Girls as young as 13 decide that parenting offers a better life than dead-end jobs, says new study

The Independent (UK) reports:

Teenage girls who get pregnant are deliberately “planning” to become mothers in the belief that a baby will improve the quality of their lives.

…they see parenting as preferable to working in a dead-end job.

The revelation that teenage girls are actively choosing motherhood is backed up by official figures obtained by this paper which show that nearly a quarter of pregnancies to under 18s are second children.

The parts of [Britain] that have most teenage births are areas of poverty and high unemployment; girls from low-income families are 10 times more likely to become teenage mothers than those from affluent backgrounds.

Only a handful of girls said they regretted getting pregnant.

While this is the UK and not the U.S., similarities no doubt exist and it certainly turns current social policies on their head. All of the sex education in the world won’t do a thing about teen pregnancies if in fact certain teens are using motherhood as a way to avoid dead-end jobs instead of going to school or otherwise improving themselves.

tag: teen pregnancies

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 7:26 am by Insider and is filed under Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.