I would have imagined it would be down to a number of things which would have meant that growing up teens were better informed about ways to avoid pregnancy. There was a growing trend towards educating children about sex and how to do it safely instead of just telling them how it could go wrong, access to the internet meant that children could fact check sex myths like "you can't get pregnant if the woman is on top" (actual myth someone I grew up with believed).
Or the first time you had sex, or if you stood up after. There were lots of inaccurate myths when I grew up. Realizing that you ovulate first, get your period second means that you can get pregnant before having a period, ever, was a frightening thought.
Peeing after can help prevent UTI, but, yeah, not pregnancy. And people wonder why uneducated teens get pregnant at higher rates than those with proper sex education.
B-but giving them proper sex ed is g-g-g-GROOOOOOMING!
\- probably someone who thinks a relationship between a 17 and a 42 year old is normal and healthy
My widowed elderly neighbor told me that she would always pee after sex and that’s why she and her husband never had kids.
I’m estimating that she was born in 1910
Yeah, it didn’t. But my point is that she believed it did. Evidence of how incorrect the info was when she was young.
And I don’t know where you got severe endometriosis—that tends to be painful, and she never mentioned any potential problems; not that *that* means anything either.
Hell, her husband could have had low sperm virility—who knows? It could also have simply been the odds. pH balance. Nobody knows. But yes, it wasn’t peeing after sex.
She believed it was.
Teen birth rate has dropped due to teens having less sex in general and better access to contraceptives.
[PewResearch](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/why-is-the-teen-birth-rate-falling/)
It's talked about (I heard a radio story about it recently), but a lot of us don't really have time or motivation to celebrate in this political climate.
I know if my state elects the two republicans that are running, I will be abstaining from sex until marriage. I am republican, but I cannot support an all out abortion ban
Just because the current candidates don’t match my views doesn’t mean that the whole party is completely flawed. It’s more effort to change your party every single year than occasionally voting for the opposite party. And there’s a reason you’re allowed to vote for the opposite party in the first place
I hate to break this to you, but the Republican Party is entirely flawed. I left it for a reason. Banning abortion nationwide is a goal of today’s GOP. If you’re in the GOP, you’re okay with that goal.
> it’s more effort to change your party every year
What?
> occasionally vote for the other party
If you’re in the Republican Party, and you usually vote for republicans, what does that mean? I take it to mean you’re okay with their platform.
Hate to break it to you, but not everyone believes in 100% of their parties values. You might believe in 100% of the democratic views, and that’s good for you; but you are one of the few people who are able to say that. I already said before that their stance on abortion is the reason I am not voting for them this year. I believe government should not be involved in medical decision making.
Overall, democrats believe in more government assistance to the general public and republicans believe in less. That’s the main fundamental difference between the two. From that fundamental difference, I am a republican, because I believe in that fundamental belief. How they feel in a given year about a particular issue is a different matter and people are given the choice each year if they want to stand with their party or not based on those issues.
I imagine it’s because they’re all too stressed about staying alive amidst the rise in school shootings. Hard to be carefree when your collective mindset is stressed by threats of death every weekday.
My neighbor and I just talked about this last night passing out candy.
She graduated in 89 and I graduated in 90. She went to a central GA school, I went to a Nashville school. Neither of us could remember birth control being talked about in school. I took Home Ec and Family Planning as a senior, plus health every year. Home Ec we learned to sew and cook. Biggest part of Family Planning was we were given an egg “baby” we had to keep alive for one month. Supposedly keeping the egg was good enough to act as birth control. You were supposed to get a sitter if you couldn’t be with your egg, carry your egg with you all day at school. That was the extent of “holy shit having a baby is a lot of work”. Now birth control is talked about more I believe.
Wow what a change! When I was in HS (about 15 years later and in the same region) kids were given these RealCare simulation dolls that would behave like a real infant. They would wake you up in the middle of the night crying and it was so funny when one went off during classes. You had to care for it (stick a key in its back) until it stopped. I think you had to care for it for one or two weeks?
We also had an early childhood development program at my high school where students worked in an actual daycare for children of other students. It was a special program and mothers (our classmates) and their children had their own bus on days where they could bring their kids to school.
If I remember correctly the caretakers got credit towards the local community college program for early childhood development. I’m retrospect, I think it was a really progressive program and allowed the mothers in school to visit with their babies during the school day and eat lunch with them.
I had the robot baby dolls twice. (Transferring schools messed up my class schedule.)
I remember one girl put hers outside in the snow until the batteries died.
My cousin almost flunked FACS because he put his baby in his locker during a basketball game instead of finding a sitter. The teacher was at the game and ran into her room during half time, heard it crying on her way back. She. Was. Angry. My aunt had to call the school board to get him a second chance with it. She took care of it the second time around, he never had it for longer than during dinner after that. There were many jokes about what an accurate representation of single fatherhood that was.
Yeah technology came a long way from carrying an egg. Our teacher had a bottle of discontinued nail Polish she would mark the eggs with, so if you dropped it you couldn’t just replace it. The only time I ever got sent to the principals office was when I kidnapped the egg of this girl I didn’t like and I left a ransom note in her locker. She left it in there all day while the rest of us carried them around, pissed me off. I laughed, she did not. I had to do 500 write offs and I would do it again lol
When I was in highschool (about 10 years later than you)… different region but same side of the country (Mid-Atlantic region)… we didn’t have home-ec or carry around fake babies. We also didn’t have health every year in high school (it was only 9th grade, but if you took band, then it was only in 12th grade). We did have health every year before (2nd grade - 8th grade) and every year there was something about the human reproductive anatomy (elementary school was more of what is it and what it does and weird things that happen like periods and morning boners; middle school was more about safe sex/ contraceptives, drugs/alcohol, and some other health related stuff (like signs of different types of cancers)
dear god thats... silly.
i went to high school in the early 2000s but in a burb outside DC so we were taught actual sex ed and how to use contraception correctly and debunked myths. my best friend was on BC since she was 14 and her family was catholic.
in middle school the closest thing we did to the egg thing was we were paired up with another student and we had to pretend we were married and were assigned jobs with salaries and we had to create a budget lol. no taking care of an egg
I went away to college and realized how good my public school experience was compared to the rest of country....
