Commentary

Angst about teenagers dates back to ancient Greece.

This commentary, about the teen pregnancy rate in Britain which a new report says shows to be higher than the last report,  takes a brisk look at 50 years ago and now.

The writer points out that teen mothers were “very much more common fifty years ago.”

What happened? Very interesting statistics show a more complicated story than British teen-bashers understand.

The Economist

“There is the usual and predictable outrage in the British papers and on the radio today about the latest figures for teenage pregnancy—which has become a bit more common at the last count, and which, despite the government’s best and lavish efforts, remains much more prevalent in Britain than in most of continental Europe (though less so than in America). The idea of wildly libidinous adolescents feeds usefully into a general tabloid narrative of rampant teenage delinquency, parental fecklessness and a country that is going to the dogs.

“So here’s an inconvenient fact for the moral declinists: teenage pregnancy and births to teenage mothers were very much more common fifty years ago, before the invention of the pill and the legalisation of abortion, than they are today. Teenagers are rutting no more now than they ever have. What has changed is that teen pregnancies used frequently to result in shotgun marriages, and so the eventual infants were less of a burden on the state than those born to unwed mothers are today. In other words, the deterioration is fiscal rather than moral.(Emphasis added)

“The doomsayers might argue that the reluctance of young fathers to take responsibility for their actions is itself a sign of moral decline. But that story is a complicated one too. The opportunities for 16-year-old boys to provide for a family are much slighter in Britain’s post-industrial economy than they previously were; conversely, the expectation that children stay in education until they are older is much stronger. The angst over teen pregnancy is a classic example of ill-informed moral panic.” (Emphasis added)

Source: The Economist, February 26, 2009