ABSTRACT
It is customary to start with apparently dramatic statistics. In England and Wales in 1997, there were 8,300 known conceptions to women under the age of 16 years, resulting in 1,600 live births; 1 mother was aged 11, 3 were aged 12, 26 were 13 years old and 258 aged 14. Fifty-two per cent of the pregnancies were terminated. Little change has been recorded in the conception rate by this age group (approximately eight girls in every thousand below the age of 16 becoming pregnant) over the last 30 years. In 1997, there was a total of 46,316 live births to teenage mothers, with only 11 per cent occurring within a marital relationship (see Family Policy Studies Centre, 1999). The United Kingdom has the highest rate of teenage births in Western Europe (twice that of Germany, three times that of France and six times that of the Netherlands and Switzerland), while the United States has a rate more than twice that of the UK (Social Exclusion Unit, 1999).
