Under the Microscope: 'At least 1.25 million teenagers become pregnant each year in the 28 OECD countries under review. Of these, approximately half a million will seek an abortion and approximately three quarters of a million will become teenage mothers." This is the first key finding of a fascinating scientific survey entitled A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations, published in 2001 by Innocenti Research Centre, UN Children's Fund, Florence, Italy.
So, here is the teenage birth league in terms of the number of births (shown in parentheses) to women aged below 20 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19. Whether each country considers these figures to be of Major (M), Minor (m) or No Concern (NC) is also indicated: Korea (2.9)m, Japan (4.6)m, Switzerland (5.5)NC, Netherlands (6.2)NC, Sweden (6.5)m, Italy (6.6)NC, Spain (7.9)M, Denmark (8.1)m, Finland (9.2)m, France (9.3)M, Luxembourg (9.7)NC, Belgium (9.9)m, Greece (11.8)m, Norway (12.4)m, Germany (13.1)M, Austria (14.0)m, Czech Republic (16.4)NC, Australia (18.4)m, Ireland (18.7)NC, Poland (18.7)m, Canada (20.2)M, Portugal (21.2)M, Iceland (24.7)NC, Hungary (26.5)m, Slovak Republic (26.9)NC, New Zealand (29.8)M, UK (30.8)M, USA (52.1)M.
I will represent a few of these figures as the percentage of 20-year-olds who had a child in their teens (percentages in parentheses): Australia (9), Belgium (4), France (4), Germany (6), Ireland (8), Japan (2), Netherlands (3), Portugal (9), Spain (3), UK (13), US (22).
Later life outcomes for mothers and mother's age at birth of first child were also studied by interviewing women in their 30s. I will only give the results for Ireland. Of those women who first gave birth as teenagers, 73 per cent had achieved less than upper secondary education at time of interview compared to 37 per cent of those who first gave birth in their 20s. The corresponding figures for "neither the woman nor her partner working" are 46 per cent for the women who first gave birth as teenagers compared to 14 per cent for women who first gave birth in their 20s.
In 19 of the 28 OECD countries, births to teenagers have more than halved over the last 30 years. Here are some examples in terms of births per thousand women aged 15 to 19 (the first figures in the parentheses are for 1970 and the second for 1998) Spain (14.1, 7.9), Ireland (16.9, 18.7), Netherlands (22.6, 6.3), Italy (27.4, 6.6), Denmark (32.4, 8.1), France (36.8, 9.3), Canada (42.1, 20.2), UK (49.4, 30.8), USA (69.2, 52.1).
What about marital status? In the following data, the first number in parentheses represents the percentage of children born to women aged below 20 whose mothers were married and the second number is the percentage of children born to women of all ages whose mothers were married (data for 1998). Japan (86,99), Greece (80,96), Poland (60, 88), Portugal (45, 80), Germany (39, 80), Austria (31, 71), USA (21, 67), France (15, 60), Australia (9, 71), Ireland (4, 72).
Giving birth while still a teenager is strongly associated with disadvantage later. This was much less pronounced in the past. Traditionally, it was not at all unusual for married women to have children before the age of 20 and to rear their families at home while the husband earned the family income at work. Nowadays most young women are ambitious to work or study outside the home. The responsibility of caring for a child, particularly for a single mother, as is the case for almost all Irish teenage mothers, makes it difficult to work or study outside the home.
Northern European countries do best in lowering teenage birth rates, but to a large extent they achieve this by relying on high levels of abortion. In Sweden 70 per cent of teenage pregnancies are aborted, in France and Norway the figure is about 60 per cent and in Denmark 66 per cent. The exception is the Netherlands, which has not only one of the lowest teenage birth rates and also one of the lowest abortion rates in Europe.
Achieving a low birth rate amongst teenagers through abortion is unacceptable. Even people with no moral objection to abortion would frown on this method as a first line of defence. There is much interest in how the Dutch achieve their low statistics. Holland has a very open attitude to sex, and sex-education is given to children from a young age.
Sexual imagery is now widely displayed in society and traditional conservative codes of sexual behaviour have been replaced by sexual licence. In the UK at least 30 per cent of males and 20 per cent of females under 16 report having had sexual intercourse. Apart from any other considerations, these young people are neither emotionally nor psychologically mature enough for such activity. Teenage pregnancies are more likely in disadvantaged social sectors and births to teenage mothers reinforce the cycle of disadvantage.
Sexually transmitted disease is sharply on the increase amongst teenagers in the UK, the US and Ireland.
In 2005, 61,042 babies were born in Ireland, 2,427 of whom were born to teenagers. Almost all these teenage mums are unmarried. All sectors agree that this is an undesirable situation. The challenge is to devise a strategy to significantly reduce this statistic. But the sexual genie is out of the bottle and will not be readily coaxed back.
• William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Public Awareness of Science Officer at UCC: http://understandingscience.ucc.ie