Study shows spring spike for teen pregnancy
Research at an Ontario university has raised a curious possibility — that there is a season for teen pregnancy.
Evidence gathered at a hospital in Kingston suggests adolescent girls are more likely to conceive during March, and public-education programs to combat unprotected sex ought to ramp up in early spring.
The reason for the apparent spike remains unclear, but the doctors behind the work say it may be tied to either the opportunities for sex offered by March break, or the particular rhythms of the academic year.
“When kids come back from summer vacation, they’re not starting to pair off, they’re just starting to date, and less likely to be sexually active,” said Dr. Ashley Waddington, a Queen’s University obstetrics and gynecology professor and co-author of one study on the issue. “Then they start to form couples and date more seriously and maybe sexual activity starts to occur at that time.”
The March spike is not huge, but may provide an opportunity for timely intervention, as opposed to a constant, year-long barrage of advocacy that could lose impact over time, she said.
When the group issued news releases and generated media coverage around the issue in early spring one year, the March pregnancy surge diminished, a study published last year concluded.
Adolescent mothers tend to suffer from educational underachievement, lower socio-economic status and more mental health problems; their children have on average a lower live birthrate, a greater risk of “failure to thrive” and more chance of being poor.
The rate in Canada declined steadily from the 1970s to the mid-2000s, before levelling off.
The Queen’s group analyzed data over five years from the one Kingston hospital that handles pregnancies, and compared the 838 teen conceptions with a randomly selected group of adult pregnant women.
The peak for adults conceiving was in December. But for high-school-age girls, there was a modest surge in March, with close to 90 pregnancies, compared with about 60 in most of the other months. And the spike appeared each year the researchers examined.
“Around spring break time, it would be valuable to have public awareness campaigns to promote taking care of sexual health broadly,” said Alex McKay, executive director of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada. That said, research has shown the main predictor of adolescent girls getting pregnant is economic, he said.
Teenagers with fewer educational opportunities or have few community supports are more likely to conceive, he said.