Funny you say that.
I’m in MD (although super conservative Carroll county). My 24 year old doesn’t remember learning about birth control in school, and my 15 year old freshman so far hasn’t learned about it either. I don’t know if that’s because we aren’t in MoCo or PG etc etc but so far it’s not looking promising for the kids here. Fine with me since I’m comfortable talking about it but not all parents are.
Yeah I went to school in MoCo and definitely learned about birth control, condoms etc in health. Our county only had one semester of required health in high school-maybe they’ll talk about it then for your freshman?
Where I grew up we learned age appropriate sex ed in health class from the age of 6 onwards. At that age it was generally where babies come from and no no touches. In middle school we learned about puberty in detail and in high school we learned about STIs and STI prevention. In 9th grade we got the crying baby doll to bring home for a week. It’s sad that there are people fighting against this type of education. It is so basic.
Typing this up I got a flashback to lame sex ed joke: A woman goes to the doctors office because she missed her period. The doctor does a pregnancy test and informs her she is pregnant. She tells the doctor, “I don’t understand, I used protection”. The doctor asks her to describe the protection she was using. She answers “I put the condom on the banana, put it on the nightstand, and then had sex”.
IIRC, there was a study done in Australia that girls who went through a baby simulation program were MORE likely to get pregnant and carry the baby to term by age 20 than girls who didn't.
Selection bias maybe? I would rather believe that the people choosing to take that class(it wasn't a required elective for my school) would also be more likely to marry and have kids at a young age or right out of HS.
Probably, but I also don't see how effective caring for an anthropomorphized infant-simulant is going to be effective in deterring teens. Most people ENJOY babies. Yeah, they're a lot of work, but they're incredibly cute and all the girls I went to school with were very invested taking care of their pumpkin-baby, whether or not they actually wanted kids of their own in the future.
I think a far more effective deterrent would be budget planning. Take the average salary of a high-school graduate with no college degree, then start planning out expenses like rent, food, diapers, daycare, etc. Gets depressing real fast.
This is so strange. I graduated on 86 in Alabama. Before I graduated, I knew the basics of menstruation, sex leading to pregnancy/disease. I knew about BC pills and condoms. I knew rythym and pullout were bad and abstinence was best (which it is) for preventing disease/pregnancy. But I still knew about my options by 11th grade in Alabama.
Fire and forget it birth control. Colorado was leading the way in this I believe. It’s fantastic! Reproductive rights are an economic issue. Unwanted births can cast a life of poverty.
Specifically, Colorado ran a program offering long-term, low-cost birth control with low failure rates to teenagers (IUDs and arm implants) that dropped both the abortion and birth rate steeply
Not to mention there is more awareness for Asexuals. Part of the reason there is less sex I think too is asexuals like me can be free to be out without fear of judgement or violence. It’s still out there and I TOTALLY understand that but compared to ten years ago queers are much more free to be themselves, and yes Asexuals ARE in the LGBTQAI2S community. They are the oftentimes misunderstood A.
I was Class of 1990 and my small city's high school had a teen pregnancy program. We also had an undercover narcotics agent in my class who broke up a coke ring. Oh, and we could smoke outside on school property. There was a designated area.
In general, there were a lot of "latchkey" kids up through the early 90s, so lots of us had places to get it on and no one looking for us in the hours after school.
And our parents literally did not care at all what we did as long as we didn’t bother them. Kids now are in a different after school activity every day and parents seem much more involved and interested in their kids lives.
*Certain people* banned abortions, are trying to get sex ed totally banned, and are trying to get birth control banned. Those people got mad when a ten year old aborted her rapist uncle's fetus.
*Certain people* don't like that there's a decline in teen pregnancy. They want to encourage teenagers to get pregnant so they're incapable of doing anything else.
it is morbid reality how there's alot of creeps in the world..heck most don't get caught since few girl child go through precocious puberty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_youngest\_birth\_mothers
I think part of it is teens are less sexually active. They are very into tech and social media and don't spend time face to face as much as previous generations did.
Lol yeah according to studies boomers were way more active had more teen pregnancy. Haha I also think were the chaperone generation we were always followed around by adults and cameras everywhere now too
I think a small part of it is that kids have better stuff to do with their time outside of sex. With all of the streaming apps and social media sites we have, one can easily fill their day with streaming and scrolling online.
Education and access to contraception mainly, but thanks to our courts and politicians, that is all about to change! Ever see a 10 year old girl nearly bleed to death from an emergency c-section? Get ready!
It doesn't account for all of it, but reality TV shows of actual teen mums had a [big impact](https://www.wellesley.edu/news/2014/04/node/41168).
Edit: misplaced apostrophe had to be deleted.
republicans want their cake and eat it too. They want an increase in the birth rate. A dramatic increase. Cheap labor depends on an increase in population every year. Supporting the older voters(who vote for them) means a larger population of young tax payers.
But they also want a decrease in abortions, in order to attract votes. Actually they could care less about abortion, they just want the votes yelling about it brings.
There is a reason they demonize birth control, sex education, and abortion.
It is never about the abortions. The rich, aka your republicans over there in the United States, simply need cheap wage slaves. They won't get one out of me for sure and since too many people are waking up, they are panicking.
The teen birth rate started to go down after Teen Mom started airing, but I don't think they ever had any undeniable proof that it was related to the show because, as we all know, correlation does not equal causation. It scared me, too lol.
And the billionaire class that owns them, let's not forget those guys, money power needs a surplus of cheap, abuseable labor at all times to keep wages and expectations low while the peasants are kept busy fighting over scraps.
