Morning:
9°c
Poor parenting and broken homes are risk factors
Martin Bentham13.02.09
Inadequate parenting and a dysfunctional home background have been identified by both ministers and health experts as among key risk factors which can lead to teenage pregnancy.
Research has shown, for example, that children who have suffered parental neglect or who come from broken homes are more likely to become teenage parents. Similarly, those who themselves are the children of teenage mothers have a higher chance of giving birth before they reach 20.
Children whose parents allow them to miss large amounts of schooling through truancy - as well as those whose poor behaviour leads to their exclusion from class - are also more likely to become teenage parents. Similarly those with a family upbringing marred by extended periods of unemployment, violence, alcohol or drug misuse are also at higher risk.
A final problem identified by government advisers is the failure of parents - from all backgrounds - to pass on accurate information to their children about sex, and to give them enough self-confidence to be able to resist sometimes powerful peer pressure to engage in intercourse at an early age.
To tackle such problems, ministers have had a teenage pregnancy strategy for the past decade under which help is targeted at the areas - and the families within them - where these factors are most widespread.
Measures include efforts to reduce exclusion and under-performance at school, tackle low self-esteem, and introduce a more direct focus by health and other officials on "problem" families where parenting is seen as "deficient".
In the capital, priority is given to inner city boroughs such as Lambeth and Southwark - which have long featured on national lists of areas with high levels of teenage pregnancy.
Other work has shown that some seaside resorts - where deprivation can be widespread - have similar problems, while some more affluent outer London boroughs such as Harrow and Barnet have also seen teenage pregnancy rates rise sharply in recent years.
Reader views (5)
The fathering of 13 year old Alfie Patten of a daughter has received extensive media coverage here in Greece and I am not surprised this has happened in a society where just about anything goes, though it appals and disturbs me for if this downward trend continues Britain will soon be a country of absolute pagans and barbarians with no moral or religious values. We are definitely going back to the jungle day by day. Both our church, religious and political leaders are totally inept at launching the required moral/spiritual revivalist crusade required to make society a saner and stabler place to live in. Perhaps nothing short of a massive religious revival is needed to stem the downward spiral that will sink Britain into the mire and earn us an even worse reputation. But both institutions of the church and state must heal its own wounds first before it can moralise and change people's ways of thinking. It is just so sad that young men and women- scarcely able to raise children themselves-produce even worse and more irresponsible offspring!
Tom Salonika, Greece
- Tom Hendry, Salonika, Greece
No benefits to ANYONE, unless they've paid at least 5 years into the system. That goes for unmarried mothers, asylum seekers, drug addicts, school leavers etc. And if they do qualify, put a time limit on their claim of no more than six months in any three year period.
Young unmarried mothers should be housed in hostels, run by strict adults and the doors locked at 10pm, and no boyfriends etc allowed into their rooms.
Harsh, you bet. These kids have been treated with kid gloves for far too long.
We are in different times now, and I need the money I earn for myself and my own family, not going to freeloaders.
- Denise, London UK
The Oxbridge mob have a lot to answer for.
- David,Chertsey, Chertsey.UK.
There should be no benefits for underage mothers and their children and this should be for life. Britain has the most generous benefits for lone and underage parents in Europe and has by far the most of both. It's cause and effect. In the end it cannot continue - working people are having fewer and fewer children while those surviving on benefits are having more and more. You can't ask the diminishing taxes of ever fewer people to subsidise a non-contributing greater part of the population.
- Tom Moncrieff, london W6
WE MAKE A RULING THAT YOUNG GIRLS CAN'T GET A FLAT AND ALL THE BENEFITS THAT GOES WITH IT COMES TO A STOP. THE TEENAGE PREGNANCY WILL STOP. DOES IT NEED A ROCKET SCIENCE TO WORK IT OUT ?
- Joe, Swanley Kent
