Teenage Mothers Risk Premature Babies (20th September, 2014)

A newly-released study suggests that teenage mothers are 'more likely to give birth prematurely'.
 The report from University College Cork, Ireland, says pregnant girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are at a much higher risk of giving birth to premature babies.

 They said this was particularly so if it was a second pregnancy.
 The researchers found that a quarter of all teenage mothers became pregnant again before they turned 20.

 Head researcher Ali Khashan looked at the pregnancies of over 56,000 women in the northwest of England over a three-year period. There were 3,636 women aged between 14 and 17 at the time of birth, and 7,506 between 18 and 19.
They found teenage mothers were more likely to be underweight and come from a white ethnic background.

The researchers published their findings in the journal ‘BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth’.
They call for better sex education at school and the promotion and use of contraception after a teen has given birth for the first time. The researchers said the rates of teenage pregnancy were related to the mothers’ social background.

They discovered that around thirty per cent of the teenage mothers came from poorer areas.
 Mr Khashan also suggested the body of young teens may not be ready for childbirth: “It is possible that the increased risk of poor pregnancy outcome is related to biological immaturity,” he said. He also noted teenage girls did not get proper medical advice after becoming pregnant and that health service workers generally focused on them less when they had a second child.