Attitudes towards marriage, contraception and abortion have changed across the centuries as science has advanced, religion has retreated and society has been transformed. The changes have been dramatic, affecting the most intimate aspects of family life. Childbirth and puerperal fever no longer kill thousands of mothers every year. Women and men get married later in life – and live longer.

They have babies later in life. They have fewer babies and more of them survive into adulthood. And changing economic patterns have led more parents more deliberately to plan the size of their family.

In addition, new forms of contraception (and most especially the pill) have meant that sex without the fear of conception either within marriage or without is a reality. Other fears persist, not least thanks to HIV/AIDS and other Sexually Transmitted Infections. But sex without fear of conception is the modern norm, not the exception.

Yet we have a very real problem of teenage pregnancy in Britain. The statistics give a stark picture, especially in deprived communities.

• We have by a considerable way the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe – five times that of Holland, three times that of France and double that of Germany – and the second highest rate in the world.

• Most teenage pregnancies in England and Wales are to the poorest girls in the poorest parts of the country.

• And many teenage mums were themselves the children of lone teenage mums.

It is a depressing story, not least in my own constituency, where we have the equivalent of 20 teenage pregnancies per secondary school every year.

The myths

There are however, many myths around teenage pregnancy.

• Many people believe that girls get pregnant so as to get a flat of their own from the Council. In fact 90% of teenage mums live in other people’s homes – normally their parents’.

• Many believe that the number of teenage pregnancies is rising. In fact the peak was between 1995 and 1997 and there has been a steady, though fairly small fall since 1997.

• Many believe that British teenagers are just more promiscuous than their European counterparts, which is why we have higher levels of teenage pregnancy. In fact there is little evidence that we are any different in this regard from the rest of Europe.

• The media often focus on the youngest teenage mums. In fact more than half of teenage pregnancies were to 18 year olds and only 6% to under 16 year olds.

• Some have suggested that non-Whites are more likely to become teenage mums. In fact 89% of teenage mums are White British and the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy are found amongst Asian women.

The facts

Statistics abound when it comes to teenage pregnancy. Figures tend to be calculated either by numbers of conception or live birth per thousand and are often separated by conceptions to girls under 20, under 18 and under 16. Confusingly, some figures are referred to as ‘teenage’ when they properly refer to under 18s. I shall use teenage to mean under 20.

• Teenage pregnancy rates in the UK peaked between 1995 and 1998, but the UK still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe.

• There were 341 conceptions to girls under 14 in 2004 in England and Wales. 61.3% led to legal abortions. There were 7,613 conceptions to girls under 16 and 42,150 to girls under 18 and 101,260 to girls under 20.

• In 2005 there were 41.1 conceptions per 1,000 girls aged 15-17 in England representing an overall decline of 11.8% since 1998 and the lowest level for 20 years.

• The figure for under-16 conceptions in England in 2005 was 7.8 per 1000 girls aged 13-15. This is 12.1% lower than the 1998 rate of 8.8.

• Half of all conceptions under 18 occur in the UK’s 20% most deprived wards.

• Rates have fallen in some areas, but in others they have risen. Lambeth fell marginally between 1998 and 2004, by 1.5%, but Barking and Dagenham rose by 32.6%, Blackpool by 11.6% and Torbay by 13.0%.

• Figures have fallen similarly in Wales, but from 2002 to 2004 the rate in Torfaen rose from 47.8 to 66.9 per 1,000.

• Just over a quarter (27 per cent) of births to teenage mothers in England and Wales were registered solely by the mother.

• Maternity rates vary across the UK. In 2004 in England and Wales there were 36 maternities per 1,000 females, in Scotland 21 and Northern Ireland 23.

• The proportion of teenage mothers aged 16-19 in education, employment or training has increased from an average of 23.1% in 97-99 to an average of 29.2% in 2004-06.

• The UK Labour Force Survey suggests that between April and July 2007 the percentage of mothers aged 16-19 in employment was 20.7%, ILO unemployed was 8.5% and 70.8% were economically inactive (though this would include those in education)

Table 1: Under-18 Conceptions for England: 1998-2005

Source: Office for National Statistics, 2007

*per thousand females aged 15-17

Table 2: Under-16 Conceptions for England, 1998-2005:

Sources: Office for National Statistics, 2007

*per thousand females aged 13-15

Welsh Facts

• Wales continues to have a higher teenage pregnancy rate than England – with 43.6 conceptions per thousand girls in 2005, compared to 41.3 in England.

