Teen pregnancies are a result of teen sex. There is a growing culture which has reduced sex to a casual recreational activity.
Some think that encouraging the use of condoms and other contraceptive measures will solve the problem. This is wrong, and as has seen in other European countries, efforts to encourage safer sex are backfiring. The number of teenage pregnancies is at its highest level in the UK despite a multi-million-pound teenage pregnancy crackdown almost a decade ago.
More sex education is needed that not only educates children from an early age about their reproductive function, but also holistically: a comprehensive educational and psychological approach by teaching them life skills and to acquire self-esteem and assertiveness. This can be done through the introduction of PSD even at primary school level and increasing the input at a secondary level. This holistic education complements the upbringing they are supposed to get at home.
The excessive increase of sexual images in the media and lack of moral values have broken down the natural inhibitions of children about sex. Young girls no longer use fear of pregnancy or of God as a reason to reject sexual advances. In a few years, this trend will lead to the ultimate stage of offering abortion and post-abortion counselling as a solution. This will be society's admission of failure. Research abroad is showing that this phenomenon is leading to social misery for thousands of teenage girls with possible social, psychological and financial problems leading to an uncertain future for many children.
If sex education boils down to the use-a-condom-when-you-have-sex strategy, it will fail to halt teen pregnancy. As a society, we must strengthen our families. What we need is family-led organisations, local church communities and the voluntary sector to work together. The sole emphasis on sex education and contraception will give young people the wrong message that sex at a young age is inevitable.
In some ways, it is good that we have reduced some of the shame around sex that existed before the 1970s, but in other ways we have replaced it with a new type of misery, with unwanted babies being brought up by children. We must learn lessons from other countries which are already suffering the social consequences of this problem.