

* Exceedingly bizarre incidents potentially conceivable notwithstanding.

It's probably the lack of impractical and superstitious ideas about premarital sex. Hence, the Japanese place a higher premium on economic issues and less on "accepting consequences of sin" and such rubbish.

Iceland is particularly interesting, given that there is no stigma attached to bastardy at all there. They don't even have family names. Your surname is always a patronymic- taken from the father. If the religious right were correct, they should have MORE teen pregnancy, not LESS. But they don't. Hmm....

 

[oggbashan]

All I want to know is if you all heard the word condom before? You may just be on par with the USA who thinks "Get a rubber," means a pencil end. Joking, of course.

I would like to hear your comments on these stats, Og?

We used to have proactive family planning clinics that would visit schools and sixth form colleges advising about safe sex and the use of condoms and other forms of contraceptive. The funding for those clinics has been cut so they can only advise those who visit their office - usually when it's too late.

The Welfare State in the UK was skewed so that it was more advantageous to have children when young and unmarried - subsidised housing and a living income would be provided to teenage single mothers ahead of married couples. The teenage girls knew this. Getting pregnant was a way out of the family home into apparent independence (except on the State). They couldn't achieve comparable independence through education and employment unless they were high achievers with a strong drive to succeed. Becoming pregnant was a life-style choice. Who the father was, was irrelevant to the aim of an independent life for the woman.

The system is changing slowly. Now the father can be identified by DNA even if the mother didn't know who of her multiple partners actually fertilised her egg. The father can be required to pay maintenance in theory. In practice the Child Support Agency, set up to make fathers pay for the support of their children, has been a succession of costly failures that have not increased the money paid to mothers by fathers instead of by the State.

I believe that many teenage pregnancies on the Parkwood Estate do not occur through ignorance but by deliberate choice to attain a lifestyle not available any other way. The system has to change. While it stays as it is, I think that many of the girls are making a rational choice based on their perception of the economic realities around them. I would find it difficult to say that they are wrong.

Og

 

[CharleyH]

We used to have proactive family planning clinics that would visit schools and sixth form colleges advising about safe sex and the use of condoms and other forms of contraceptive. The funding for those clinics has been cut so they can only advise those who visit their office - usually when it's too late.

The Welfare State in the UK was skewed so that it was more advantageous to have children when young and unmarried - subsidised housing and a living income would be provided to teenage single mothers ahead of married couples. The teenage girls knew this. Getting pregnant was a way out of the family home into apparent independence (except on the State). They couldn't achieve comparable independence through education and employment unless they were high achievers with a strong drive to succeed. Becoming pregnant was a life-style choice. Who the father was, was irrelevant to the aim of an independent life for the woman.

The system is changing slowly. Now the father can be identified by DNA even if the mother didn't know who of her multiple partners actually fertilised her egg. The father can be required to pay maintenance in theory. In practice the Child Support Agency, set up to make fathers pay for the support of their children, has been a succession of costly failures that have not increased the money paid to mothers by fathers instead of by the State.

I believe that many teenage pregnancies on the Parkwood Estate do not occur through ignorance but by deliberate choice to attain a lifestyle not available any other way. The system has to change. While it stays as it is, I think that many of the girls are making a rational choice based on their perception of the economic realities around them. I would find it difficult to say that they are wrong.

Og

Am I getting that there is still a division of aristocracy in the UK?

 

[oggbashan]

Am I getting that there is still a division of aristocracy in the UK?

There is a significant gap between the haves and the have-nots and the gap is widening. Those at the bottom of the economic heap need not starve and can live reasonable lives IF they don't have expensive habits such as recreational drugs. However they are bombarded with advertising suggesting that they should spend several times their weekly income on a designer handbag.

Many families (using the widest definition of family) have to have both partners working to be able to afford accommodation - even if it is subsidised by the state.

Children of parents who are supported by the state are likely to have to be part supported by the state when they become adults - even if they work full-time. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s a bright child could claw their way out of the dependency culture through education. That is almost impossible now because of changes to the education system.

My parents and their siblings were poor. Education was the way out and they appreciated the free education they got and built on it to have a reasonable lifestyle. Their equivalents today would find it far more difficult.

Aristocracy is irrelevant to the impasse. Aristocrats can be rich or poor. Some appear rich because of their ancestral homes but maintaining them is so expensive that their living standards compare with the poorest.

Many of the current Labour politicians owe their position to education that they now deny to their young equivalents. They have an aim of sending 50% of children to university but they have dumbed-down the examinations required for university entrance and dumbed-down the courses at university so that a degree can be worthless. Yet the student will have been saddled with a massive debt to obtain that degree. Only now after 10 years of Labour rule have the politicians begun to realise that university degrees can be useless. It wasn't just Labour. Conservative governments before Labour also devalued education and allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen.

Some of the deprivation is self-inflicted. If the culture in which a child grows up does not value education and enterprise then how can they expect the child to work hard to achieve? Those cultures that do value and support education see their children achieve - usually at considerable cost to their parents. What better investment can a parent make than ensuring that their children can earn a better lifestyle than their parents?

The single mothers of Parkwood are ensuring a better lifestyle for their children than they had. It may be a perverse way of doing it - but it works for them. The mothers are sacrificing their education and prospects. Unfortunately their children are likely to do the same. The result is self-perpetuating. It is no use telling them that education and enterprise are the route to success. Everything they see around them confirms that they are not - except for the unusally talented who are lucky as well.

I would like to make schools identify and educate the able child to stretch their abilities. Unfortunately the able children are often seen as a nuisance and are left to their devices while the teachers concentrate on the average pupil and try to control the disruptive ones.

Og