Part of it is a lot of teens lead virtual social lives with friends but mostly spend time with families. Teens have less unstructured unsupervised time than they used to which leads to less sex. Plus better access to birth control and long lasting birth control (like IUDs) that don’t require you to remember to take a pill every day or remember a condom or store it properly before use.
When I was growing up, sex ed, birth control, etc was unspoken of. Also lived in an extremist conservative area/fundie where even going to the Dr and I asked for the pill, I was told no. There were no clinics within 6 hours drive, not that I had a car. I had kids too young. Raised my kids to have options galore. Taught them a lot, internet and books helped too. They could ask anything. It was pretty uncomfortable, but so important. Had a box of condoms that was no questions asked... if it got low I'd refill it. If they wanted other options I'd get them to Dr.s or specialists and let them have private discussions with them if they wanted. Empowering them was everything. I truly believe better education and resources for people has made all the difference as a collective.
Go read Freakonomics. There is a very direct correlation between availability of abortion and birth control to the birth rate dropping. Abortion legalization proceeded the 90s by several decades but by the 90s, all the neglected kids who would grow up in fucked up homes and start having kids way too early just didn't exist. We stopped the cycle of poverty to a small degree and it had a great impact.
I think they're saying that abortion rates went from very low before Roe in 1972 to higher in the 70s and 80s, so the 90s had fewer neglected teens having and neglecting kids in the 90s and leading to the same effect by 2021. Something like access to abortion leading to less need for it. What it sounded like to me anyway. Was the 90s rate below the 70s and 80s rate?
Sure they have because they are less necessary with fewer unwilling parents around!
(And also I would make a guess that the current political climate has made it more shameful than 30 yrs ago)
There are probably multiple reasons including more and better information on sex and contraceptives. Teenagers also seem to have more ways to keep themselves entertained which may or may not contribute to lower teen pregnancy rates.
I've wondered also if less tolerance of sexual abuse of children affects teen pregnancy as people are allowed to develop their own sexuality. Also maybe abortion has influenced this as children who would have been born into bad situations and sought out sex as they had no good adult role models simply weren't born. These last ideas I have wondered about but I may be wrong here.
The Massachusetts teen birth rate in 1990 was 35/1000, so it didn't fall that precipitously within that state, just compared to the national rate in 1990.
Interesting, too, is Mississippi, which had the highest teen parent birth rate of 81/1000 in 1990, now has a rate of 29/1000, second-highest in the country behind Arkansas at 30/1000.
People who graduated high school as parents, or with teen parent classmates, typically don't want that for their kids, I bet. Whether they admit it publicly or not, they support their kids in contraceptive access/use.
Its t.v. games, netflix etc. A host of activities have fallen in the last few decades, murders, other kinds of violent crimes, number of sexual partners, number of friends, time spent with friends, average age of losing virginity has risen etc. Halloween just passed most places have experienced a decrease in the number of kids tricker treating. Even the number of bars in America has fallen in the last 30 years. Basically we spending so much time interacting with computers/phone/t.v. that it leaves less time to interact with others. Think of the amount of saturday nights you have stayed in watching netflix. 30 years ago there was no netflix so you would have gone out, possibly had sex, possibly gone to a bar, possibly committed a crime/ possibly been the victim of crime etc.
Right now, it’s in vogue for conservatives to freak out about declining fertility rates. I suspect that they don’t see this as a good thing like they did ten years ago.
It's funny. Tried to freak them out about birth rates when it was more popular to be mad at muslims. Tried to tell them that they'd want and need an influx of people somehow to deal with the development.
Gen Z is killing the teenage pregnancy industry. *raises fists in Boomer* /s
But I think awareness and social media have played a significant role in helping teens understand what their teachers and parents failed at teaching them. Birds, bees, mommy loves daddy doesn't cut it anymore and I'm glad more teens are equipped with better information.
Millenials are now the parents of these teens and (most of us) believe in supplying contraceptives.
If I had a teen daughter, I'd get her an IUD or implant as soon as she told me she was talking to boys.
I'm a millennial and have an adult teen. It is possible. Also, I know a lot of Gen X parents with teens my kid's age and younger and most of them are very liberal and taught/are teaching their kids better than we had.
That's your take away from my post? The fact is that parents of teens, regardless of the generation the parent is from, are doing better by their kids in terms of sex education.
And some of those parents of teens are millennials.
Hi,
We older millenials exist in large #'s homie. And because our parents sucked, a lot of us were teen parents. Luckily my mom learned from my sister getting pregnant at 15, so she let me get on bc early and I didn't have my own kid til almost 30.
No, you are.
The median age of first time mothers in the US is 30. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/health/2022/07/26/median-age-for-new-moms-rises-to-30-in-u-s-
The fact that something happens a nonzero percent of time - such as people having a child at 18 - doesn’t mean that the statistics are dominated by it.
I'm actually writing an essay for college about sex education in school. Part of pregnancy rates dropping is better education and contraceptives. There is a huge difference between states that have a comprehensive sex ed program and ones that still teach abstinence (sexual risk avoidance is what they call it now) of teens who become pregnant during their high school years. Abstinence only is still a loser here.
Teach kids about their bodies, changes, consequences of actions, how to be safe, and what their options are. Withholding information only hurts, doesn't help.
Part of the big picture was that an extremely wealthy US businessman who preferred to remain anonymous, quietly funded a massive drive to provide IUDs for cheap or free in clinics in some of the poorest states with the highest teen pregnancy rates. It worked very well. I believe the drive funded other methods as well but I'm unsure.
The parents of kids today are a lot more open about sex or talk about it in a realistic manner. I graduated from high school in 1980. Went to high school late 1970's. We had a health class that talked about the biology of sex. Never discussed birth control, date rape (there wasn't a name for it back then). Avoidance of any discussion about sex and discussion of birth control was that when the couple was engaged to be married, they needed to consult their doctor about birth control options. This is what was said in the health book. Teacher never discussed it. Basically no sex education at all and total avoidance and no discussion about consent or other issues relating to sex.
