Dateline Sacramento (1/28/2010)
Dateline Sacramento
News with a View from the California Capitol
January 28, 2010
Teen Pregnancy Rates Rise Slightly
For the first time since 1990, teen pregnancy rose roughly 3 percent from 2005 to 2006. This increase spanned racial demographics and coincided with increases in both teen birth rates (up 4 percent) and abortions (up 1 percent). Recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group formerly affiliated with Planned Parenthood, determined that, in 2006, roughly 7 percent (743,000 total pregnancies) of girls in the United States under the age of 20 became pregnant.
In the United States, teen pregnancy dropped 41 percent between its peak in 1990 (116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19) and 2005 when it reached 69.5 pregnancies per 1,000. Between 1991 and 2006, teen births dropped 35 percent, and teen abortion fell 56 percent from its peak in 1988 to 2005. From 1986 to 2006 the number of teen pregnancies ending in abortion dropped by almost one-third, from 46 percent to 32 percent. The rise in numbers, depicted in the Guttmacher report, may be the beginning of an upward trend or it may be simply a blip on the timeline.
Teen pregnancy can have long-reaching consequences far beyond the changed lives, lost innocence, health risks, and family dynamics. Teen mothers often are dependent on welfare after their child’s birth, are more likely to have a second teen pregnancy, and are likely to drop out of school – although studies have shown that many of them were struggling academically prior to becoming pregnant.
A March 2009 Child Trends research brief calculated the cost of teen pregnancy. It indicated that children born to teenagers are often premature and suffer from low birth weights. These children are at risk academically, often become teen parents themselves and, on average, a higher percentage of boys born to teen girls spend time in prison. The teen parent often never graduates from high school, is more likely to receive welfare and live in poverty, and is less likely to marry by age 35. In 2004, the total public cost of teen pregnancy – resulting from medical care, child welfare, incarceration, and lost tax revenue – was $9.2 billion annually.
Child Trends recently examined the risk of teen mothers not obtaining a diploma or GED. They found that, while 89 percent of those who had not given birth in their teens had earned a diploma by age 22, only 51 percent of teen mothers had. Further, those who had a child before age 18 were less likely to receive a diploma or a GED than older teen mothers. Those teens who did complete high school after becoming a mother were slightly more likely to earn a GED instead of a diploma.
Guttmacher reported that the gap in pregnancy rates between blacks and Hispanics had closed, but the rates of both groups remain higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Child Trends found that in spite of this, black teen mothers were more likely than Hispanic or white teen mothers to earn a diploma or GED by age 22. Sixty-seven percent of black women earned a diploma or GED compared to 55 percent of the teen white mothers and 46 percent of the Hispanic women.
This failure for teen mothers to complete their educations results in numerous negative consequences for them and their child. Earning a diploma or GED reduces the mother’s risk of a subsequent teen pregnancy. Failure to obtain a high school education significantly limits a teen’s opportunities in the job market. A parent’s higher educational achievement improves their child’s behavioral and cognitive outcomes during the pre-teen and early teen years, and reduces the risk of the child repeating early sexual activity and the cycle of teen pregnancy.
The implications of teen pregnancy have long been mired in politics and money. In the 1980’s, sex education was almost entirely safe sex or pro-condom education, based on the faulty premise that everyone – including teens – was sexually active. Schools taught students about risk avoidance and contraceptives. With the 1996 federal welfare act, government funding was made available to teach abstinence-only programs, which taught teens to wait until they were older and married before becoming sexually active. While comprehensive sex education still raked in the lion’s share of public money, a few struggling abstinence programs began to operate, competing for government dollars. Even now, proponents of comprehensive sex education are blaming abstinence for the rising pregnancy rates, and Valerie Huber of the National Association for Abstinence Education told USA Today, "To me, it appears to be another opportunity to throw a barb at abstinence education.”
In a culture that glamorizes sexuality – in media, in advertising, and in the public square, teens are caught between parents and peers and schools – each side playing a part in shaping the opinion of impressionable children who are often unprepared to tackle the issues of pregnancy, parenthood, and sexually transmitted disease. Meanwhile, teens are being sold a false bill of goods – that sexual activity can be safe outside the confines of a truly committed relationship. Most parents prefer that their children be taught abstinence, and it behooves them to determine and enforce the messages their children hear about sexuality – in the home and in school.
Mass Media: The New Parent?
In this century, the mass media have become the rival to parents, schools, and religion as the most influential institution in children’s lives. ~ Media and Values Magazine
For decades, social psychologists have warned parents of the dangers of allowing television to become their child’s babysitter. They caution that the long-term negative impact of television viewing on young children could result in lower academic abilities, attention disorders and language problems with both reading comprehension and oral expression.
Dr. Ellen Abell, a family and child development specialist, explains that “research suggests a strong link between many of the growing problems [with youths] and excessive use of television.” She further states “that long periods of television viewing hamper the pre-frontal cortex – the area of the brain responsible for planning, organizing and sequencing behavior for self-control, moral judgment and attention.”
Research has also indicated that television viewing has supplanted valuable family time and exposed children to increased depictions of violence, sex and profanity. For this reason, Dr. Abell and many social psychologists stress the importance of engaging children in reading and other family activities to offset the negative impact of television.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation study, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds reveals that improved technology has magnified the problem for parents. According to the study, children and teens ages 8-18 spend more than 53 hours a week using entertainment media. The hours identified include time spent watching television, listening to music, looking at online social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook and Twitter), sending text messages and online and video gaming.
