Teens at Risk
(Published Oct. 1, 1997)
It’s never been easy being a teenager, but two studies released today found that up to half of America’s teens face risks — poverty, welfare, the absence of one or both parents, or sexual abuse — that could lead to dropping out of school, joblessness and — for girls — pregnancy.
“It’s good news, bad news,” said Ken Bryson, senior analyst for the U.S. Census Bureau and author of “America’s Children at Risk.”
The bad news is that “even looking at a small number of risk factors, half of 16- and 17-year-olds have at least one which would make them subject to bad outcomes,” he said.
The good news is that “among those who have have three or more strikes against them, only 15 percent dropped out of school, were jobless or had given birth,” Bryson said. “That tells us most adolescents are remarkably resilient and have resources that get them through childhood without major mishaps.”
A separate report for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health issues, painted a grimmer picture. It found that adolescent girls who had been
sexually abused were more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors linked to pregnancy, such as having sexual intercourse before age 15, not using contraception and having a greater number of sexual partners.
Those findings ring very true, said Candy Harris of the Adolescent Parent Program at Walnutwood High School in Rancho Cordova. “A huge percent of our kids have been sexually abused; at one point it was about 80 percent.”
The institute’s report is based on a Washington state survey of 3,128 adolescents. Researchers at the Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation in Seattle
found that girls who had been sexually abused were more than three times as likely to get pregnant as those who weren’t abused.
Overall, they found that 23 percent of girls in eighth through 12th grade had been sexually abused. Sexual abuse was defined as “when someone in your family, or
someones else, touches you in a sexual way in a place you did not want to be touched, or does something to you sexually which they shouldn’t have done.”
Researchers found a host of problems in such victims. They associate sexual abuse with significantly higher levels of school absenteeism, lower grades and less involvement in extracurricular activities.
Sexually abused girls also were more likely to consider grades unimportant, to have thought of dropping out of school and considered college out of the picture, the study found. Alcohol and drug use, thoughts about suicide and poor body image were prevalent.
A lack of parental supervision and guidance contributes heavily to the problem, Harris said.
– Kathryn Dor Perkins – Bee Staff Writer