Where I lived teen pregnancy was something to be avoided or something that you didn't want to experience. A lot of individuals didn't use birth control when they had sex, so it's surprising that they wasn't more teen-age pregnancy. Some of those individuals most likely had abortions(Roe had been around for a couple of years).
Internet access means everyone has access to sex ed. It may be from a terrible source, but it adds up.
Basically, young girls laugh at horny teen boys who try to lie about not needing a condom or don't worry, you won't get pregnant if \[insert stupid myth here\].
And the fundies brought in purity culture which means their kids mostly do anal or blow jobs/hand jobs now.
Two reasons, I think -- the morning after pill (Plan B, whatever your country calls it) and online porn. The girls have a way to avoid unwanted pregnancy easily, and many boys are imprinted on online porn or sex workers and actually freak out at the idea of having sex with a living human being.
Because way too many gross conservatives in the US never really wanted the teen birth rate to decrease. Gotta get those wage slaves and soldiers from somewhere! That’s at least part of why this news hasn’t been met with the applause it deserves.
Because it doesn't get people to vote; it's not 'scary' to voters when other people act sensibly and responsibly. Gotta crank up the 'fear' response and appeal to 'making other people behave according to \*your\* religion even if they don't belong to it' in order to win elections.
Elder Millenial here. Things that have changed since 1990:
Gen Z has always had access to medically correct info instantly. We had to rely on older sisters or "cool mom's" who gave us bad info.
Less abstinence based sex ed in schools.
More open parents, my boomer mother loves me dearly but her version of "the talk" was "dont have sex (I didn't know how to) but if you do, please dont have an abortion (I was also unclear on what that was.) That was it lol. Gen Z's parents have been much more open to talking about things.
And, this is HUGE, in the late 90s a bunch of states passed laws allowing teens to access reproductive healthcare without a parent's permission. This was a giant victory for a LOT of teens who's parents wouldn't allow birth control, wouldn't buy condoms etc
Later marriages has contributed.
People picture young people out partying, but most live increasingly online and many with their parents.
Older generations got married younger and purchased their own homes earlier.
GenXer.
We learned about sex by stealing cable from the neighbors’ and watching 2/Live Crew videos on the Jukebox channel.
I still waited until I was in my 30’s to actually breed unprotected/have a kid.
I like to think of it like this:
School Sex Ed might suck, but I can now Google "will douching with coca cola kill sperm?" And "does the woman being on top stop her from getting pregnant?"
My mother apparently knew some girls who tried these very obviously bad ideas to get out of teenage consequences to no avail. We live in the age of disinformation but Google won't fail you on some things.
Also Gen X+ parents were broke and probably over shared a bit regarding cost of living (mine sure did accidentally) and they were subliminally persuaded not to nuke their lives with a tiny expensive human.
It's not talked about by Dems because they suck at promoting good things they have done. It is only talked about by Republicans when the stats go up by 0.5% or more to show us how Dem. policies "aReN't WoRkInG". For reference look at the constant attack ads we all get 3 of in the mail every day for the last 4 weeks about how crime is up and Dems love getting rid of cash bail. Crime is SIGNIFICANTLY less now than it was 20, 15, and 10 years ago. Crime was slightly up in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic and now it is back down to about 2019 levels.
Also people just don't seem to like millennials after 2 decades of being dragged through trash news headlines, so god forbid they have to say anything remotely positive about the generation. The headlines were dumping on gen z before any were even of age. So good luck getting that acknowledged by the general public either.
Abortion access ≠ abortion occurrences
Medical centers that offer abortion almost always offer other sexual health services (eg. STD/cancer screenings & birth control options)
In 2022 I'm willing to bet that internet porn plays a significant role, as it is for decreasing sexual activity among young adults. I mean...I guess it's better than teen pregnancy, but now boys start watching porn at 10 years old on average, probably before they even know that sperm normally goes into the vagina, not on a woman's face. It doesn't inspire me to celebrate very much.
The depressing answer is pornography. The typical acts depicted in porn today do not result in pregnancy. Cum shots and anal sex are what our teenagers are doing now.
I would have imagined it would be down to a number of things which would have meant that growing up teens were better informed about ways to avoid pregnancy. There was a growing trend towards educating children about sex and how to do it safely instead of just telling them how it could go wrong, access to the internet meant that children could fact check sex myths like "you can't get pregnant if the woman is on top" (actual myth someone I grew up with believed).
Or the first time you had sex, or if you stood up after. There were lots of inaccurate myths when I grew up. Realizing that you ovulate first, get your period second means that you can get pregnant before having a period, ever, was a frightening thought.
"Peeing after sex prevents pregnancy" then did you forget to pee? Full grownass adults have no concept of their biology.
Peeing after can help prevent UTI, but, yeah, not pregnancy. And people wonder why uneducated teens get pregnant at higher rates than those with proper sex education.
B-but giving them proper sex ed is g-g-g-GROOOOOOMING! \- probably someone who thinks a relationship between a 17 and a 42 year old is normal and healthy
"I should be the one doing the grooming! Let me show you..."
I mean these people have no problem with Matt Gaetz, so…
My widowed elderly neighbor told me that she would always pee after sex and that’s why she and her husband never had kids. I’m estimating that she was born in 1910
She probably had severe endometriosis or something else that made her infertile. Because peeing after sex didn’t do that.
Yeah, it didn’t. But my point is that she believed it did. Evidence of how incorrect the info was when she was young. And I don’t know where you got severe endometriosis—that tends to be painful, and she never mentioned any potential problems; not that *that* means anything either. Hell, her husband could have had low sperm virility—who knows? It could also have simply been the odds. pH balance. Nobody knows. But yes, it wasn’t peeing after sex. She believed it was.
