Approved by Council, October 1986

As the major medical association with expertise on child and adolescent development and psychopathology, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is concerned about the high rate of teenage pregnancy. The AACAP recognizes that parents have the primary responsibility for providing guidance to their children in the appreciation and understanding of their sexuality.

The Academy endorses the development of curricula in family life and sexual education throughout the U.S. school system. the Academy recommends that in communities where the need for such services is indicated, school systems should collaborate with local health agencies to establish health care clinics which would provide a full range of services including counseling and information regarding reproductive health. Where health services are provided to adolescents, these services should maintain the traditional practices regarding patient confidentiality.

The Academy documents the need for these measures with the following data:

• Young adolescents subject to adverse sociocultural conditions of poverty, discrimination, and family disorganization have been most vulnerable to pregnancy. The problem of teenage pregnancy is now affecting growing numbers of youngsters from all economic backgrounds.
• When education is available on sex and contraception, there is marked reduction in adolescent pregnancies and births by adolescents.
• Pregnancies of adolescents are likely to entail poor pre-natal care with consequent medical complications that threaten the well-being of both mother and father.
• The children of such pregnancies often are not given up for adoption and eventually become part of the foster care welfare systems and enter a lifetime of dependency and expensive social intervention.
• These children are often unwanted and are more prone to abuse, neglect, failure to thrive, and serious medical illness.
• The tendency of this pattern to pass from generation to generation is marked, and perpetuates a cycle of social and educational failure, mental and physical illness, and serious delinquency.

As a result of this data, the AACAP recommends that there be adequately funded programs of education for pregnancy avoidance in the schools, and information on available contraception, and that psychiatric services be used where appropriate to aid in the interruption of the harmful cycle which is perpetuated by teenage pregnancies.