Teen-Age Illegitimacy: A Pisgah Perspective.

Today's family living teacher is faced increasingly with the growing concern about illicit pregnancies among high school and college girls. The drop-outs or "temporary transfers," the conferences in confidence and the protruding profiles of their female students provide teachers with ample evidence of such pregnancies. It is well known that the total number of females aged 10-14 has increased markedly during the last five years, due to the high birth-rate that commenced in and has continued since 1946. What is not so well known is that this age group, which includes junior high girls, was responsible for a slightly smaller proportion of all illicit births in 1959 (2.1%) than in 1938 (2.3%). To look only at the distribution of illicit births among given age groups can be misleading, however, due to the fluctuations in the percentage of all single females who are in any one age group and due to the much higher proportion of all single females who are teenagers. Hypocrisy is compounded when at the same time youth is admonished to grow up and be adult evidences of adult sexual laxness grow.