A new study shows that states that skew towards more conservative religious beliefs tend to have higher rates of teenage girls giving birth. (Shocking, I know.)
Researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh says,"We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."
Now, obviously studies like these have the whole correlation/causation issue going on - but from the work I did write The Purity Myth, this study makes sense to me.
If you grow up in an area where you're taught that sex is bad and contraception is evil (and that it can kill you), when you do have pre-marital sex - as 95% of Americans will - you're much less likely to protect yourself. Not only because you've been taught that condoms cause cancer and other such ridiculousness, but also because you may think that if sex happens in the heat of the moment - and you didn't plan for it like a bad, slutty girl - you're not as tainted.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Highly religious states have top teen birth rates.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16093
No surprises there!
It'd be interesting to compare birth rate data with pregnancy rate data (though that may not be readily or accurately available) to see if redness of a state has any effect on abortion rate.
The New Yorker had a very good article on this last year called Red Sex, Blue Sex. It seems to me when teens think they can't have sex until marriage, which seems so far off, it's easier to break down the resolve to wait, because waiting for this day you're not sure will ever happen can seem like eternity. But if you've been taught you make your own decision about when to have sex, it might be easier to wait for that time when you're ready.
http://heatherleila3.blogspot.com/2008/11/red-sex-blue-sex.html
When I was in high school I was a member of another liberal faith group who recognized that sex education as taught in public schools was wholly insufficient. So it proactively took it upon itself to formulate a very informative, albeit graphic (and there's nothing wrong with that) approach towards teaching contraception and sexuality.
Not only that, but the program was offered to kids at a young age, often as young as 11.
Somehow none of the girls in the group became pregnant and somehow none of the boys contributed to an unplanned pregnancy. Why am I not surprised?
I would also add that there is a connection between rurality, religiousness, and income.
Rural areas tend to be more religious and have less lower per capita income levels. The rurality tends to create a culture where teenagers lives consist of work and hanging out with friend with little to do. No shopping, no after school activities, etc. Sex, then, often occurs at a younger age. The income levels and lack of goals and opportunities also contribute.
My high school in rural KY was full of pregnancies, and most kids were fine with it. Most of my friends had kids before graduating, and most also sought to marry sometime very young. I had two who were on second divorces before they were twenty-four.
These issues arise from interconnected and over-lapping conditions; it would be over-simplifying and culturally blind to attribute these numbers otherwise.
You make some interesting points.
Although, I would challenge your suggestion that rurality leads to having sex any earlier - though certainly environment plays a big role in other areas of interpersonal relationships and development.
Admittedly, my data is purely anecdotal - being a child of the city - but I could find no data to show there is any significant difference between urban, suburban, and rural children and when they become sexually active.
Were you able to find any numbers on that front?
I see what you're saying, but I don't know any teenager anywhere, rural or urban, that thinks where they live is full of excitement. I grew up in the closest suburb to Chicago and even though looking back on it there was plenty to do all us kids thought it was the most boring place on the planet. I remember saying all the time that in high school my friends and I would all drink and have sex because "what else was there to do?" But that wasn't really why we were drinking and having sex. I think that's just the way teenagers feel most of the time no matter what about their hometown.
I'm shocked to discover that there is gambling in this establishment!
Yeah, basically the politically and socially conservative states have the highest rates of all the bad things (teen pregnancy, illiteracy, infant mortality, etc. ) and the lowest rates of the good things (college attendance, healthcare).
I just started "The Purity Myth" It's great so far, Jessica!
Thanks!!
It should probably also be noted that abortion is much less accessible and much less accepted in rural areas.
From the article:
"but also because you may think that if sex happens in the heat of the moment - and you didn't plan for it like a bad, slutty girl - you're not as tainted."
This sentence really struck a chord with me - I have seen this attitude even among otherwise very liberal, professional women I've known, even well in their 20s. Sort of showed me that the christianity-based anti-sex movement and mainstream attitudes about female sexuality (that women have/should have less sexual desire than men) are linked.
My daughter is seeing this attitude at university. An acquaintance talked about being involved in sexual activity with four different guys in one weekend, but then just minutes later said birth control is "skanky". I'm not passing judgment on her sexual choices, but I am very concerned that she is clearly engaging in behavior that, if done without condoms, is extremely high risk.
Regarding Tara K.'s comments:
I'm not sure if I completely buy the idea that rural students get pregnant at higher rates because there is nothing else to do. However, I have also noticed, anecdotally, that rural high schools seem to have a higher percentage of pregnant students. I would suspect that has less to do with boredom and more to do with a lack of access to contraception and/or abortion services.
