MANILA, Philippines — While the number of young mothers giving birth has been on a decline since 2016, the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) found that one out of 10 live births in the country was from adolescent mothers.
The PSA defined adolescent mothers as girls aged between 10 and 19 years old.
“A decline of -22.7 percent in adolescent births was observed from 2016 to 2020 with 203,085 and 157,060 births, respectively. These births consistently made up about one-tenth of all live births in the country,” said the PSA in a statement on Thursday.
The agency said that three-fourths of these births from adolescent mothers were fathered by men who were three to five years older.
“Furthermore, fathers who are more than 10 years older than the adolescent mothers are responsible for about six to seven percent of births, every year, from 2016 to 2020. However, almost one in five adolescent births do not have information on the age of the father,” said the PSA.
In addition to this, there has been an increasing trend of fathers within the same age group of the young mothers since 2016, going from 18.6 percent that year to 23.8 percent in 2020, found the PSA.
The agency also said that 80 percent of these adolescents gave birth for the first time while the remaining 15 to 17 percent were second birth orders, and the remaining births were third or higher, stated the PSA.
The Commission on Population and Development (Popcom) has previously commented on another survey of teenage pregnancies from the University of the Philippines Population Institute, which cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a cause for the decline in teenage pregnancies.
“As they gradually return to their normal activities, we should not let our guards down. It should give us more resolve to strengthen and sustain our efforts in providing age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education and information, as well as access to reproductive health services among adolescents, which we deem will sustain, or further accelerate, the decline in adolescent pregnancy percentages,” Popcom Officer in Charge-Executive Director Lolito R. Tacardon said.
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