Thread: Welfare Letter
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Old 01-21-2008, 10:06 AM   #5
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
Quote:
I see where you are coming from Cic, but the truth is a teenage pregnancy has far more impact on the mother and the mother's family than it does on the boy or his family. Of course there are exceptions, but on the whole the boy just goes on with his jolly old life and knocks a few more hapless teens up for good measure.
But that's precisely the point isn't it Sundae? The main effect tends to be on the girl, where the lad gets to move on if he so chooses. So...given a choice of where to focus our enforced interventions the state/society usually looks to the girl. If you're talking about interventions after the fact (dealing with the consequences) it makes a kind of sense to focus on the girl as she's easily identifiable as a mother to be. If, however, you are talking about enforced intervention pre-conception and targeted on a general demographic then there is no reason for the state/society to continue to focus on the girls.

Enforcing contraception to me is an appalling idea. Do you enforce it with all teenage girls? Or just the poor? Means tested, enforced medical intervention? Really? Or mass medication of half the young population? Quite aside from the complete violation of their human rights, what about the expense? That's a hell of a lot of contraceptives right there.

Education does have an effect. It might not feel like it when you look around and see all those teen mums...but it does. My area of Yorkshire had one of the highest (actually it may even have been the highest) rates of teenage conceptions in England. This means it has become one of our key performance indicators and thus large amounts of time and resources have gone into trying to tackle this, primarily through education programmes, but targeted ones: rates of teenage conception are much higher amongst looked after children and they're significantly higher in certain geographical areas and if parents were also teenage parents.

Last year we had the sharpest reduction in teenage conceptions of almost anywhere in the country. It's a way to go, but these thiungs help. Especially if you attempt to tackle some of the related problems at the same time. Basically a concertd effort by councils, health trusts and local community organisations and neighbourhood management boards.
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