The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently did a study of teen moms who had unintended pregnancies, and the results were astounding.
In a survey of 5,000 teen moms, about a third thought they couldn’t get pregnant.
Others believed they couldn’t get pregnant the first time or at certain times of the month or were sterile.
Wow.
It is confusing why we are allowing this misinformation to happen to our teens.
While the newest data shows that in 2011, birth rates dropped in teens to its lowest rate in the 70 years the CDC has been keeping track. Still, one in 10 births is to a teen mother.
Plus, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world. In our own Barton County, our teen pregnancy rate ranks 13th in the state.
In 2010, Kansas ranked 15th nationally in the number of teen pregnancies, per the National Vital Statistics Report from the CDC.
It is much easier to solve these problems before they began.
A fifteen year old is not emotionally ready to be a mother, and so often, grandparents end up raising the baby.
In fact, it will be a full ten years, in adulthood, that  the brain is fully developed.
It costs this country nine billion dollars per year-money that would better spent on education.
Adults can engage in magical thinking just as the teens, thinking that THEIR child won’t.
At the same time, adults provide alcohol to teens for unchaperoned parties, which is a potent mixture of raging hormones and lack of inhibitions due to the alcohol.
Our culture is saturated with sexuality, and by the time teens are 16 or 17, parents can only hope to influence them or provide information.
A teen who forgets to turn in their homework that is sitting in the backpack cannot be expected to be making good choices in other areas of life.
Parents need to be giving these facts to both boys and girls. It needs to be done more than once as part of regular conversations.
Now is a good time to share values and help your teens make good choices. The discomfort will be less than spending retirement taking care of the your teens children.

Karen La Pierre