Brook position statement - young parents

Brook supports young people’s right to decide whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy.   Young people who decide to become parents deserve to get the best support available and are damaged by negative stereotypes of teenage parents.

Brook’s position on young parents

Brook supports the right of young people to make informed choices about their sexual health, including whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy.

The decision to continue a pregnancy can be a positive one.  Young people, like the rest of the population, can make good parents if they decide to become one and deserve to get the best support available.   Negative stereotypes of teenage parents are deeply damaging.

With the right support many young people are able to use the experience of parenthood as a motivation to improve their life circumstances through re-engagement in education or training for instance.

Brook s committed to strategies and actions which aim both to reduce teenage conceptions and the risk of teenage parents experiencing long-term social exclusion by supporting them through education, training or employment.

There is a strong body of research that indicates that poverty, deprivation, poor educational achievements and localised cultural expectations lead to higher rates of teenage pregnancy and parenthood.  Brook believes that a co-ordinated approach to tackle these factors will benefit all young people – including those who are at risk of becoming parents before they are ready.

We need to shift the culture and raise the expectations and esteem of young women living in deprivation, too many of whom simply see no reason not to get pregnant as they cannot foresee a future for themselves in education or employment.

Brook takes a nuanced approach to young parenthood and considers the needs of very young parents to be substantially different to those of older teenagers.

Brook believes that the needs of the mother, the father and the child need to be taken fully into account when making policy around young parenthood and developing best practice.

Young fathers must be better integrated into ante and post-natal service provision.   More still needs to be done to find out about the needs of young fathers and young fathers-to-be and the barriers to their service use.

Brook is actively engaged in research into the needs of young fathers- to-be.

Brook supports moves to incorporate young parents fully in general parenting policies – for example, policies around parental leave and social benefits.

Background information

The Second national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles found that around 1% of young men and 6% of young women were parents by the age of 18.(1)

In 2009 there were 43,243 births to women under the age of 20 in England and Wales(2)  and 1,334 live births to young women under the age of 20 in Northern Ireland.(3)    In Scotland 3,924 women had babies before they were 20 during the year ending 31 March 2010.(4) 

A significant proportion of teenage mothers have more than one child whilst still a teenager. Around 20% of births conceived by under-18 year olds are second or subsequent births.(5)

Around 95% of births to teenagers occur outside marriage(6) .   However, in 2009 78% of babies born to teenage women outside marriage in England and Wales were jointly registered by both parents and 54% of these parents were resident at the same address.(7)

Babies of teenage mothers have a 60% higher risk of dying in their first year of life and have a significantly increased risk of living in poverty.(8)

Research has found that most young mothers know very little about welfare benefits and are not motivated to become pregnant to secure benefits or housing.(9) (10)

References

1 K Wellings et al, Sexual behaviour in Britain: early heterosexual experience, The Lancet, Vol 358, December 1 2001
2 Birth Summary Tables England and Wales 2009:  Characteristics of Mother.  Office for National Statistics 2010
3 Northern Ireland Registrar General’s Annual Report 2009
4 Births and Babies.  SMR02. ISD Scotland, 2011
5 Teenage Pregnancy: Accelerating the Strategy to 2010, DfES 2006
6 Birth Summary Tables: op cit
7 Birth Summary Tables, op cit
8 Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group.  Teenage pregnancy.  Why we need sustained action to accelerate reductions in teenage pregnancy, 2009
9 I Allen & S Bourke Dowling.   Teenage mothers: decisions and outcomes, Policy Studies Institute, 1998
10 S Cater & L Coleman.  ‘Planned’ teenage pregnancy:  Perspectives of young parents from disadvantaged backgrounds.   Trust for the Study of Adolescence 2006   Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by The Policy Press

Publication date: November 2011