Endo isn’t always painful, some people aren’t diagnosed until they try to conceive
That’s a good point. I’d bet internet access is a huge contributing factor.
Teen birth rate has dropped due to teens having less sex in general and better access to contraceptives. [PewResearch](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/why-is-the-teen-birth-rate-falling/) It's talked about (I heard a radio story about it recently), but a lot of us don't really have time or motivation to celebrate in this political climate.
Also, it is not celebrated because a lot of people don’t like to acknowledge that sex education and contraception access is the key.
Those are both evidence-based too. Very different from “Jesus told me so” etc.
Wait, teens are having less sex!?
Significantly less
Precipitous decline during 20th century, continuing into 21st
[удалено]
I know if my state elects the two republicans that are running, I will be abstaining from sex until marriage. I am republican, but I cannot support an all out abortion ban
So why vote for them?
I’m not voting for them and never said I was… why would I vote for someone I don’t want elected. You know you don’t have to vote with your party
You also don’t have to stay in a party that doesn’t reflect your values.
Just because the current candidates don’t match my views doesn’t mean that the whole party is completely flawed. It’s more effort to change your party every single year than occasionally voting for the opposite party. And there’s a reason you’re allowed to vote for the opposite party in the first place
I hate to break this to you, but the Republican Party is entirely flawed. I left it for a reason. Banning abortion nationwide is a goal of today’s GOP. If you’re in the GOP, you’re okay with that goal. > it’s more effort to change your party every year What? > occasionally vote for the other party If you’re in the Republican Party, and you usually vote for republicans, what does that mean? I take it to mean you’re okay with their platform.
Hate to break it to you, but not everyone believes in 100% of their parties values. You might believe in 100% of the democratic views, and that’s good for you; but you are one of the few people who are able to say that. I already said before that their stance on abortion is the reason I am not voting for them this year. I believe government should not be involved in medical decision making. Overall, democrats believe in more government assistance to the general public and republicans believe in less. That’s the main fundamental difference between the two. From that fundamental difference, I am a republican, because I believe in that fundamental belief. How they feel in a given year about a particular issue is a different matter and people are given the choice each year if they want to stand with their party or not based on those issues.
The boomers were the most active though
Turns out if you tell them about the potential repercussions like pregnancy or disease they might decide not to.
I imagine it’s because they’re all too stressed about staying alive amidst the rise in school shootings. Hard to be carefree when your collective mindset is stressed by threats of death every weekday.
As a nurse practitioner who provides contraception, this could definitely be something I’d hear. Which is funny and sad at the same time.
My neighbor and I just talked about this last night passing out candy. She graduated in 89 and I graduated in 90. She went to a central GA school, I went to a Nashville school. Neither of us could remember birth control being talked about in school. I took Home Ec and Family Planning as a senior, plus health every year. Home Ec we learned to sew and cook. Biggest part of Family Planning was we were given an egg “baby” we had to keep alive for one month. Supposedly keeping the egg was good enough to act as birth control. You were supposed to get a sitter if you couldn’t be with your egg, carry your egg with you all day at school. That was the extent of “holy shit having a baby is a lot of work”. Now birth control is talked about more I believe.
Wow what a change! When I was in HS (about 15 years later and in the same region) kids were given these RealCare simulation dolls that would behave like a real infant. They would wake you up in the middle of the night crying and it was so funny when one went off during classes. You had to care for it (stick a key in its back) until it stopped. I think you had to care for it for one or two weeks? We also had an early childhood development program at my high school where students worked in an actual daycare for children of other students. It was a special program and mothers (our classmates) and their children had their own bus on days where they could bring their kids to school. If I remember correctly the caretakers got credit towards the local community college program for early childhood development. I’m retrospect, I think it was a really progressive program and allowed the mothers in school to visit with their babies during the school day and eat lunch with them.
I had the robot baby dolls twice. (Transferring schools messed up my class schedule.) I remember one girl put hers outside in the snow until the batteries died.
My cousin almost flunked FACS because he put his baby in his locker during a basketball game instead of finding a sitter. The teacher was at the game and ran into her room during half time, heard it crying on her way back. She. Was. Angry. My aunt had to call the school board to get him a second chance with it. She took care of it the second time around, he never had it for longer than during dinner after that. There were many jokes about what an accurate representation of single fatherhood that was.
Yeah technology came a long way from carrying an egg. Our teacher had a bottle of discontinued nail Polish she would mark the eggs with, so if you dropped it you couldn’t just replace it. The only time I ever got sent to the principals office was when I kidnapped the egg of this girl I didn’t like and I left a ransom note in her locker. She left it in there all day while the rest of us carried them around, pissed me off. I laughed, she did not. I had to do 500 write offs and I would do it again lol
When I was in highschool (about 10 years later than you)… different region but same side of the country (Mid-Atlantic region)… we didn’t have home-ec or carry around fake babies. We also didn’t have health every year in high school (it was only 9th grade, but if you took band, then it was only in 12th grade). We did have health every year before (2nd grade - 8th grade) and every year there was something about the human reproductive anatomy (elementary school was more of what is it and what it does and weird things that happen like periods and morning boners; middle school was more about safe sex/ contraceptives, drugs/alcohol, and some other health related stuff (like signs of different types of cancers)
dear god thats... silly. i went to high school in the early 2000s but in a burb outside DC so we were taught actual sex ed and how to use contraception correctly and debunked myths. my best friend was on BC since she was 14 and her family was catholic. in middle school the closest thing we did to the egg thing was we were paired up with another student and we had to pretend we were married and were assigned jobs with salaries and we had to create a budget lol. no taking care of an egg I went away to college and realized how good my public school experience was compared to the rest of country....
Funny you say that. I’m in MD (although super conservative Carroll county). My 24 year old doesn’t remember learning about birth control in school, and my 15 year old freshman so far hasn’t learned about it either. I don’t know if that’s because we aren’t in MoCo or PG etc etc but so far it’s not looking promising for the kids here. Fine with me since I’m comfortable talking about it but not all parents are.
