Debunking Racist and Classist Myths about Teen Pregnancy.

A study put out by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy has found evidence that the majority of teens at risk of unwanted pregnancy are not from low income and/or single parent families.
via Susan Reimer for the Baltimore Sun.

According to research conducted for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 28 percent of those who report having given birth or fathered a child as a teen lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line.
And just 30 percent of those who report having given birth to or fathered a child as a teen say they were living with a single parent.
We are not only wrong – and probably bigoted – about whose teens get pregnant. Those of us in middle-class, intact families have our heads seriously in the sand if we think it can’t happen to us.

This doesn’t change that low-income families are disproportionately at risk of unwanted or teen pregnancy, but it certainly changes the demonized media image of the poor, black, single, teenage mom, so readily available to the national imagination. Looks like all those family values indoctrinated via abstinence-only education programs are not working out so well for all the “intact” families of America.