Original articleTrends in Sexual Experience, Contraceptive Use, and Teenage Childbearing: 1992–2002
Section snippets
Family environments
A large body of research links family background factors with adolescent sexual behavior and teenage childbearing. Male and female adolescents from two-parent families initiate sex later than teens from other types of families, and are more likely to use contraception when they do have sex [9], [10], [11], [12]. Female adolescents whose mothers were teens at their first birth are at higher risk of teen childbearing than daughters of older mothers [9], [13]. Higher parental education is
Data and Methods
We used data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) male and female data files for our analyses. The survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, was administered to 7,643 females and 4,928 males between the ages of 15 and 44, with oversamples of Hispanics, African Americans, and teenagers.
To examine trends over time, we created cohorts of teens aged 15–19 in 1992 (aged 25–29 in 2002), 1997 (aged 20–24 in 2002), and 2002, restricted to those who were living in
Bivariate results
Table 1 summarizes sample characteristics by cohort and gender. Among female and male teens, there was a decrease between 1992 and 2002 in the proportion who ever had sexual intercourse. During the same time period there was an increase in the proportion of teens that used a contraceptive method at first sex. There was only a nonsignificant cohort decline in the proportion of females with a teen birth, among all teens and among sexually experienced teens. Table 1 also shows increasing trends
Discussion
Our analyses show dramatic reductions in sexual experience and increases in contraceptive use for teens between 1992 and 2002, a trend that reflects other national data [3], [4]. Teen birth rates have also shown dramatic declines across the same time period, although our data show only a nonsignificant decline in teen births across the three cohorts. Differences between our estimates and Vital Statistics data may be because of smaller sample sizes and the age distributions of our cohort
Conclusions
We found that improvements in family environments, an increasing age at first sex, and changing partner characteristics help explain improvements in reproductive health outcomes among teens since the early 1990s. However, the recent increase in the U.S. teen birth rate shows the continued importance of improving reproductive health behaviors among teens. Our research suggests that it is important to tailor programs to the unique needs of varied teen populations and take into consideration how
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The research on which this article is based was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development through Grant R01 HD40830-01 and Grant R01 HD044761-03. The conclusions and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funding agencies.