One in 30 UK teens is a mum
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The United Kingdom has more teenage pregnancies than anywhere else in
the developed world other than the USA, says a report out last month.
The US has topped the table of teenage pregnancy rates - complied by Unicef
- which examined births among teenagers in 28 of the world's wealthiest
nations. Overall, 52 out of every 1000 American girls aged between 15
and 19 had given birth.
The UK topped the list in Europe, with just over 30 births per 1000 teenagers.
The researchers estimate that in the next 12 months at least 1.25 million
teenagers in the world's wealthiest countries will become pregnant.
According to the University of Essex, those that decide to keep their
baby are twice as likely to end up living in poverty than those who delay
motherhood.
At the other end of the scale are Japan, Switzerland and the Netherlands
- all of whom have a rate of less than seven births per 1000 teenagers.
This eight-fold difference can be partly explained, the researchers say,
by the move away from "traditional family values" in countries
like the US and UK to what they call a "socio-
Images from the website: www.teenpregnancy.org
sexual transformation" where sexual imagery puts pressure on teenagers to
