The Teen Mom is Dying Out
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
While the birth rate has declined in general over the last 50 years, mothers aged between 15 and 19 have seen the most consistently steep fall.
In 1975, there were 599,926 teen births in America – more than double the teen pregnancies recorded in 2024 (136,376), according to the U.N. Population Division.
Among the teen births that do take place today, "the vast majority occur among folks who are 18 or 19," said Elizabeth Wildsmith, a family demographer and sociologist at Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization.
"Teen births have declined dramatically over the past several decades," she told Newsweek, citing a lower level of sexual activity among teenagers, a higher level of contraceptive use and wider social changes.
"No easy answers," said Claire Brindis, co-director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
"No one factor can really explain the reductions," she told Newsweek, citing similar reasons to Wildsmith, along with improved access to education.
Brindis also drew on the general trend of having children later, currently taking place across all age groups. "We have to give young people a lot of credit for being pregnancy-free," she said.
Teenagers Are Having Less Sex
Some 32 percent of high schoolers said they had ever had sex in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS).
This is a decrease from the 47 percent who said they had ever had sex a decade earlier, in 2013, and significantly lower than in 1991, when 54 percent said they had ever had sex.
"I am not sure we have a clear understanding yet of the role that digital/social media is playing in shaping how and when youth form relationships, including sexual relationships, or their thoughts and behavior around parenthood," Wildsmith said.
"There is likely a mix of positive and negative impacts. For example, online resources, especially reliable sources that use evidence-based information, may help youth learn about various contraceptive methods and more easily access them," she continued. "Similarly, they can provide access to content around what a safe and healthy romantic relationship looks like."
"At the same time, we know that health misinformation on social media platforms is a serious concern," she added.
She went on to align the decline in sexual activity with "a decline in the proportion of youth that have ever dated."
Brindis also spoke about cultural shifts, pointing to the pandemic when she said: "Perhaps another factor is a residual of COVID, with more young people hanging out in groups, after long periods of isolation, and less likely to end up only in pairs."
"Ironically, while more teens are exposed to pornography through social media, they are less likely to feel comfortable talking to each other and being in a relationship," she added.
But she went on to speak about the impact of increased education and the choices this has provided.
"Clearly, access to education has been shown to be a huge motivator," Brindis said, "as young women are surrounded by role models, including their moms, who have improved their own educational status and who hold great expectations that their daughters can break more glass ceilings than they were able to themselves."
"Young women are more likely to explore how to protect themselves, including delaying having sex, having fewer partners, if they are sexually active (which reduces their risk as more steady partners will increase the likelihood of conversations about birth control protection in the context of all their other dreams," she added.
Have Teen Pregnancies Changed For Everyone?
While "the dramatic decline in the teen birth rate since the early 1990s has occurred across all race/ethnic and socioeconomic groups," as Wildsmith said, the declines "have been somewhat uneven across groups and there are still large disparities in the teen birth rate across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status."
For example, teen birth rates among Native (20.9), Hispanic (20.8), Pacific Islander (21.2), and Black (19.3) teens were more than double that of white teens (8.4) and over ten times higher than Asian teens (1.8) in 2023, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in April, which used data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
"We should recognize that there continues to be segments who are more likely to be at risk-young people who are poor or low income, those who live in rural communities, with less education, and with less hope for economic opportunities continue to be more vulnerable," Brindis said.
"The risks are that we don't continue to invest in young people across all groups, and especially women, if education opportunities are shut off, if economic options (as an alternative to going to college), if student loans are eliminated or more difficult to get, if families have more economic struggles, if access to birth control or other social support services, for example, many of these positive trends can evaporate," she added.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva
People Are Having Children Later in General
Last month, Newsweek broke down how birth rates have changed across all age groups over the past 50 years.
While mothers between the ages of 50 and 54 had no babies in 1975, this number gradually increased to more than 100 over the years and was 159 in 2024.
People in their twenties have had fewer babies, often delaying children to their thirties, which has meant the number of births in this age group has increased.
America is one of many countries around the world struggling with falling birth rates. Fertility rates are projected to average 1.6 births per woman over the next three decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office's latest forecast released this year.
This number is well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman required to maintain a stable population without immigration.
Many trying to tackle this issue have focused on public health policies and financial plans, often citing the 2008 financial crisis, its effect on housing, inflation and pay as a major contributor to why people delay having children, have fewer of them or to not have them at all.
The Donald Trump administration has made this issue one of its priorities, with the White House exploring the possibility of giving women a "baby bonus" of $5,000, according to an April New York Times report.
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