HYPE: Research on teenage pregnancy and education
South Australian data reveals that the teenage confinement rate has been relatively stable over the last five years. Figures from 2003 show that:
- teenage women account for 5.3% of confinements
- Indigenous teenage women account for 21.6% of teenage confinements
- there were 937 confinements for women aged between 15 and19 years of age, or a rate of 18.3 per 1000
- in 2003, 102 confinements were to women of school age, which is set to increase as the school age is raised to 17 years in 2010, as set out in T6.12 of South Australia's Strategic Plan
- teenage mothers are more likely to have low birth weight babies (8.0%) than all mothers (5.2%)
- babies born to teenage mothers are more likely to be admitted to neonatal intensive care units than are babies of adult mothers (3.3% vs. 2.3%)
- 42.7% of teenage mothers smoked during pregnancy compared to an overall rate of 20.4%
- the current education participation rate is 70.6%; however, for pregnant and parenting teenagers the figure is believed to be much lower than this
Further, there is evidence of an increase in confinement rates to teenagers from low socio-economic backgrounds. There are no figures on the retention rates of pregnant and parenting teenagers; however, anecdotal evidence suggests retention is extremely low. Further, most young mothers that do return to school are 'pathwayed' into alternative programs that do not explicitly offer equity of access to the whole curriculum. Although research suggests that early parenting is often a 'trigger event' for young women to re-engage in education, in reality the lack of support means that these women often fail in this pursuit.
