Of course, that enthusiasm dampened a bit--along with pitches for more funding--when just released 2006 figures showed an increase in teen (along with adult) births.

Actually, a closer look at the statistics shows an interesting, crucial fact no one wanted to talk about, for obvious reasons. Here are the numbers of births to mothers under age 20 for the years interest groups referenced, 1990 through 2006… by marital status:

The biggest reason, by far, that births by teenage mothers declined is that in 1990, 41% (410.4 per 1,000) of married teen women had babies, a proportion that plummeted to just 28% in 2006. Like adults, fewer and fewer teens are getting married, and like adults, the teens who are getting married are having fewer babies. (Less “teenage sex” accomplished this? It is very unlikely that married teens aren’t having sex!)

What these interest groups backing abstinence, sex, and contraceptive education and services are saying (without admitting it), then, is that their campaigns aimed at unmarried high schoolers instead convinced mostly post-high-school, married teenagers—average age of wife, 18.5, and husband, 22 years old—not to have babies. Given that married women accounted for just 6% of the 15-19-year-old female population but accounted for 100% of the drop in teen births, the anti-teen-sex campaigns and contraception programs were vastly more effective with married teens than with their target group, unwed ones. How on earth did they accomplish that?

Meanwhile, these same interest groups largely failed to reduce the birth rate among the unmarried teen women they targeted, which rose 12,000 by number and fell just 17% by rate over a period in which massive campaigns pressured high school girls to “wait until marriage” to have babies. Talk about achieving the opposite! In 1990, nearly one-third of births by teen mothers were within marriage, plunging to just 16% in 2005.

For those who remember the apocalyptic fury against “births by unwed teenage mothers” in the 1990s, along with welfare reform, public crusades, and a worthless new federal agency, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, these results are more than ironic. No wonder all the interest groups ignore their implications.

In fact, the terms “teenage sex,” “teenage pregnancy,” and “teenage mothers” have always been fantasies built around deeply sexist misnomers. A large majority of pregnancies and births by teenage females involve not the high school boys the news media blames, but adult men averaging three to four years older—a situation that an enlightened society that holds men (especially adult men) responsible for reproduction would call, “adult impregnation,” not “teen pregnancy.”

Crucial details like reality and the well-being of teens might have once been concerns, back before the 1980s and 1990s. But they are no longer objects of interest among today’s politicized teen-pregnancy industry which, left to right, is far more concerned about winning more funding, grants, favorable publicity, victories over ideological opponents, and eternal self-perpetuation than it is about young people. If interest groups and their “experts” were compelled to tell the truth about what they call “teenage pregnancy,” the whole discussion would change overnight… which is exactly why they don’t.

Mike Males, YouthFacts.org