SELECTED SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND MEDICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMIPAROUS 12–16-YEAR-OLD GIRLS (NEWBURGH, NEW YORK)

Abstract

The fertility rate of a school-age population-at-risk in a community of moderate size (Newburgh, New York, and environs) based on hospital records for the period 1959-1963 appears to be stable at approximately 10% of 12-16-year-old girls. A detailed review of academic and medical records confirms the sociomedical and educational profile previously documented by others, and shows no unique conformation characteristic of the community nor did an individual predictive profile emerge which might make this population especially identifiable for screening or prevention programs. It is hoped that community attitudes toward social and economic poverty can be altered enough to cease punitive measures such as withholding education and public assistance from these girls. These approaches appear to be an organized escape-into-ignorance behavioral pattern whereby the community prohibits hospital-based family-planning clinics or any teaching resembling sex education in the schools, fearing that these activities may be interpreted as sanctioning and encouraging illegitimacy. Surely the time has come to re-evaluate our public education and health practices toward a problem inexorably linked to population growth and increasing public-health education. More knowledge is needed regarding dating and supervision of teen-agers. This study does indicate that the potentially pregnant school-age girl tends not to participate in organized extracurricular activities, so that community efforts to supply "family-life" education through girls' clubs, neighborhood and church groups, Y.W.C.A., and similar organizations will fail to attract the very population it is designed to reach. The school must prepare to accept this role realistically since informal educational experience does not meet the needs of these girls.