Some Groups See Rise in Teen Pregnancy
June 8, 2000
By Tom Lee
Asian Pacific Islanders currently have one of the fastest growing teenage pregnancy rates in the nation, at a time when U.S. teen births overall are decreasing.
According to a government report, in states with a high percentage of APIs, such as California, the birth rates of API teens under the age of 15 have jumped significantly between 1986 and 1996. In fact, of the state’s 61,107 teenage births in 1997—compared to 68,284 such births two years prior—2,779 were by API mothers, found the State of California, Department of Health Services.
Because of the rising number of APIs in the United States and the growing number of teenagers, teen pregnancy is expected to continue to be a problem. In California alone, the overall teenage population will grow 35 percent by the year 2005.
“Just from our experience in the community, we see pregnancy increasingly becoming an issue in the community,” said Rina Mehta, development associate at Asian and Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health. “It’s more prevalent now because of the rising population.”
For the most part, however, the issue hasn’t been addressed. Prevailing myths of API communities being very affluent and privileged, said Mehta, lead people to doubt there’s a problem. “The general public believes APIs are well off, healthy and successful. It goes hand-in-hand with the model minority myth,” she said.
But the stereotypes and overall statistics are not necessarily an accurate reflection of the API community. Certain ethnic groups have disproportionally high rates of teen pregnancy, while others, such as Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian groups, maintain the lowest rates of all populations. In particular, one ethnic group with a growing teen birth rate is the Cambodian community.
Births from Cambodian teen mothers made up 5 percent of all teen births in California, according to the 1990 U.S. Census. The only other API group that has more of such births is the Laotian community, which makes up 9 percent of all California teen births. The statistics for current figures will not be known until the 2000 U.S. Census has been tabulated, but API community advocates are predicting similar numbers, and they say the high pregnancy rates are largely due to poor socio-economic conditions in these communities. Indeed in 1990, 40 percent of Cambodian and 30 percent of Laotian families were living in poverty.
“There is a [correlation] between rates of pregnancy and Southeast Asian teens,” said Ann Cheatham, research coordinator for Asians and Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health. “Their poverty rates are much higher, they don’t have access to health care services, and there’s a lack of access to education.”
Even with these ethnic groups increasing in population, mostly concentrated in California, no studies with formal statistics have been done to address the problems of these communities. And no studies will be implemented until the public perceives there to be a problem, said Mehta. “The lack of data presents a circular problem. With no data, there is no issue [to bring up],” she said. “There’s not a lot of research to address this problem.”
However, some have started to look into the problem. The Long Beach Unified School District, along with the city of Long Beach, where the largest Cambodian community in the United States lives, sponsored an informal survey of high school girls. Out of 400 female API students at Polytechnic High School, almost 80 percent said they experienced sexual harassment; 16 percent claim to have also been harassed by teachers or staff. Half of the girls who participated in the survey said the aggravation impacted their ability to learn, and negatively affected their participation in class and in extra-curricular activities.
This harassment, along with poverty rates, are root causes for the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the Cambodian community, Cheatham contended. “We believe harassment contributes to a large percentage of [the rates],” she explained. “We see sexual harassment especially in recently-arrived immigrant families. Being female and being immigrants are factors that stack up against them as targets. It reflects people’s racism and anti-immigration [mentality].”
Mehta agreed: “A lot of things need to be done or else poverty will equal inequality. We need to look at gender inequality. We need to eliminate sexism and racism from our society. These are the [underlying] causes of high [teenage pregnancy rates].”
Educating the communities about safe sex is one of the first steps that can be taken to help reduce the pregnancy rates. Even though sex is rarely talked about in these Asian communities, starting a flow of conversation is crucial in addressing the problem, said Mehta. “There are some barriers to talking about reproductive health and sexuality. People need to recognize it as a problem and be willing to talk about it,” she said. “That is just one of the barriers.”
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