More parent-child time needed to stem rise in teen pregnancies

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Misamis Oriental, Philippines — Parents should spend more time with their children to arrest the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy in Northern Mindanao, officials of the Commission on Population (Popcom) said.

Teenage mothers delivered more than 3,000 babies in the region from January to mid-June this year, or an average of 18 births a day, Popcom Region 10 Director Jeremias Gupit said.

He said the rate of teenage pregnancy in the region has tripled in the last 15 years, from 4.6 percent in 2002 to 14.7 percent in 2017, citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Lack of supervision

Gupit attributed the spike in teen pregnancies to parents’ lack of supervision over their children who find good company in electronic gadgets.

“The rise in teenage pregnancies is due to the failure of  parents to pay attention to their children,” he told reporters.

He added that some parents make up for their absence in the lives of their children by giving them gadgets, allowing the latter to experiment with sex.

To arrest this trend, Gupit challenged parents to develop closeness especially with their adolescent children, and provide the needed personal attention which electronic gadgets cannot give.

Northern Mindanao had the second highest rate in teen pregnancy in the country next to Davao region, according to the PSA’s 2017 National Demographic and Health Survey.

A fourth, or close to a million of the region’s estimated 4.9 million population in 2018 are teenagers.

A University of the Philippines Population Institute study in 2015 showed Northern Mindanao as among the areas with the highest prevalence of teenage pregnancy.

According to the study, two in five youngsters in the region had sexual experience, and one in three of them read pornographic materials.

The study showed that the number of youth in Northern Mindanao having sex in various ways was higher than the national average, Gupit said.

Phone sex

For example, 4.5 percent of teenagers engaged in sex with someone they met online or through text message, which was higher than the national figure of 3.7 percent.

At least 10.1 percent had engaged in phone sex — the highest in the country, 4.8 percent had casual sex and 5.2 percent had sex with the same sex.

Nine of 10 youngsters had unprotected sex in their first premarital sex.