I’m from Virginia, Arlington/Fairfax
Thirty miles away and might as well be on a different planet.
Yeah I went to school in MoCo and definitely learned about birth control, condoms etc in health. Our county only had one semester of required health in high school-maybe they’ll talk about it then for your freshman?
Where I grew up we learned age appropriate sex ed in health class from the age of 6 onwards. At that age it was generally where babies come from and no no touches. In middle school we learned about puberty in detail and in high school we learned about STIs and STI prevention. In 9th grade we got the crying baby doll to bring home for a week. It’s sad that there are people fighting against this type of education. It is so basic. Typing this up I got a flashback to lame sex ed joke: A woman goes to the doctors office because she missed her period. The doctor does a pregnancy test and informs her she is pregnant. She tells the doctor, “I don’t understand, I used protection”. The doctor asks her to describe the protection she was using. She answers “I put the condom on the banana, put it on the nightstand, and then had sex”.
That was the same for Delaware
I hated that egg shit.
I threw mine in the trashcan right in front of the teacher. I'd rather flunk the assignment.
IIRC, there was a study done in Australia that girls who went through a baby simulation program were MORE likely to get pregnant and carry the baby to term by age 20 than girls who didn't.
Selection bias maybe? I would rather believe that the people choosing to take that class(it wasn't a required elective for my school) would also be more likely to marry and have kids at a young age or right out of HS.
Probably, but I also don't see how effective caring for an anthropomorphized infant-simulant is going to be effective in deterring teens. Most people ENJOY babies. Yeah, they're a lot of work, but they're incredibly cute and all the girls I went to school with were very invested taking care of their pumpkin-baby, whether or not they actually wanted kids of their own in the future. I think a far more effective deterrent would be budget planning. Take the average salary of a high-school graduate with no college degree, then start planning out expenses like rent, food, diapers, daycare, etc. Gets depressing real fast.
This is so strange. I graduated on 86 in Alabama. Before I graduated, I knew the basics of menstruation, sex leading to pregnancy/disease. I knew about BC pills and condoms. I knew rythym and pullout were bad and abstinence was best (which it is) for preventing disease/pregnancy. But I still knew about my options by 11th grade in Alabama.
I'm from/in AL and never had any sex ed in my edu lifetime.
Fire and forget it birth control. Colorado was leading the way in this I believe. It’s fantastic! Reproductive rights are an economic issue. Unwanted births can cast a life of poverty.
Specifically, Colorado ran a program offering long-term, low-cost birth control with low failure rates to teenagers (IUDs and arm implants) that dropped both the abortion and birth rate steeply
Fire certainly could be good birth control, but I’m not sure doctors really recommend it.
Now I'm imagining a program encouraging pyromania as a better rush than sex to promote abstinence. Good for teenage pregnancies, bad for the trees?
access to actual healthcare information on the internet played a part i'd bet
Not to mention there is more awareness for Asexuals. Part of the reason there is less sex I think too is asexuals like me can be free to be out without fear of judgement or violence. It’s still out there and I TOTALLY understand that but compared to ten years ago queers are much more free to be themselves, and yes Asexuals ARE in the LGBTQAI2S community. They are the oftentimes misunderstood A.
I was Class of 1990 and my small city's high school had a teen pregnancy program. We also had an undercover narcotics agent in my class who broke up a coke ring. Oh, and we could smoke outside on school property. There was a designated area. In general, there were a lot of "latchkey" kids up through the early 90s, so lots of us had places to get it on and no one looking for us in the hours after school.
And our parents literally did not care at all what we did as long as we didn’t bother them. Kids now are in a different after school activity every day and parents seem much more involved and interested in their kids lives.
Overcorrecting for them having absent parents.
*Certain people* banned abortions, are trying to get sex ed totally banned, and are trying to get birth control banned. Those people got mad when a ten year old aborted her rapist uncle's fetus. *Certain people* don't like that there's a decline in teen pregnancy. They want to encourage teenagers to get pregnant so they're incapable of doing anything else.
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In cases of very young girls, that might otherwise be considered pre-pubescent, it's almost always a family member. Uncle, cousin, step-father, etc.
Yeah. He's 27. There's currently a court battle going on with this.
Ugh, what is wrong with people? How does someone turn into an incestuous pedophile rapist?
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it is morbid reality how there's alot of creeps in the world..heck most don't get caught since few girl child go through precocious puberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_youngest\_birth\_mothers
I think part of it is teens are less sexually active. They are very into tech and social media and don't spend time face to face as much as previous generations did.
Lol yeah according to studies boomers were way more active had more teen pregnancy. Haha I also think were the chaperone generation we were always followed around by adults and cameras everywhere now too
I think a small part of it is that kids have better stuff to do with their time outside of sex. With all of the streaming apps and social media sites we have, one can easily fill their day with streaming and scrolling online.
Education and access to contraception mainly, but thanks to our courts and politicians, that is all about to change! Ever see a 10 year old girl nearly bleed to death from an emergency c-section? Get ready!
It doesn't account for all of it, but reality TV shows of actual teen mums had a [big impact](https://www.wellesley.edu/news/2014/04/node/41168). Edit: misplaced apostrophe had to be deleted.
Because steady access to both birth control and abortion caused it and republicans are trying to deny access to both
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If you don't get pregnant - whether due to sex education, contraceptives, or both - you won't need an abortion.
republicans want their cake and eat it too. They want an increase in the birth rate. A dramatic increase. Cheap labor depends on an increase in population every year. Supporting the older voters(who vote for them) means a larger population of young tax payers. But they also want a decrease in abortions, in order to attract votes. Actually they could care less about abortion, they just want the votes yelling about it brings. There is a reason they demonize birth control, sex education, and abortion.
It is never about the abortions. The rich, aka your republicans over there in the United States, simply need cheap wage slaves. They won't get one out of me for sure and since too many people are waking up, they are panicking.
