All those teens with babies

EVERY DAY IN Thailand, 355 women under 20 become mothers – and 10 of those “women” are actually just girls, younger than 15. The numbers aren’t aberrations and in fact they’re increasing.
This is despite efforts over the past 17 years by the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) to reduce the number of adolescent pregnancies.
The agency and United Nations Population Fund Thailand Country Office last week unveiled a report titled “Motherhood in Childhood: Facing the Challenge of Adolescent Pregnancy”. It tallies 801,737 births in 2012, of which more than 129,000 involved teenage mothers. Given Thailand’s teen population of 2.4 million, that’s a ratio of 54 per 1,000 girls. In 2000 the ratio was 31.1, indicating an alarming increase since then.
The report stresses the challenges, social perceptions and educational impact facing young mothers and warns that pregnancy and motherhood can damage not only their health but their employment opportunities – and thus have a knock-on effect for the national economy.
Adolescent pregnancy, the report says, is intertwined with many societal factors. There has been a failure to guarantee the mothers access to education. There is no reproductive-health service for adolescent girls. There is no effective enforcement of the laws protecting their rights as adolescents. Certain beliefs and attitudes prevail that continue to see boys treated better than girls.
“Today the lifestyle of young people is influenced a great deal by the Internet, but the prevention of sexual behaviour and the fostering of appropriate, safe sexual health is still inefficient,” NESDB secretary-general Arkhom Termpittayapaisith said.
“Adolescent pregnancy is still an important problem that leads to poor quality of caring. It has many adverse effects, such as health problems for the mothers and children, economic problems that arise from poverty, loss of educational and development opportunities, and social problems caused by unsafe abortions and child abandonment.”
The NESDB’s own report for the fourth quarter of 2013 acknowledged that the number of adolescent mothers is rising while awareness of the hazards remains low. In 2012, it said, 1.8 girls out of every 1,000 aged 10 to 14 gave birth, compared to 1.1 in 2008. Among girls aged 15 to 19, the birth rate rose to 53.8 per 1,000 from 50.1 in that same period.
The United Nations agency’s Caspar Peek noted that more than 125,000 Thai girls who are 19 or younger become mothers every year. “That’s one in every 20 girls in this age group,” he said. “Imagine a classroom of 20 girls and 20 boys. Now imagine that at least one of these boys and one of these girls will be a father or mother by the time they’re nineteen. And if you assume that, for each girl who becomes a mother, there are two more who get pregnant but have an abortion, it might be that as many as 350,000 girls are pregnant each year. That means one out of every seven girls in Thailand.”
Peek said 80 per cent of adolescent mothers around the world are married, but only 20 per cent of Thai girls.
“More often than not, society points fingers, shameful to a girl,” he said. “The sad reality is that many people carry the responsibility to make sure she does not get pregnant. This includes parents, who need to talk to their children about how to handle their sexuality responsibly, and trust them to be responsible.” Boys and girls are still raised differently, though. Often a father teaches his son that it’s okay to have sex and his daughter that it is not. “On this complicated matter, they should be treated the same.”
Teachers should give adolescents the right information about sexuality instead of simply conducting biology lessons or telling them outright that sex is “bad” – or telling them nothing at all.
“Sexual education at school should start when they’re 12 years old, not 16,” said Peek. “It’s about relationship management, which is very important for young people. Moreover, this includes nurses and doctors, who should give young people good information on contraceptives instead of telling them they shouldn’t have sex until they’re married. Allow them to access to reproductive-health services.”
Arkhom emphasised the broad range of impacts that adolescent pregnancy has on the mother, father and society at large.
“With both the short-term and long-term effects and the rising trend among these problems, the government has focused on solving the teen-pregnancy problem as a high priority,” he said. It wants to promote awareness of the opportunities and rights that youngsters possess, and to provide education, vocational training, healthcare and age-appropriate development.
“We need solutions for the unprepared-pregnancy problem in accordance with the framework for life-cycle development and the nation’s strategic plan. The government has set up the OSCC 1300 – One Stop Crisis Centre – to connect all the information and services that the involved agencies offer. The OSCC 1300 lets young people access the services and exercise their rights efficiently so they can return to their daily lives with dignity.”
Thailand has meanwhile, like most countries, become an ageing society. “There is a larger elderly population, continually fewer children and a smaller working-age population,” Arkhom noted. “As a consequence Thailand has to accelerate efforts to ensure a high quality of life for its people and support the elderly population, whose needs will become more stringent.
“Working people have to take care of not only their children but also their nieces and nephews and their parents.”