Sorry, Michael, but I couldn't resist!!!
First, while we do have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world, it did go down this year. We can only hope it will continue to do so.
Part of the problem is that we rewarded teenagers for getting pregnant, by awarding them welfare benefits--their own apartment, money to live on, etc.--for getting pregnant. For teenagers who are troubled anyway, and I would think that most of the teenagers who do get pregnant might fall into that category, it was a vast social experiment which did not work. As we have tightened up requirements for welfare, and insisted that pregnant teenagers remain at home to receive benefits, much of the incentive is gone.
However, I think there is an even larger issue. It is a statistical fact that in industrialized nations, the average age for beginning sexual relations is 15.5. There is probably a strong biological component to this. In Europe, sex education is of much higher quality than it is here, non-judgmental and right out there. America is an extremely Puritanical nation, and there are huge debates about whether to even have sex education. So here, children are statistically much less likely to actually plan for their first sexual relationship by obtaining birth control beforehand, than in other industrialized nations. Children in Europe are having sex just as early, and at least as much--their rate of pregnancy is just very much less because they don't have the moral qualms about birth control that American teenagers do.
So I would really assert here that lack of discipline has very little to do with our teenage pregnancy rate. Bad social engineering and conflicted messages about sexuality and sex education are much more to blame.
I think it is wonderful for teenagers to be abstinent from sex, and am happy that there are more and more programs that support that. I think emotional maturity is essential for any kind of a happy sexual relationship. However, I am also a realist, and not all children opt for abstinence. Did most of us?? I doubt it. We can try to be abstinent, but we are fighting strong biological urges. Let's be realistic, and offer better sex education, more, not less, in our schools and homes!!
Christine (on another campaign)
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