Seems like the headlines most people are familiar with lately.
There's a serious amount of talk about teens, sex and popular culture today.
I won't say debate or discussion because it's limited to snide comments and assumptions that crazy-sexy kids are dressing and acting out today, and how this really is bad for them, and how they are all running around having sex all the time.
My mom recently was telling me about an Oprah where she managed to give the impression that every teenager thought sex was like shaking hands, and they were doing it everywhere, all the time, with no regards to their future.
Well, seems like the times they is a changin', I'll agree to that. But not how most people think.
The New York Times reported a couple weeks ago that "Teen pregnancies, abortions fall in 2000."
Teen pregnancies down... Yep, those darn kids are out of control, and sex on TV must be an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it problem...
There's so much bad news out there based on misperceptions, that it's important to also understand that the country isn't quite ready to implode just yet.
The Times quotes from data produced by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. This link takes you straight to the article, which says that teen pregnancy rates have dropped for the 10th straight year.
Read the article for more specifics, as well as an available PDF file for download with breakdowns for each state.
Since 1990, abortions have been cut almost in half, from 43.5 per 1000 teen women to 24. That's significant.
Since 1990, overall pregnancy has declined 28%. Those are huge numbers.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: to me, there's so much bad news out there based on misperceptions, that it's important to also understand that the country isn't quite ready to implode just yet.
Essentially, even as crime and other bad stuff is decreasing, reporting of such crimes and problems has greatly increased on the 5pm Nightly News Police Report. It's a shame.
Another headline in the Denver Post a couple days ago goes even further. It says, "Teens' abstinence, contraception (use) up."
For example, birth rates over the decades... rated as # of births/1000 women for women ages 15-19.
50s ---- 80
60s ---- 97
70s ---- 70
80s ---- 53
90s ---- 62
Today - 43
Hmmmm, from a high of nearly 100 to a low today of around 40. Damn. Apparently all this sex education stuff is working. Kids are seeing the world around them and apparently deciding they don't want to bring kids into this world the wrong way, and don't want to get AIDS.
Bravo!
Posted by BilFish at March 13, 2004 09:22 AM