Teenage pregnancies are girls between the ages of 13 and 19, becoming pregnant. The terms used in ordinary speech usually refer to girls who have not reached legal adulthood, who in Australia are anyone under the age of 18. At the national level, adolescent birth rates have declined in the last decade. This figure is about 16 infants per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years between 2011 and 2012 but this has dropped to 11.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in 2015, the lowest number in records. Termination can be done up to 12 weeks mark. About half of all teenage pregnancies are terminated in Australia.
Video Teenage pregnancy in Australia
Birth rate
By 2015, the birth rate among adolescent women in Australia is 11.9 births per 1,000 women. This number fell from 55.5 births per 1,000 women in 1971, possibly because of the ease of access to effective contraception, rather than decreased sexual activity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that the median age for having babies in Australia between 2003 and 2013 was 30.8 for mothers, and 32.3 for fathers.
Maps Teenage pregnancy in Australia
Australian Aborigines
In Australia, indigenous young women are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers than non-adat young women. Many factors contribute to this gap, such as unemployment, poverty, and educational outcomes. However, there is very little understanding of the attitudes of Indigenous young Australians themselves with regard to pregnancy. There is a national Native fertility rate of 69 per 1,000, which is four times the national rate for all adolescent girls in Australia. The preliminary census estimates that the Indigenous Australians, about 2.5% of the total Australian population, show how radical this figure is. These findings provide a clear indication of the issues of Indigenous Australians, and the lack of support provided in relation to contraceptive education and access to health information. Indigenous Australians have high rates of illiteracy, which also play a large role in the high fertility rates mentioned above.
Historically speaking, Indigenous Australians always have higher rates of living in rural and remote areas, which have been found to indirectly affect teenage pregnancy rates in this population. The region, along with many other factors, all contribute to high adolescent fertility rates among the Australian Aboriginal population. To bring this down, the Australian Government has created programs aimed at improving health literacy, improving access to health care and providing better education in relation to contraception and sexual activity.
Facts and Statistics The Australian youth found that the number of Adat youth aged 12-24 is estimated to be 116,000, about 3% of the total number of youth across the country, indicating that Indigenous Peoples are a younger society. At the same time, Native mothers were more likely to give birth at a younger age than non-native mothers. The average age of Native mothers who gave birth in 2013 is 25 years, compared with the average age of 31 years for all Australian mothers.
By region
In Australia, pregnancy and childbirth in adolescent girls are associated with midwifery and social risks, and there is evidence to suggest that birth rates among adolescents in rural and remote areas of Australia are not decreasing. Although the number of births of teenage mothers in Australia has declined in recent years, there are strong suggestions that such trends have not yet been found for adolescents living in remote and disadvantaged economies. This finding raises particular concerns, as there is clear evidence of an "urban-rural" division for young women who gave birth in Australia. This manifests as an increased chance for adverse outcomes, such as stillbirth for women giving birth to their babies in rural areas.
Ann Larson states that "higher fertility is the result of economic growth that has ruled out younger regional women, and to lower levels of youth, who lack the reach of educational and job opportunities to lead them into paths other than primary care." This statement can be supported through various studies and epidemiology that show a direct trend between rural and remote areas, and the rate of teenage pregnancy. Other problems come with living in rural areas of Australia including; high levels of teenage smokers and excessive drinkers, as well as inadequate work and education. This risk has been associated with increased rates of caesarean section and abortion among mothers living in rural and remote areas. Although the above study concludes that there is an extremely high rate of teenage pregnancy in rural and remote areas, the Australian Bureau of Statistics finds that birth distribution in Australia is the lowest in remote areas. This statistic can be seen in the table below.
Effects
Teen mothers have a strong relationship with long-term health risks, including mental and physical health. Along with these health risks, teenage mothers in Australia generally experience a lack of identity, social problems, low incomes and poor educational background. This often causes their child (ren) to experience the same problems throughout life, and can cause other serious complications.
A new study finds teenage mothers more likely to:
- drop out
- do not have or have low qualifications
- idle or low paid
- live in poor housing conditions
- suffers from depression, which can lead to suicide
- live in wellbeing
Although this does not apply to all adolescent mothers, one or more of the above applies to the majority. It has also indicated that children of teenage mothers are more likely to:
- live in poverty
- grow without father
- become a victim of negligence or abuse
- is not good at school
- engage in crime
- abusing drugs and alcohol
- eventually becomes a teenage parent and starts the cycle.
The above effects of teenage pregnancy in Australia have been studied in depth, and statistics have found that the majority of these populations are more likely to fall into one or more of the above categories. In terms of general health, the proportion of adolescent mothers reporting poor or fair health is almost twice as high as other mothers. Adolescents are also associated with high dependence on welfare institutions such as Centrelink. Birth is also much more complicated; their babies have higher rates of suffering problems such as premature birth, low birth weight and congenital abnormalities. Adolescent pregnancy and delivery are important teen health issues in Australia because of long-term negative psychosocial outcomes for mothers and children and their association with adverse physical consequences.
