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 The researchers compared two groups of teen girls: those with a
similarly-aged friend who’d given birth, and those with a friend
who’d had an early miscarriage.
They wanted to see whether these events affected the girls’ choices
in having sex, getting pregnant, having a child, and getting married
as teens – or their choices regarding school, marriage and family as
adults.
Altogether, the investigators studied 595 young women from across
the U.S., interviewing them multiple times over the years, starting
in 1994-1995 when they were in their early teens.
Compared to girls whose friends had miscarried, those whose friends
became teen mothers were less likely to have sex as teens, get
pregnant or get married and more likely to attain their college
degree.
“Teens learn from their friends’ mistakes,” study co-author Dr. Olga
Yakusheva of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor told Reuters
Health by phone.
“It’s common sense, really – we obviously know few people would
follow their friends jumping off the proverbial cliff, but that’s
how we used to think about peer influences among teens,” she said
But the study, published June 16 in the Journal of Adolescent
Health, suggests that teens learn from their friends’ mistakes.
Furthermore, girls in the teen birth group were 5 percentage points
less likely to have a baby themselves as a teen, compared to those
in the miscarriage group.
“Sixteen of every 100 girls whose friend had a miscarriage had a
teen childbirth themselves, whereas in (girls whose friends had
babies) group, the number was lower, with only 11 girls having a
teen birth,” Yakusheva said.
In 2000-2001 - the fifth year after the start of the study - girls
whose friends had given birth had about 25 fewer sexual intercourse
encounters, on average, than girls whose friends had miscarried.
Odds of getting married before age 20 were about 6 percentage points
lower for the teen birth group versus the miscarriage group.
Moreover, women in the teen birth group were 8 percent more likely
to complete a four-year degree.
No long-term effects were found in income earnings, possibly because
the college-educated women in the study were just starting out in
their career, the study authors write.
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By having sex less frequently, teens were more successful at not
getting pregnant.
Stigma might be one reason why the teens who were friends with a
teen mom chose not to get pregnant, said Jane Champion of the
University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved with the study.
Pregnant teens often drop out of school or go to alternative
schools, which can have an impact on their social lives, said
Champion, who specializes in behavioral intervention in teen
pregnancy.
“They’re often ostracized by their community and no longer accepted
by their circle of friends,” she said. “That can be a huge wake up
call for teens.”
Preventing early teen pregnancies is what matters, Yakusheva noted.
“What our work shows is that, in addition to teaching kids how not
to become pregnant, we should also teach them why,” she said.
She recommends exposing teens to the realities of pregnancy.
“Kids have to see it for themselves,” she said, “not read it in
books, not have an adult tell them, because that’s already being
done and it doesn’t work very well.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/29yULlp
J Adolesc Health 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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