• The figures for under-18 pregnancies in Wales were similar, but higher than in England. In 2005 there were 43.3 pregnancies under 18 per 1,000 (a fall of 9.8%), though many fewer led to abortions than in England (38.6% in Wales and 46.9% in England). In absolute terms there were 2,605 conceptions to girls under 18 in Wales in 2004, 434 under 16.

• There were 457 conceptions in 2005 to Welsh girls aged under 16, up from 434 in 2004. Conception rates for girls aged under 16 decreased every year between 1999 and 2004 but increased slightly to 7.9 per thousand girls aged 13-15 in 2005.

• In 2005 there were an estimated 2,521 conceptions to girls aged under 18, down from 2,605 in 2004. Conception rates for girls aged under 18 decreased from 45.1 per thousand girls aged 15-17 in 2004 to 43.6 in 2005.

• In 2005 there were around 6,100 conceptions to females aged under 20, down from around 6,200 in 2004. The conception rate for females aged under 20 decreased from 64.2 per thousand females aged 15-19 in 2004 to 63.1 in 2005.

• Figures by local authority area for conception rates under 18 show Wrexham with the highest rate in Wales at 62.7 per thousand, up from 56 in 2003, followed by Torfaen (59.7), Caerphilly (53) and Rhondda Cynon Taff (52.7).

• In Rhondda constituency, the figure for live births was 43.4 per thousand teenage girls. This compares to 28.9 in England and 33.7 in Wales.

But is teenage pregnancy a problem?

Above all, the statistics show that being a teenage mum is bad for you. You are less likely to be in good health or to complete your education and more likely to live in poor housing and spend long periods of your life on benefits. As one six form girl put it to me at Treorchy Comprehensive School, ‘there’s a problem because girls won’t finish their education because of the stresses of having a baby and they’ll end up on benefit for ever.’ And in the words of another, ‘with benefits you’re still poor.’

There are real dangers. In particular:

• Babies to teenage mums tend to have a lower than average birth weight.

• Infant mortality is 60% higher than for babies of older women.

• Just 44% of mothers under 20 breastfeed, compared to 64% of 20–24 year olds and up to 80% of older mothers.

• Most depressingly, the daughters of teenage mothers are more likely to become teenage mums themselves.

Teenage pregnancy cannot be considered, of course, in isolation from other sexual health issues. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of new episodes of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) seen in Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland doubled from 669,291 to 1,332,910. Young people, in particular females under the age of 20, bear the burden of sexually transmitted infections. Between 1997 and 2006 there was a 347% increase in the numbers of chlamydia infections in 16-19 year old boys and 160% for girls.

Although some teenage mothers have immensely supportive families and cope with remarkable resilience, many find bringing up a baby very tough. When I visited the excellent Books and Babies project for pregnant schoolgirls and mothers under 16 in Nantgarw many of the girls highlighted the real problems they had had: problems telling their parents they were pregnant, problems sorting housing and finances, problems with the dads, problems at school. One girl was just 13. Another had been thrown out by her mother when she was only 14. Another was keen to move in with her 19 year old boyfriend but was finding it impossible to get a flat unless she pretended she was going to live on her own. These are immensely tough issues for teenagers to cope with – and they showed remarkable cheerfulness.

One of the girls, Katie Wood, wrote, ‘I find that I stress over any little thing most of the time and half of it is nothing to worry about but I can’t help making a deal out of nothing. I can go a couple of months being fine, then I will have a week or so where things get on top of me and I just end up breaking down and crying about everything’.

Joy Starling, who runs Books and Babies underlined to me the real emotional difficulties the girls face: ‘many of the girls suffer from acute depression and have real problems when their babies become toddlers. The children then end up being a problem because they’ve just not had enough support. The girls are desperate to come back to us, but we’re only able to help until they are 16. Some girls will have a second baby when they’re still teenagers because they remember the warm feeling of the early days.’

One final reason for worrying about the number of teenage pregnancies is of course the number of teenage abortions. In England in 2005 there were 18,628 under-18 abortions and in 2006 47% of pregnancies ended in abortions. 19 year-old girls are now the most likely age group to have an abortion.

‘The children of teenage mums have higher rates of infant mortality than children born to older mothers, are more likely to be born premature – which has serious implications for the baby’s long-term health – and have higher rates of admissions to A&E. In the longer term, children of teenage mothers experience lower educational attainment and are at higher risk of economic inactivity as adults; The pressures of early parenthood result in teenage mothers experiencing high rates of poor emotional health and well-being – which impacts on their children’s behaviour and achievement; and They often do not achieve the qualifications they need to progress into further education and, in some cases, have difficulties finding childcare and other support they need to participate in Education, Employment or Training (EET). Consequently, they struggle to compete in an increasingly high-skill labour market.’