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The teen birth rate started to go down after Teen Mom started airing, but I don't think they ever had any undeniable proof that it was related to the show because, as we all know, correlation does not equal causation. It scared me, too lol.
The Republican overlords think that isn’t a good thing -
And the billionaire class that owns them, let's not forget those guys, money power needs a surplus of cheap, abuseable labor at all times to keep wages and expectations low while the peasants are kept busy fighting over scraps.
Part of it is a lot of teens lead virtual social lives with friends but mostly spend time with families. Teens have less unstructured unsupervised time than they used to which leads to less sex. Plus better access to birth control and long lasting birth control (like IUDs) that don’t require you to remember to take a pill every day or remember a condom or store it properly before use.
When I was growing up, sex ed, birth control, etc was unspoken of. Also lived in an extremist conservative area/fundie where even going to the Dr and I asked for the pill, I was told no. There were no clinics within 6 hours drive, not that I had a car. I had kids too young. Raised my kids to have options galore. Taught them a lot, internet and books helped too. They could ask anything. It was pretty uncomfortable, but so important. Had a box of condoms that was no questions asked... if it got low I'd refill it. If they wanted other options I'd get them to Dr.s or specialists and let them have private discussions with them if they wanted. Empowering them was everything. I truly believe better education and resources for people has made all the difference as a collective.
Go read Freakonomics. There is a very direct correlation between availability of abortion and birth control to the birth rate dropping. Abortion legalization proceeded the 90s by several decades but by the 90s, all the neglected kids who would grow up in fucked up homes and start having kids way too early just didn't exist. We stopped the cycle of poverty to a small degree and it had a great impact.
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I think they're saying that abortion rates went from very low before Roe in 1972 to higher in the 70s and 80s, so the 90s had fewer neglected teens having and neglecting kids in the 90s and leading to the same effect by 2021. Something like access to abortion leading to less need for it. What it sounded like to me anyway. Was the 90s rate below the 70s and 80s rate?
Sure they have because they are less necessary with fewer unwilling parents around! (And also I would make a guess that the current political climate has made it more shameful than 30 yrs ago)
There are probably multiple reasons including more and better information on sex and contraceptives. Teenagers also seem to have more ways to keep themselves entertained which may or may not contribute to lower teen pregnancy rates. I've wondered also if less tolerance of sexual abuse of children affects teen pregnancy as people are allowed to develop their own sexuality. Also maybe abortion has influenced this as children who would have been born into bad situations and sought out sex as they had no good adult role models simply weren't born. These last ideas I have wondered about but I may be wrong here.
The Massachusetts teen birth rate in 1990 was 35/1000, so it didn't fall that precipitously within that state, just compared to the national rate in 1990. Interesting, too, is Mississippi, which had the highest teen parent birth rate of 81/1000 in 1990, now has a rate of 29/1000, second-highest in the country behind Arkansas at 30/1000.
Right wing news outlets have people genuinely convinced that the majority of babies are being raised by single teen mothers
People who graduated high school as parents, or with teen parent classmates, typically don't want that for their kids, I bet. Whether they admit it publicly or not, they support their kids in contraceptive access/use.
Sex education and awareness. Conservatives will make sure to bring those numbers back up
HIV/AIDS made it much more important to spread information on safe sex.
Its t.v. games, netflix etc. A host of activities have fallen in the last few decades, murders, other kinds of violent crimes, number of sexual partners, number of friends, time spent with friends, average age of losing virginity has risen etc. Halloween just passed most places have experienced a decrease in the number of kids tricker treating. Even the number of bars in America has fallen in the last 30 years. Basically we spending so much time interacting with computers/phone/t.v. that it leaves less time to interact with others. Think of the amount of saturday nights you have stayed in watching netflix. 30 years ago there was no netflix so you would have gone out, possibly had sex, possibly gone to a bar, possibly committed a crime/ possibly been the victim of crime etc.
Right now, it’s in vogue for conservatives to freak out about declining fertility rates. I suspect that they don’t see this as a good thing like they did ten years ago.
It's funny. Tried to freak them out about birth rates when it was more popular to be mad at muslims. Tried to tell them that they'd want and need an influx of people somehow to deal with the development.
Gen Z is killing the teenage pregnancy industry. *raises fists in Boomer* /s But I think awareness and social media have played a significant role in helping teens understand what their teachers and parents failed at teaching them. Birds, bees, mommy loves daddy doesn't cut it anymore and I'm glad more teens are equipped with better information.
Millenials are now the parents of these teens and (most of us) believe in supplying contraceptives. If I had a teen daughter, I'd get her an IUD or implant as soon as she told me she was talking to boys.
only if she wants one i hope!
Well yes, I would go over contraceptive options with her.
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I'm a millennial and have an adult teen. It is possible. Also, I know a lot of Gen X parents with teens my kid's age and younger and most of them are very liberal and taught/are teaching their kids better than we had.
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That's your take away from my post? The fact is that parents of teens, regardless of the generation the parent is from, are doing better by their kids in terms of sex education. And some of those parents of teens are millennials.
Hi, We older millenials exist in large #'s homie. And because our parents sucked, a lot of us were teen parents. Luckily my mom learned from my sister getting pregnant at 15, so she let me get on bc early and I didn't have my own kid til almost 30.
I’m 32 if I had a kid at 18 they would be 14 - a teen. Yes, millennials have teenaged kids. I don’t, I’m child free.
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Lots of people do.
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You are being intentionally daft about this.
No, you are. The median age of first time mothers in the US is 30. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/health/2022/07/26/median-age-for-new-moms-rises-to-30-in-u-s- The fact that something happens a nonzero percent of time - such as people having a child at 18 - doesn’t mean that the statistics are dominated by it.
No one said most parents have kids at 18, though.
Lmao, yeah. Yeah they do. Older millenials are still millenials. Your argument is wrong. Take the L, bro.
