TheAgitator.com
The Kids: Still Alright
Thursday, October 15th, 2009According to a new CDC study, teen pregnancy and abortion rates are both at historic lows.
The pregnancy rate for teenagers fell 40 percent during the 1990–2005 period, to 70.6 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19 years. This rate was the lowest reported since 1976.
The overall decline for teenagers is reflected in significant declines in rates for live births and induced abortions, with much steeper declines for abortions (down 53 percent) compared with live births (down 32 percent). The pregnancy rate declined much more rapidly from 1990 to 2005 for younger teenagers 15–17 years (48 percent) than for older teenagers 18–19 years (30 percent). Pregnancy rates declined by 47–49 percent each for black and white non-Hispanic teenagers and by 23 percent for Hispanic teenagers.
These declines occurred over the same period social conservatives have been warning us about the consequences of a sexualized culture, the mainstreaming and widespread availability of pornography, the licentious nature of the Internet, and so on. But like most major social indicators over the last 20 years (last week, the FBI reported that reported rapes are also at a 20-year low), teen pregnancy and abortion rates are moving in the right direction. And pretty swiftly.
Save, I guess, for obesity. Maybe the next panic will be that America’s teenagers are too fat to have sex.
People don’t want to have sex with fat women, so that’s why pregnancies are down. In that same period, 1990-2005, America has gotten fatter. There is your explanation.
/sarcasm
Are the kids all right or alright? I’m an engineer, so couldn’t tell if this was some sort of literary device.
Oh, and the title made me instantly think of “The Kids Aren’t Alright” by The Offspring.
I think you figured it out.
Your age may be showing (or mine). How can you see that post title and not think of “The Kids are alright” by The Who. :)
I’d say the obesity hype is passe now. The next health hysteria should be “People are no longer interacting and we turning into a society of hermits” Face book does nothing but allow you to remove yourself from any real social interaction, and that is why teen pregnancy is down. :)
cyber-sex is the new safe-sex!
@ #2 | Danny, I think it comes down to context and who is doing the writing. A little googeling makes it look like ‘all right’ is the more common, accepted form, but alright is generally accepted. Basically that ‘all right’ is more right/correct. My wife is a writer and she uses ‘all right’.
Hooray Abstinence Education! Clearly, there’s no other explanation…
I’d be interested to see how the rates of pregnancy and abortion correlate to rates of teenage sex. Is it the case that less teens are having sex or that teens have become more savvy about birth control (or have better access to it) and are thus betterable to avoid unplanned pregnancies? If it’s the latter, I’d say “win-win.”
@ #9 | parse, What isn’t win-win about ‘less teens are having sex’? There isn’t anything wrong with that, is there?
Interesting. I wonder if the title of the Offspring song is a throwback to The Who. And wikipedia appears to confirm it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kids_Aren%27t_Alright
I love the teenage sex analogy. I use it all the time.
[insert your topic here] is just like teenage sex.
Everyone is talking about doing it.
Few people actually are.
And those doing it aren’t doing it very well.
If I’ve learned one thing from Jerry Springer, it is that there is no such thing as too fat for sex.
Back when I was a kid i knew quite a few girls who got pregnant so they could collect welfare and move out of the parents house. Today kids know that their boyfriend will have to pay child support and may be labeled a sex offender. No profit in that.
Oh no! Manufactured crisis #1281 turned out to be false. But fear not, we’ve already planned ahead for this eventuality by manufacturing crises #1282-1296 in the meantime, so nobody gets any crazy ideas about needing less violence-enforced safety protocols paid for by the victims… err… customers.
“Too fat to have sex”
Just to make sure everyone’s voice is at the table: For some people (not me FWIW) there’s no such thing as “too fat” to have sex with.
I’ve seen the websites to prove it.
@#3 Danny –
I also thought Offspring… Also didn’t realize that was a play on an old The Who song.
ZOMG! The internet is going to have a desperate shortage of hot teenie fuck sluts! This is a tragedy waiting to happen folks, call your congressmen today! We have to get this obesity problem under control, or there won’t be any cum-slurping cheerleader whores by 2020!
I actually recognize and have listened to that Offspring song many times, yet had no idea of it’s title. Something to be said for clearly having the song title in the chorus for marketing purposes.
Zack, I think there is something wrong with less teens having sex. Sex is a wonderful thing, and more people having more of it strikes me as a good thing. Less people having less of it strikes me as a bad things. There are exceptions–not every sexual encounter is a positive one–but in general, I think more sex is better than less sex.
Teen pregnancy and abortion rates are both at historic lows, but rates of kids getting whisked away in homemade flying saucers are at an all-time high. Won’t somebody think of the children???!!!
I can see abstinence only proponents using this to back up their views.
I don’t understand NOT teaching safe sex, but the fact that you can’t get pregnant or STDs if you don’t have sex is still true.
I think the problem will be that America’s teenagers are too fat for anyone to want to have sex with them.
I am also old enough to instantly think of the Who movie/song/soundtrack when reading the title of the post.
re: Alright, irrespective of what’s correct, the Who movie/song/soundtrack used the Alright spelling, so if Radley was deliberately alluding to that it makes sense.
[...] The kids: still alright (The Agitator) [...]
Maybe more teenagers out there are scared that they’ll go to prison and be labeled sex offenders.
[...] The Agitator » Blog Archive » The Kids: Still Alright [...]
In other news: World fails to come to end yet again.
Parents are also keeping their kids at home more than they used to. They’re afraid to let their kids run the streets. People fear child predators and the police too much to let the kids of the leash as much as they used to.
Skew the numbers one way, then skew them the other way, who cares these statistics are still bullshit. This is a play for money, plain and simple. When the Republicans are in power, teen pregnancy is at epidemc levels. When the Democrats are in power, teen pregnancy drops. The numbers DO NOT change, what changes is the criteria for the study, so that the correct result can be obtained when petitioning for more MONEY to study the problem.
Why do so many smart people use “less” when they should be using “fewer”? Apparently schooling has falllen down on the job of teaching proper English.
Windy, less people know how to taking good these days.
Isn’t Flash what YouTube uses to play its videos? Or is Flash Video a different animal? It’s all the flash video I watch that makes me feel like Flash is one of the things a web site can reasonably expect you to have and not work unless you download.
Sorry, wrong thread.