Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Text Box 5.9: Teenage Mothers
A teenage mother, as mapped here, is a girl/woman aged between 15 and 19 years old
who has at least one child. A map of teenage fathers might look similar to this.
A third of all the teenage mothers in the world live in India. There are three times
more teenage mothers living in Southern Asia than live in any other region. The fewest
recorded teenage mothers live in Japan.
Being a young parent is normal in some parts of the world, whilst in other parts
teenage parenthood is a rarity. Where it is a rarity mothers tend to be considerably
older - but internationally comparable data on older mothers does not yet exist.
Attitudes towards young mothers … shift in relation to prevailing moral values,
and also to some extent reflect economic conditions
(Debbie A. Lawlor, 2002)
5.2.9 Condom use by men
It was the contraceptive pill, and its use by women, that brought fertility levels to below
replacement level for most of the world. However the pill offers no protection from sexually
transmitted infections (chlamydia, gonorrhoea, HIV and various others), which are more
prevalent than ever (because, in Britain at least, there is still too narrow-minded a concern
about pregnancy alone). The pill is also hard to come by in much of the world. Condoms
are a little easier to find, although again in the poorest parts of the world they can be too
expensive to use. It is estimated that in the 1990s the cost of one year's supply of condoms
(however many that might be!) was less than 1 per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP)
Figure 5.11
Territory size shows the proportion of all boys and men aged 15-24 years old worldwide
who used a condom last time they had high-risk sex. 'High-risk sex' is defined as sex with someone
who these men are not normally living with or married to (Worldmapper Map 226)
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