Teen Girls Don’t Believe They Will Get Pregnant, CDC Study Shows

Reality TV show “Teen Mom” mustn’t be getting through to its target demographic. A new study by the CDC shows a high percentage of teenage girls have no understanding about their odds of getting pregnant.

A survey conducted on over 5000 teenaged women who have unintentionally gotten pregnant has shown that roughly one third of them weren’t using birth control because they didn’t think they could get pregnant.

Unfortunately, the survey didn’t go on to ask why the teenagers thought this, but some of the reasons that have been cited in past research include a belief that you can’t get pregnant on the first time, that you can’t get pregnant at the specific time of the month during which they had sex and even that they believed they were sterile.

In total, over half the girls in the study were not using any form of birth control for the aforementioned and other, which was a great surprise to authors of the report. Along with the belief they would not get pregnant, one of the other most surprising reasons the girls gave for not using birth control was that their partner didn’t want them to use it.

While these reasons and statistics might be cause for alarm, actually, things may not be as bad as they seem. According to Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington, teen pregnancy rates are actually at an all-time low for the past 70 years.

Still, at SureBaby, we did find ourselves concerned over the reasons so many teenage mothers gave for their accidental pregnancies. Tell us, what do you think can be done to raise awareness amongst teens on pregnancy and contraception?

Leave your tips and opinions in the comments!