In larger cities, students have access to places like Planned Parenthood, or even just drug stores where no one knows who they are. In small towns, everyone is in your business and if a teenager purchases condoms at a local store, there is a much higher chance that information could get around to others: family, friends, neighbors, etc. Also, once an unintended pregnancy does occur, the closest abortion clinic could be hundreds of miles away.
Additionally, as Tara K. mentioned, many more people in rural areas seem to be ok with teens getting pregnant in high school. Education is not universally valued in some rural areas--for many, there are no plans for college or a meaningful career whether there is an unplanned pregnancy or not. And, students who have babies young are often following in their parents' footsteps. While these attitudes are hardly unique to rural areas, it has been my anecdotal experience that they are more concentrated in those areas.
It's true that abortion access is incredibly limited in rural areas, but contraceptive access, in my experience, is less so.
My experience is antecdotal, but it's based on the huge number of female students I have spoken to about this. That doesn't make it "fact," but I will say it's not based on just speculating about a few of them.
Many of the girls I've spoken to who have had children in high school cited common beliefs/opinions:
1. They did not get pregnant intentionally.
2. They did not really consider abortion. (Roughly half mentioned that they though it was wrong; others said they didn't know why they didn't consider it. I largely interpret this to be because, when all of your friends have kids, it's normalized. You don't have to consider alternatives. And in these instances, it has been very normalized.
3. Most of them came from married parents who were married before they had children (contrary to comments above).
4. They thought the ideal age to have children was between 18-25. (There was a lot of variation here; I think some girls cite younger ages out of defensiveness, which I understand. Generally, though, younger pregnancy is expected.)
5. They did want to get married. (In my experience, many of them did marry the father of the child at some point, though I can't speak as to the lifetime of the marriage.)
---------
What I've described may be very specific to Applachia; I don't have any sources, other than those women themselves. But I think it's significant to note that, in that area of the country, teen birth rates have been rising for quite a while, and these girls are not repeating what their parents did, as many believe.
In my observation, their deviation from their parents isn't that they are choosing to have children sooner, but they a) have more freedom than their parents to hang out with the opposite sex because of cars/jobs, b) are more likely to marry later. Their parents' generations (again, in this region) typically married right out of high school at age 18 or 19. They had conceived immediately after, or relatively soon. Their children, then, aren't conceiving much earlier, but are less inclined to marry for the same reasons. I consider this a positive shift. Many of their parents opted for early marriage because, in a region where few ever went to college and the society is familistic, marriage is the only route to independence (moving out of the parents house), and the parents they wanted to escape were domineering. Now, teens have more independence and better relationships with parents, so they're less inclined to jump into marriage. They do, however, have more access to sexual opportunities because of after-school jobs and increased vehicle ownership.
Reading your reply I can see that we are talking about two different regions. I taught in the rural Ozarks and you are talking about Appalachia. However, while we may have some different ideas about the root of the problem, it's interesting that we are seeing several of the same contributing factors: lack of access to contraception; lack access to, or even consideration of abortion; and a community that accepts teen pregnancy with little concern.
Also, to clarify, I never claimed to know whether or not their parents were married when they had their own children. I simply said that these students were following in their parents footsteps of having children at a very young age. I would have no way of knowing their marital status at the time. I would suspect that, like what you are finding, they were more likely to have been married (either before or after conception), but I don't actually have any information on that at all.
Reading your reply I can see that we are talking about two different regions. I taught in the rural Ozarks and you are talking about Appalachia. However, while we may have some different ideas about the root of the problem, it's interesting that we are seeing several of the same contributing factors: lack of access to contraception; lack access to, or even consideration of abortion; and a community that accepts teen pregnancy with little concern.
Also, to clarify, I never claimed to know whether or not their parents were married when they had their own children. I simply said that these students were following in their parents footsteps of having children at a very young age. I would have no way of knowing their marital status at the time. I would suspect that, like what you are finding, they were more likely to have been married (either before or after conception), but I don't actually have any information on that at all.
I have a friend who once mentioned that due to money problems she and her husband were facing, she wasn't on birth control. I asked, as politely as I could, if she had looked into the local Planned Parenthood, to see if they qualified for discounted BC. Her response was that Planned Parenthood was, and I think this was the word she used - but if not, it's close - "sleazy." I told her sleazy birth control was better than none, but who knows if she ever did go. Although she was in her 20s, she's always been pretty religious, which I assume had an effect on her judgment of PP.
Another married friend of mine mentioned that her husband ordered condoms online because he wasn't comfortable buying them at a store - in case he saw someone he knew.
It's amazing to me how, even when you're married, some people have such stigmas about obtaining contraceptives.
One could also ask how she planned to solve her money problems if she got pregnant.
