In 2013, the latest year for updated statics, the U.S pregnancy rate of girls between ages 15 and 19 was 26.6 births for every 1,000 girls. This information was collected by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy. The rate has declined since 1991, when it was 117 per 1,000 teens between the same ages. Even though this rate has dropped, nearly 3 in 10 teen girls in the U.S. will get pregnant at least once before the age of twenty. That is more than 700,000 teen pregnancies each year. This still makes America the country with the most teen mothers.

Also, most of the teenage girls believe that the father of their children will stay with them. Sadly, 8 out of 10 fathers leave the family or will not marry the women. This leads the fathers to usually only pay an average of $800 dollars in child support. Since the fathers do not pay an acceptable amount of child support, the mother ends up going on welfare. On the other, some women have to pay the full amount by themselves because they were raped.

Teen mothers are also more likely to drop out of high school, but there are the few rare women that stay in high school. Also, some of the teen girls go for their GED. Another fact is that the daughters of teenage mothers are three times more likely to become teen mothers themselves, and the sons of teen mothers are likely to end up in prison. More than half of all families on welfare had their first child as a teenager. Also, children whose parents that do not live together are five  times more likely to be poor than children whose parents do live together.

On a good note, 7 out of 10 American teenage girls will not end up as teen mothers. The main reason for the decline his how strict people are now about birth control. More teenage girls are taking the birth control pills, an IUD, and even abstinence. Also, the teens will use condoms, which give you a 98% chance of not getting pregnant. The thing is, teenagers usually don’t thin k before they act and this leads to unplanned teenage pregnancies. So just think do you really want to put your life on hold for 18 years.