teenage preganacy

Adolescent pregnancy has long been a societal concern, but in the past decade, this issue has become one of the most frequently cited examples of the perceived societal decay in the United States (U.S. House of Representatives, 1996). In 1990, 1,040,000 adolescents under the age of 20 became pregnant, approximately 530,000 (51%) of whom gave birth ( Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994). Ironically, the rate of births to teenagers is much lower now than it has been throughout much of the 20th century. Between 1960 and 1985, the rate of births to female adolescents declined substantially, falling from 89.1 births per 1,000 teenagers ages 15-19 in 1960 to 51.0 in 1985. In the late 1980s, the rate increased to a recent high of 62.1 in 1991 but then declined again in the 1990s to 56.8 births per 1,000 15-19-year-olds in 1995 ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995; Ventura, Martin, Curtin, & Mathews , 1997). Most of the births to teenagers are concentrated in the later years of ado...