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A longtime problem with anti-teen pregnancy campaigns is that they're somewhat dishonest. Most, if not ALL of them, try to convince teens that their life is somehow OVER if they have babies too young. No matter what. That's simply untrue, and these kids are smart enough to know it.
Here's a few facts:
1) Statistically, high school dropout rates for teenage mothers are only slightly higher than for girls who don't become pregnant. Sound wrong? The dropout numbers have typically been skewed by the fact that girls who drop out are far more likely to become pregnant. If you narrow the numbers to only look at girls who were in school and passing at the time of their pregnancy, the difference narrows substantially. The problem is that most people simply look at pregnancy/graduation numbers, which is misleading. If you look at the WHOLE set of numbers, it becomes clear that the BEST way to prevent teen pregnancy is to KEEP THEM IN SCHOOL. A young white girl with good grades who gets pregnant probably WILL graduate high school, while a young latina who gets pregnant two months after dropping out probably will not.
2) Social class and resources has more bearing on the economic success of a young woman than motherhood does. Young women from poverty stricken households have substantially lower high school and college graduation rates. If you compare the graduation rates of poor non-pregnant teens vs. poor pregnant teens, you again will find a much smaller difference than is normally touted. If you look at the graduation rates of non-pregnant middle and upper class teens vs. the graduation rates of pregnant middle and upper class teens, you'll find that the difference is almost nonexistent. The differences only appear when you bundle all of the groups together, and is again skewed by the fact that lower-income children are substantially more likely to drop out in the first place. The pregnancy is simply an aggravating factor. (Simplified: In some poor parts of California, 50% of teens drop out before 18, and somewhere around 80% of female teen dropouts end up pregnant. In those areas, those female teen dropout mothers can account for more than 90% of teen pregnancies. Obviously, the economic failure in these situations originates from the act of dropping out, not the act of getting pregnant.)
3) Even college graduation rates tend to be skewed by economic classes. One often-repeated claim is that only 2% of teen mothers complete college, even though half of girls do. The issue, again, is that teen pregnancy overwhelmingly occurs in our poorest populations, which are overwhemlingly among the 50% which do NOT attend college anyway. Also, these numbers are often skewed by the fact that most polls only look at college graduation rates by age 22 or 24. A large percentage of teenage mothers DO pursue secondary education later in life after the child has grown a little older, and the number of teen mothers attending career, college, or technical schools rises sustantially if you push back the cutoff date to 30.
4) One other little discussed fact is the issue that pregnant poor teens are typically doing BETTER than their peers when compared again at age 35. This is because a teen girl who gives birth at 16 is child-free at 34, giving her more time to devote to a career than her peers who waited until their 20's or 30's to have children. This has been borne out by many studies in several countries, but isn't discussed much because nobody wants to risk the possibility that it might "encourage" teen pregnancy. Note that this only holds true for the lowest socioeconomic classes, and that the numbers are about even for children from wealthier families.
The problem we have is that kids aren't stupid. They know these things, and when we look at them and say "your life is over if you get pregnant", they know they're not being told the whole story. That message is just as dishonest as "smoking weed will make you a braindead loser who can't hold a job". Will some end up that way? Of course, but many will not. So the kids tune the message out, assuming that they won't be pregnant, and if they do, they won't end up as one of the poor statistics but will instead be one of the "successful ones". They know that white-middle class kids with good grades and a supportive family will probably be just fine in the long run. When we look at them and say "But your life will be DESTROYED if you get pregnant," they know we're lying.
A better idea, IMNSHO, is to stick to a more fact based argument. Show them what the real impacts of pregnancy and motherhood are. Will getting pregnant at 16 end your life and doom you to decades of living in cockroach infested apartments waiting for your welfare check? No, but you are going to have to work your ass off taking care of the kid, and your social life will be ruined. Your plans for the future will be put on hold until the kid is old enough to get into school, and your options on future relationships are going to be limited by the fact that fewer young men are going to be interested in dating a woman who already has a kid at home. To keep the middle class girls from getting pregnant, show them how pregnancy limits them, but stay away from the doom and gloom.
As for the girls from poor families...the greatest help we can provide for them is to keep them in school, to push them to further their education, and to keep them hopeful that they can achieve something better. Everything else will follow.
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