I would add two thoughts:
1. Many people have the idea that any clinic that they consider akin to the "health department" caters only to "trashy" people (a pejorative I hate), or people who are considered slutty, on drugs, etc. It's a class thing.
2. As for the buying condoms, this can be a big or small deal depending on area. I just moved to a new state and found that in many stores here condoms and lube are kept in a locked case. To buy them, you have to go find a clerk to open the case with a key and then verbally tell them what you want. Ideally, it wouldn't be a problem. It is, however, much more of a personal display than in my old state where you could just grab a box and throw them on the counter. The time you spend standing in front of the case with the clerk fidgeting with the keys draws a lot of attention.
Ugh, I know so many people that think of Planned Parenthood as "trashy."
I knew several girls in high school that I talked to about going to PP for BC (they didn't want to tell their parents about the fact they were having sex but then didn't know how to get BC) and they never took my suggestion because they saw PP as a place where "slutty" and lower class girls went. They would never think to set foot in there.
They have lower abortion rates.
Hey, check out these statistics on the out-of-wedlock conception and birth rates for teens back in the thirties and forties. I don't think they even taught sex ed back then, or had any sort of child support laws.
http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications_archive/files/0087.pdf
They have lower abortion rates.
Hey, check out these statistics on the out-of-wedlock conception and birth rates for teens back in the thirties and forties. I don't think they even taught sex ed back then, or had any sort of child support laws.
http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications_archive/files/0087.pdf
Once you repeal all the obscenity laws and start telling people "now it's OK to have sex outside of marriage", they're going to do it. The out-of-wedlock birth rate (among other things) is going to spike. When you say that comprehensive sex ed works better at reducing teenage (out-of-wedlock) pregnancy, you're just trying to benefit from your own wrongdoing.
Right, because obviously life was better for everyone in the days when high school kids were forced into shot gun weddings when they mistakenly got pregnant due to lack of access to birth control (remember, your statistics are about OUT OF WEDLOCK births to teens...not teen births). Or when pregnant girls were sent away to have their babies away from their communities and then to closed adoptions, without any say in the matter, never to see them again, or have the incident spoken of again.
Much, much better than acknowledging the reality that some people have sex soon after hitting puberty and telling them their various options for avoiding unintended consequences from that. Yep.
Did you read the statistics that I linked to? The rate of teenage "shotgun marriages", i.e. out-of-wedlock conceptions, in-wedlock births, was the same in the thirties and forties as it is today. The whole "teenage shotgun wedding" idea about the early 20th century is a myth.
Even assuming that is true (I'm not exactly sure how that statistic would be collected, other than by asking the women if they were pregnant and relying on their response, unless they were so far along as to be visibly preg, which generally takes about 5 months in a first baby...I know from anecdote there were ALOT of "premature" babies in those days), people did get married a whole lot younger, and I'd venture to say that part of that was due to either conception having occurred to a fear that it would due to planned sexual activity in the absence of accurate bc information. Since your own report talks about how early marriages are the most unstable, I'm not sure how that was a good thing either.
Again, I just don't see why you feel we are so much better off if marriage and sex are mandatorily linked for heterosexuals(now that we have bc which is pretty darn reliable if there's free access and good info), like people felt they needed to be b/f bc. Maybe that attitude made sense then, but looking at the evidence in terms of various measures of people's well-being here on earth, it just does not now...take a look at the New Yorker article the second poster posted...it has a fairly strong argument how divorce rates are far lower amongst those who take an "to each his/her own" attitude towards pre-marital sex AND provide access and info to their young people about how to avoid unintended consequences.
Well, that's just empty speculation on your part, based on the idea that people can't control their own bodies. I don't think that early marriages are particularly stable, but if you look at how low the out-of-wedlock conception rate was, it's a safe bet that raising the minimum age at which people got married would have gone a long way towards lowering the overall teenage pregnancy rate. And I imagine that applying the sexual standard equally to men and women + child support laws would have lowered it all the more.
Do you think that statisticians and sociologists don't take reporting biases into account?
Oh, and it's not like it was unheard of for engaged couples to concieve children out of wedlock. There's no reason to believe that all or even most of those out-of-wedlock conceptions followed by in-wedlock births were to couples who were not planning on getting married at the time.
A bit of advice - I saw in another thread you said you weren't old enough to vote for George W. You might want to learn a little bit more about those old timey days before you start getting all nostalgic for something that never really existed.
What makes you say that it never existed? Statistically and sociologically, it sure looks like it did.