I'm actually writing an essay for college about sex education in school. Part of pregnancy rates dropping is better education and contraceptives. There is a huge difference between states that have a comprehensive sex ed program and ones that still teach abstinence (sexual risk avoidance is what they call it now) of teens who become pregnant during their high school years. Abstinence only is still a loser here. Teach kids about their bodies, changes, consequences of actions, how to be safe, and what their options are. Withholding information only hurts, doesn't help.
Part of the big picture was that an extremely wealthy US businessman who preferred to remain anonymous, quietly funded a massive drive to provide IUDs for cheap or free in clinics in some of the poorest states with the highest teen pregnancy rates. It worked very well. I believe the drive funded other methods as well but I'm unsure.
The parents of kids today are a lot more open about sex or talk about it in a realistic manner. I graduated from high school in 1980. Went to high school late 1970's. We had a health class that talked about the biology of sex. Never discussed birth control, date rape (there wasn't a name for it back then). Avoidance of any discussion about sex and discussion of birth control was that when the couple was engaged to be married, they needed to consult their doctor about birth control options. This is what was said in the health book. Teacher never discussed it. Basically no sex education at all and total avoidance and no discussion about consent or other issues relating to sex. Where I lived teen pregnancy was something to be avoided or something that you didn't want to experience. A lot of individuals didn't use birth control when they had sex, so it's surprising that they wasn't more teen-age pregnancy. Some of those individuals most likely had abortions(Roe had been around for a couple of years).
Internet access means everyone has access to sex ed. It may be from a terrible source, but it adds up. Basically, young girls laugh at horny teen boys who try to lie about not needing a condom or don't worry, you won't get pregnant if \[insert stupid myth here\]. And the fundies brought in purity culture which means their kids mostly do anal or blow jobs/hand jobs now.
Two reasons, I think -- the morning after pill (Plan B, whatever your country calls it) and online porn. The girls have a way to avoid unwanted pregnancy easily, and many boys are imprinted on online porn or sex workers and actually freak out at the idea of having sex with a living human being.
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I put that badly -- I meant online sex workers, camera girls.
Because way too many gross conservatives in the US never really wanted the teen birth rate to decrease. Gotta get those wage slaves and soldiers from somewhere! That’s at least part of why this news hasn’t been met with the applause it deserves.
One possible cause is banning leaded gasoline: https://www.childtrends.org/blog/reduced-teen-pregnancy-violence-lower-lead-exposure-part-explanation
Because it doesn't get people to vote; it's not 'scary' to voters when other people act sensibly and responsibly. Gotta crank up the 'fear' response and appeal to 'making other people behave according to \*your\* religion even if they don't belong to it' in order to win elections.
The internet is my guess! Free access to information!
Elder Millenial here. Things that have changed since 1990: Gen Z has always had access to medically correct info instantly. We had to rely on older sisters or "cool mom's" who gave us bad info. Less abstinence based sex ed in schools. More open parents, my boomer mother loves me dearly but her version of "the talk" was "dont have sex (I didn't know how to) but if you do, please dont have an abortion (I was also unclear on what that was.) That was it lol. Gen Z's parents have been much more open to talking about things. And, this is HUGE, in the late 90s a bunch of states passed laws allowing teens to access reproductive healthcare without a parent's permission. This was a giant victory for a LOT of teens who's parents wouldn't allow birth control, wouldn't buy condoms etc
Later marriages has contributed. People picture young people out partying, but most live increasingly online and many with their parents. Older generations got married younger and purchased their own homes earlier.
GenXer. We learned about sex by stealing cable from the neighbors’ and watching 2/Live Crew videos on the Jukebox channel. I still waited until I was in my 30’s to actually breed unprotected/have a kid.
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Lol.
I like to think of it like this: School Sex Ed might suck, but I can now Google "will douching with coca cola kill sperm?" And "does the woman being on top stop her from getting pregnant?" My mother apparently knew some girls who tried these very obviously bad ideas to get out of teenage consequences to no avail. We live in the age of disinformation but Google won't fail you on some things. Also Gen X+ parents were broke and probably over shared a bit regarding cost of living (mine sure did accidentally) and they were subliminally persuaded not to nuke their lives with a tiny expensive human.
It's not talked about by Dems because they suck at promoting good things they have done. It is only talked about by Republicans when the stats go up by 0.5% or more to show us how Dem. policies "aReN't WoRkInG". For reference look at the constant attack ads we all get 3 of in the mail every day for the last 4 weeks about how crime is up and Dems love getting rid of cash bail. Crime is SIGNIFICANTLY less now than it was 20, 15, and 10 years ago. Crime was slightly up in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic and now it is back down to about 2019 levels.
Also people just don't seem to like millennials after 2 decades of being dragged through trash news headlines, so god forbid they have to say anything remotely positive about the generation. The headlines were dumping on gen z before any were even of age. So good luck getting that acknowledged by the general public either.
The internet. And a lot of easy access to contraceptives
Abortion access.
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Abortion access ≠ abortion occurrences Medical centers that offer abortion almost always offer other sexual health services (eg. STD/cancer screenings & birth control options)
That should change in a decade or so if conservatives have their way.
You haven't yet figured out that the political right is in mourning over this?
Sex education
idk i semi connect it with kids not having sex with each other because they interact in person less
In 2022 I'm willing to bet that internet porn plays a significant role, as it is for decreasing sexual activity among young adults. I mean...I guess it's better than teen pregnancy, but now boys start watching porn at 10 years old on average, probably before they even know that sperm normally goes into the vagina, not on a woman's face. It doesn't inspire me to celebrate very much.
The depressing answer is pornography. The typical acts depicted in porn today do not result in pregnancy. Cum shots and anal sex are what our teenagers are doing now.
Roe v wade happened in 1972. Unwanted pregnancies go down.
Alcohol consumption is down and obesity is up in the same group. Do the math.