Without better marriage education and support in the United Kingdom, teenage pregnancy rates are likely to remain high even with increasing availability of contraceptives, suggests a letter in this week’s BMJ.
Trevor Stammers of St George’s Hospital Medical School in London reports that young people aged 14-17 who live in a two parent family are less likely to have ever had sexual intercourse than young people living in any other family arrangement, even after factors such as race, age, and socioeconomic deprivation are taken into account.
This is hardly surprising, as children whose parents talk to them about sexual matters and provide sexuality education at home are more likely than others to postpone sexual activity, he suggests.
Cohabitations are four times more likely to break up than marriages and less than 4% of cohabitations last 10 years or more, so children born outside of marriage stand little chance in their teenage years of being in the optimal family structure associated with the lowest risk of unplanned pregnancy, he concludes.