In the "good ole days", my mom was severely injured in a car accident (my grandma was driving) because they didn't have to wear seatbelts. My 6 year old dad used to go buy cigarettes and whiskey for his grandather without a problem. BOTH of my parents' parents ended up divorcing before the era of "easy sex and easy divorce". Hell, my maternal grandfather used to beat my grandmother and my mom and her siblings; but when he finally left her for another woman, people blamed HER for causing him to leave!!
Those are the days you want to go back to?? Really? (Incidentally, my parents are still married).
Oh, and both of my grandmothers have told me very few people waited til marriage back then either-they just told people they were. Neither of mine did.
I don't see what seatbelts and cigarette access has anything to do with the sexual mores of those times. I think that there were many, many problems with them though. If what you're saying about you grandfather beating your grandmother, and people blaming her for his leaving is true, I'm really sorry. That sort of thing happened way too much back then.
If I claimed that my grandmother told me that everyone really did wait until they were either married or engaged to have sex, would this have any credibility?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16287113/
"More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past."
Of course people who were born in the 1940s did not wait until they were married to have sex - they would have been twenty in the sixties! The sexual habits of people who were born in the forties says nothing about the sexual habits of people during the forties. People who were born during the forties would have been between 0 and 9 years old during that period of time.
http://s242739747.onlinehome.us/publications/teenmariage02-20.pdf
Check that out. The out-of-wedlock teen birth rates during the thirties, forties, and fifties was extremely low. What really impressed me was the incredibly low level of "shotgun marriages", i.e. out-of-wedlock conceptions followed by in-wedlock births. And when you take into consideration the fact that abortion was illegal, and many of those couples were probably engaged when they conceived children out of wedlock...
The point of the comment was to show you that those "good ole days" in the 1950s-where daddy worked and mommy stayed home and nobody had premarital sex or abortions or drug addictions and liberals weren't ruining everything and life was all hunky dory-is really, a fallacy. Yeah, there may have been less divorce, but people weren't necessarily happier. And obviously the majority of the children of these families weren't all that happy, either-otherwise, why would they have created the backlash in the 60s?
I'm sure your Grandmother did wait, personally I have no objection to waiting until marriage before sex. But if you REALLY believe that premarital sex barely existed before the "liberals" said it was ok-you are very naive and misguided about sexuality.
I am not surprised. I come from California, last time I checked (sans Prop 8), it was a blue state, but Bakersfield is a whole another different place. It's basically a small town from Texas dropped in the middle of California. In Bakersfield, there's a lot of teen pregancies, some school drop outs, a lot of high school grads, country music, dumbasses, people that love Mike Huckabee, we are the most polluted city in the country, this is the hotbed of ultra right-wingers in all of California, and there's a few people who actually have degrees here. People here seem to have backwards attitudes towards minorities, women, and gays. I just want to live on the coast when I'm older and with a hot career in cartooning and voice acting!!! Jessica (funny that's my real name), I've read a lot of your books (expect for "yes means yes!"), "The Purity Myth" is worth reading if ya'll want to save the world!!!
Godspeed, Jessica!! Keep up the good work!
On what basis is a state considered "highly religious"? I clicked through to examine the study and they appear to equate "highly religious" with "fundamentalist Christian interpretation of the Bible."
While I would accept a headline akin to "States with higher percentage of fundamentalist Christians have higher teen birth rates," I grow tired of all religions being painted with the same broad misogynist brush. This discourages active feminism within many religions, as such internal movements are constantly ignored or minimized by the secular feminist community.
Also, the given researcher's quote shows a clear bias in terms of expected findings. Are the churches trying to "discourage sex," or to encourage teens to participate in sexual activity only when they are ready to become parents? It's all about how you frame it. The results could also be framed as "Teen girls in fundamentalist Christian states more likely to carry their pregnancies to term." Teen girls with families in this kind of religious practice would be raised to believe that abortion is morally wrong, so would be more likely to choose to keep their babies (and I do think the access to abortion services and the validity of "choice" is certainly worth more examination as suggested in previous posts).
I thought the "Kill you" link was going to go to a video of the coach in Mean Girls saying "Don't have sex! You will get pregnant and die!"
I'm coming to this conversation a little late, but I just want to point out that the attitude to teenage pregnancy is a lot more lax in those conservative states. My boyfriend's family lives in rural Indiana, and there an accidental pregnancy is considered an unfortunate mistake but certainly not sinful or a character flaw. I witnessed this in conversation with my future MIL about one of her neighbors just last week. An accidental high school pregnancy there is just considered an extra life challenge for a woman and she would be admired for doing right by her child and succeeding with her life (as, in my opinion, she should be). I think we saw this with the forgiving Conservative response to Bristol Palin. Abortion, on the other hand, that they don't forgive you for.
I went to a private school where I was taught abstinence only. They told us contraception was for married folks.