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Fourteen and Younger: New Report Finds Sex, Pregnancy, and Risky Choices Start At An Early Age
"Teen Pregnancy" is often the subject of media attention and public health scrutiny, but when you really stop to think about it, "teen" is a pretty broad age category, encompassing young people from junior high students to college kids. A new report that looks at six national and local surveys of adolescents recently released by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has gone some distance towards breaking down this unwieldy "teen" block by taking a close look at the sexual behavior of young teenagers, specifically those under the age of fifteen. And here are some of the report's most important findings: approximately one in five adolescents has had sex before his or her fifteenth birthday, and one in seven sexually active 14 year old girls has been pregnant.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the report also found that those teenagers who had engaged in sexual intercourse early in their adolescent lives were more likely than virgins to engage in other risky behaviors, such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and experimenting with illegal drugs. For example, 43% of sexually experienced teenagers (those who had engaged in sexual intercourse at least once) said they had tried smoking marijuana, as compared with 10% of virgins. Similarly, 18% of sexually experienced teens reported drinking regularly, as compared with 3% of virgins. For this reason, Sarah Brown, the Director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington D.C.), characterized the results of the study as "a wake-up call that the efforts we make toward young people have to start early, that teachers looking at a class of 13-year-olds can't assume they're in a state of latent innocence."
The report, which comprises seven chapters and is the work of seven teams of researchers, contains findings about sexual experience, contraceptive use, partner-to-partner pressure, and dating trends. Here are some of its striking conclusions:
Dating
·About half of teenagers aged 12-14 report having been on a date or having a romantic relationship in the past 18 months.
·About a quarter of those relationships are with someone two or more years older. Girls are far more likely than boys to date older partners.
·For young teenagers, the greater the age difference between partners, the more likely the relationship will include sexual intercourse. Specifically, here's how the numbers break down: 13% of same-age relationships among young people aged 12-14 include sexual intercourse. If one partner is two years older than the other, 26% of relationships-a full twice as many-include sex. The bigger the age difference, the more likely sexual intercourse will occur: a gap of three or more years bumps the likelihood up to 33%.
Contraceptive Use and Safer Sex
·Between half and three quarters of sexually active young people aged 12-14 report that they used contraception the first time they had sex.
·One in seven sexually experienced 14-year-old girls reports having been pregnant, which translates into about 20,000 pregnancies each year and roughly 8,000 births. (For those aged 15 to 19, the numbers are about 850,000 pregnancies and 450,000 births.)
Number of Partners
·Of women under the age of 20, those who first had sex at age 14 or younger had more sexual partners, on average, than girls who first had sex at age 15 or older. An increased number or partners can result in an increased risk of STDs.
Pressure
·About one in ten girls who have had sex before age 15 describe the sex as non-voluntary. Many more describe it as "unwanted" (i.e. though the encounter was voluntary, they did not want to have sex when they did).
·On a related note, younger teen girls who are sexually experienced are more likely than older teens to say they "wish they'd waited."
Opportunities for Sex
·One-third of twelve-year-olds and about half of 14-year-olds report having been at parties without any adults present in the house.
·About one third of the young people surveyed said that within the past three months, they had lain on a bed or couch alone with someone.
In light of the report's findings that 20% of teenagers have had sex before the age of 15, it's tempting to assume that current teen pregnancy rates are pretty bleak. And while teen pregnancy continues to be a very real problem in America today, there's good news on this front, too. According to data from the federal government, the teen birth rate for those aged 14 and younger declined 43% between 1991 and 2001. (The birth rate for those aged 15-19 declined 27% over the course of the same decade.) In other words, the trend is towards fewer and fewer pregnancies among the very young.
Interested in this report on adolescents and sexual behavior? Click here read the full report and news coverage.
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