The study notes that the actual amount of entertainment media use could be as much as 75 hours per week, because children and teens often use multiple types of media simultaneously. According to the Parents Television Council, the study’s finding indicates that children and teens spend “almost double” the time utilizing entertainment media as they spend in school.
The rise in technology is blamed for “facilitating increased consumption” of entertainment media in children and teens. Television watching was once only viewed in family living rooms during specified times, now television is viewed in children’s bedrooms, on laptops, cell phones and iPods. In fact, “20% of media consumption occurs on mobile devices—cell phones, iPods or handheld video game players.”
As a result of new technology, children have a plethora of ways to access entertainment media. While increased technology may have had many positive benefits in the professional world, for parents, it has become more difficult to monitor what their children are viewing and limit their child’s exposure to inappropriate material. Increased time spent in front of electronic media means more exposure to sex, violence, profanity, pornography and even exposure to child predators.
Further, the time children and teens spend accessing entertainment media results in parents spending less time with their children. Thus, parents do not share their experiences, beliefs and values, which provide their children with a moral foundation, and often, parents do not discuss the messages their children are receiving from these diverse media sources.
The Kaiser study reaffirms Dr. Abell’s belief that parents should establish and enforce household rules on media use, including limiting the amount of time using entertainment media and restricting inappropriate media products. Studies confirm that children in homes with limited media opportunities spend more time in positive family interaction.
Marriage “Pays Off”
With unemployment rates rising above 10 percent in the U.S. – and even higher in California – a new study reveals the economic advantages of marriage.
The study, titled “New Economics of Marriage – The Rise of Wives” published by The Pew Research Center reveals that the roles of husbands and wives have changed significantly since 1970. Women are now more educated and earning a higher percentage of the family income, a trend that has helped lessen negative financial impact on married couples during these difficult economic times.
Forty years ago, the typical man did not gain another breadwinner to the household when he married. Today he does – giving his household increased earning power that most unmarried men do not enjoy. This trend has enabled married men to surpass unmarried men in their median household income.
The economic downturn has hurt employment of men more than that of women. Males accounted for about 75% of the 2008 decline in employment (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). Women are moving toward a new milestone in which they constitute half of all the employed. Their share increased slightly from 46.5% in December 2007 to 47.4% in December 2009.
A larger percentage of men today are married to women whose education and income exceed their own. In 1970 only 4 percent of wives earned more than their husbands. That number has now grown to 22 percent. In 2007, median household incomes of three groups – married men, married women and unmarried women – were about 60% higher than those of their counterparts in 1970. But for a fourth group, unmarried men, the increase in median household income was smaller – just 16%.
Another reason for the economic gains of married adults is that those with more education are far more likely to be married than those with less education, a gap that has widened since 1970. Because higher education tends to lead to higher earnings, these changes have bolstered the economic gains for married men and women.
Among US-born 30- to 44-year-olds, women now are the majority of both college graduates and those who have some college credits without a degree. Women’s earnings grew 44% from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for their male counterparts.
For single adults, men’s household incomes fared worse than those of women. Unmarried women in 2007 had higher household incomes than their 1970 counterparts at each level of education. But unmarried men without any post-secondary education lost ground because their real earnings decreased and they did not have a wife’s wages to buffer that decline. Unmarried men who did not complete high school or who had earned only a high school diploma had lower household incomes in 2007 than their counterparts did in 1970. Income for unmarried men with some college education was relatively unchanged.
California Family Council is dedicated to keeping you informed on the latest issues and research. Please visit our website at www.CaliforniaFamily.org often and join us as we work together to strengthen California’s families.
Local Links
SANTA CRUZ – A Santa Cruz woman is seeking to maintain joint custody of 10-month-old twins that she and her partner, who is the biological mother of the children, had once agreed to raise. The biological mother is now involved in a relationship with the biological father and they are seeking full custody of their children. Read more in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Community College District has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals to restore a discriminatory policy that permitted a professor to berate and demean a Christian student. Read more at WorldNetDaily.
INLAND EMPIRE – The growing attacks on local governments’ ability to pray before meetings has garnered increased media attention. The Press Enterprise takes a look at invocation practices of Inland Empire cities and counties. Read more in the Press Enterprise.
SANTA ROSA – A hillside development in this Sonoma Valley city was supposed to become one of the nation's first retirement communities specifically for gays and lesbians. That was in 2005. Today, the project, called Fountaingrove Lodge, is still months away from city approval and has stopped marketing and selling units. Even its developers say they don't know when it will ever be completed. Read more in the Wall Street Journal.
Truth Project Opportunities
RIVERSIDE – California Family Council continues to expand its offerings of the acclaimed Truth Project group leader training seminars. Training in biblical worldview is a prerequisite to living out authentic Christianity in today’s postmodern culture, with its subjective claims of truth.
The next Truth Project Group Leader Training Seminars:
Saturday, January 30, 2010 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Host Church: Calvary Chapel of Livermore
545 North L Street
Livermore, CA 94551 (Alameda County)
Proyecto La Verdad Group Leader Training Seminar:
Spanish Language
Saturday, February 6, 2010 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Host Church: Santa Maria Foursquare Church
709 N. Curryer Street
Santa Maria, CA 93458 (Santa Barbara County)
For more information on attending or hosting a seminar, call the California Family Council at 951.354.8362 and ask for Trudy. Register online for seminars at: www.californiafamily.org.