Cause
While not all teenage pregnancies are unplanned and unintentional, unintended pregnancies may be related to the following issues:
- Family situation with regular conflict
- Family violence or sexual abuse during childhood
- Unstable housing settings
- Stay outside the nursing home
- Poor school performance and attendance
- Low socioeconomic background
- Family history of pregnancy at a young age
- Low maternal education level
- Low self-esteem
- Anonymous secret type charm
- Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status
- Live in rural and remote areas
- Have a mental health diagnosis
High levels of high in the English-speaking countries have been linked to their ambivalent attitudes and hence behaviors against contraception, sex education and mass communication about sexuality, the provision of their welfare to unmarried mothers and their social inequalities. Studies have shown that girls who report first sexual intercourse during their early adolescence have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than girls who delay their sexual activity until they are older. A further study found a strong association between high pregnancy rates and partner violence. This same study also showed high rates of miscarriage and termination related to the same issue of partner violence. There are other studies that indicate the relationship between spousal violence and premature birth, which further indicates that violence in partnership plays a major role in issues related to teenage pregnancy, particularly in Australia.
Women of all ages who experience violence and abuse can be subject to unprotected sex and unprotected sex, leading to unplanned and undesirable pregnancy rates, but this figure is much higher in adolescents.
While most Australian women are aware of the contraceptives and the reason behind using this mechanism, many use it inconsistently or not at all. Motivation has been indicated to influence people's attitudes toward contraception, and this has been found to fluctuate in different contexts, such as romantic relationships.
Given this information, the idea of ​​using contraception to be a behavioral relationship between reproductive outcomes and pregnancy attitudes, some supporters argue that sexual health policy-makers and doctors should remove themselves from the assumption that teenagers are motivated to avoid pregnancy.
Controversy
Opinions about teenage pregnancy around the world often reflect prejudices of one kind or another, and in Australia it is kind of negative. This opinion is sometimes polarized, but usually there is no conflict in relation to the strategy of trying to avoid unwanted pregnancies in adolescents. Both arguments against teenage pregnancy, positive and negative, usually support the practice of healthy sexual activity and encourage young women to grow in social knowledge and skills. Despite the demographic shift that has seen the average age of women who give birth in Australia has increased by more than 30 years, about 5% of deliveries still occur in adolescents. This gives great controversy because many people are opposed to giving more money and time in reducing teenage pregnancy, because this figure is not "high enough". However, the argument against this is that the figure may be reduced even higher with better education and increased access to health care, and that adolescent health should be a top priority in Australia. Overall, research has been found to show that early intervention that prevents people from relying on well-being may be more important in reducing the utilization of future welfare benefits, by adolescent mothers. This is because state dependency plays a greater role in the higher welfare dependence of adolescent mothers. In Australia, policymakers mainly focus on the potential disturbance of adolescent mothers with adolescent school education, as lower education has been indicated to be associated with adverse job market outcomes and hence higher welfare dependence.
The social support tax burden for adolescent mothers is a problem in Australian public discourse.
Many argue that teenage pregnancy is an option and adolescent mothers should live with problems associated with this choice. This is supported by a growing body of research showing that the level of control teenagers retain on their contraceptive behavior is the strongest predictor of pregnancy outcomes, and inconsistent and contraceptive users do not have a higher chance of becoming pregnant than with consistent users. But this point of view has been challenged by further research stating that although there is a clear relationship between behavior and outcome, no study has fully understood the basic processes affecting adolescent sexual and reproductive choices, including the use of contraception.
More and more research also shows that, although teenage pregnancy can be considered problematic by Australian society, young people usually consider it different.
Epidemiology
Pregnant women in Australia have a caesarean section rate of 13.4% compared with 33.4% among women over the age of 40.
A third of teenage mothers become pregnant again within two years of their first child who has been indicated for poor use of contraceptives, according to a study published in The Medical Journal of Australia.
A study based in Western Australia followed 150 first-time mothers and found that most teenagers had sex again within 3 months after the birth of their baby, and a total of 47 were pregnant again in 2 years. Two people are said to be pregnant just 6 weeks after their first birth.
In Australia in 1995 there were 43.6 pregnancies per 1000 young women aged 15-19 years, and this figure was stable over the previous 10 years. This is relatively low compared to the same age group in the United States (83.6 per 1000), and is comparable to other Western developed countries such as New Zealand (54 per 1000), British (47 per 1000) and Canada (45.4 per 1000). Overall in Australia in 1995, there were 19.8 births and 23.8 terminations per thousand young women aged 15-19 years.
The level of fertility of Australian teenagers is higher than most developed countries outside the United States and Britain. In addition, Australia has one of the highest rates of abortion in this age group, with the proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion increasing from 20% to over 50% over the past 30 years. This number has since stabilized.
In 2013, birth rates in Australia among young women were 14.6 births per 1,000 women.
1 of 25 live births in Australia in 2009 are teenage mothers, and two out of every 100 girls aged between 15 and 19 years pregnant each year.
See also
- Safe sex
- Teenage pregnancy in the United States
- Abortion in Australia
- Unwanted pregnancy
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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