babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
They Say: Teen Parents are Rich Kids Too
There’s a popular myth out there about pregnant teens: they’re disadvantaged youth who come from poor families. Oh yeah, and more likely than not, they haven’t seen their real Dad in a long, long time.
A nice pat way to explain how teens end up pregnant. Except it isn’t true.
A new study proves that the myth of the poor girl getting knocked up because she doesn’t have a strong male role model at home and mom is off working two jobs to make ends meet is just that – a myth.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found sixty-seven percent of Americans believe pregnant teens come from homes below the poverty line. Seventy percent, they say, believe the teen girls are from single-parent households.
But a look at more than fourteen thousand kids in grades seven through twelve revealed that four of every ten teenage parents (including the fathers) lived in a home with both biological parents. An additional nineteen percent of those kids lived with one biological parent and one step-parent, putting the number of teenage parents living in a two-parent household at more than fifty percent.
Only twenty-eight percent of the teen parents lived in a home below the federal poverty line, and more than forty percent lived in homes where the income level was at or above two hundred percent of the poverty line.
More by this author:
Go Back To Strollerderby
0 Comments
[...] They Say: Teen Parents are Rich Kids Too | Strollerderby [...]
Gaming Night is a great way to bond. | Parenting help in Oregon commented on Nov 02 09 at 6:20 pm[...] They Say: Teen Parents are Rich Kids Too | Strollerderby [...]
Workout with the kids | Parenting Help in Arizona commented on Nov 02 09 at 11:36 pmEric commented on Nov 02 09 at 2:34 pmContinuing my role of ‘statistics asshat,’ the conclusions drawn are a little stretched. If you read the graphs in the linked article you can see that teens of a non-two biological/adoptive parent homes are 50% more likely to have children (40% of teens having 60% of the babies), and teens living below the poverty line are nearly twice as likely to have babies (16% of teens having 28% of the babies). Another whopper of a point is that this measures births to teens not teen pregnancies.
jenny tries too hard commented on Nov 02 09 at 3:48 pmyeah, I have to agree with the statistics asshat here…to declare something a “myth” you generally have to prove that it doesn’t exist or is pretty darn rare, not “slightly less out-of-proportion than we thought”.
It’s also useful to point out that a lot of people don’t think in terms of the actual federal poverty line. People at up to 200% of the poverty line can usually qualify for programs like Medicaid, and in my brain Medicaid recipient=person in poverty, even though the fed gov would technically disagree. The stereotype of a pregnant teenager being “poor” would still fit to many people who would classify Medicaid recipients as “poor”, so it would be good to know whether the respondants knew this.
Add your take:
Note: Babble is a supportive, diverse community. We encourage a range of opinions,
but any unduly hostile comments will be removed.
Comments are delayed up to 15 minutes
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
0