As with a lot of indicators about the well-being of people in Mississippi, this state has made significant progress in reducing the number of teen births, but it still has a long way to go.
In 2009, out of 1,000 females in Mississippi between the ages of 15 and 19, 64 gave birth to a child. By 2020, the latest year for which data is available, the rate had fallen to 27.9. That’s a drop of 56% in a little more than a decade.
That’s the good news.
The bad is that Mississippi’s teen birth rate remains way above the national average. The national teen birth rate, which has been falling slightly faster than Mississippi’s, is 15.4, or about half as high as the rate in Mississippi.
Even more dramatic is comparing Mississippi to the state with the lowest rate. In Massachusetts, the teen birth rate is 6.1, about a fifth of Mississippi’s. This disparity is repeated in the large differences in wealth and poverty between these two states. Per capita income in Mississippi is about half as high as it is in Massachusetts, and its poverty rate is more than twice as high.
An article this past week in Mississippi Today largely blames an inadequate sex education program in the public schools for why this state’s teen birth rate is still the highest in the country. The article says that although Mississippi mandates that the schools provide sex education, the curriculum is outdated and many of the students are not receiving the instruction either because their parents have not given their approval or because the schools are not being held accountable for providing it.
We don’t doubt some of this is true.
But it’s also likely that cultural and economic factors are more to blame. Pregnant teens, the vast majority of whom are unmarried, have become so common that the condition has largely lost its stigma. The use of contraceptives is also less common among people who are poor and undereducated.
Although the schools may help with some of that education, more effective will be the influences that young women receive from their families and their peers. Whether it’s promoting abstinence or contraception, the point that needs to be made to teens is that they and their children are likely to have a very difficult life if the mother is not old enough to handle the responsibility. Also, although this may sound old-fashioned, their odds of escaping poverty and raising healthy and successful children will be a whole lot better if they wait to have children until they are married.
There are, of course, children born to unmarried teen mothers who beat the odds and excel. But that’s the exception, not the rule. It’s unwise to make decisions on the hopes that you and your child will be that exception.
