In America we often talk about how bad teen pregnancy is.
What about pre-teens?
Before we jump into this lets look at some numbers the teenage pregnancy rate was the lowest in 30 years in 2005. It has since gone up a few percent but is much better than the 90%. Abortion is also a third less than it was in 1988 in teens. Meaning this generation is seeing change for the better and I think it is in part from better sex ed in schools.
Finding numbers for pre-teens in our country proved harder, so I do not yet have them to share. While the mother and baby I am posting about today live in Northeast China, we must note that we have had pre-teen births in our own country.
Please note that this story going around facebook and twitter is from 2010
She is yet still unidentified though many wish they could have and update on how the mother and baby are doing.
She was not the youngest girl to give birth, wikipedia lists children as young as 5-6 in the records.
There are so many issues with pre-teen and teen pregnancy it is hard to get into them all. The first I think being how the body is able to handle pregnancy when it is not yet fully developed.
Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan, a leading high-risk obstetrician, has pointed out that the pre-teen’s body may not have yet developed to carry a child, despite the fact that she has given birth to a baby boy. He also noted that text books do not even cover how to deal with a 10 year old pregnant child.
So now I wonder, how will Utah’s new law to only teach abstinence in schools will effect the children in that state.
Along those lines, the pregnancy rate has climbed some since 2005 and one has to wonder if shows like teen mom are contributing to this issue.
We need to educate our children, we need to be open and honest.
I’m all in favor of comprehensive sex education, but I’m not sure it would make a difference in most cases of pre-teen pregnancy. Though I’m sure that occasionally pre-teen pregnancy happens due to consensual similar-age experimentation, these are almost always going to be cases where there is a power differential unfavorable for the child to be insisting on the use of birth control, and I really don’t see hormonal birth control being either an appropriate or accessible option for a pre-teen.
I think that, at this age, a focus on abuse awareness would be more effective than teaching about contraceptives.