Today I was checking the statistics about who is reading my blog. Yup – there IS Big Brother in the blog world who can tell me exactly who is looking at my site! What I find really cool is that I can see which countries people live in that are viewing my blog. I have had people reading my blog from France (okay, my daughter lived there…she probably made her friends look at it), Australia (my other daughter lives there…it was probably her), Dominican Republic (a daughter has a friend there…), but India? Denmark? Haiti? Whoever you are, thank you for checking the blog out!
But it got me thinking….do people realize just how significant the pregnancy rates in our country are compared to other countries? How about condom use? And what DO other countries teach their kids compared to ours? Does it make a difference?
A few years ago when visiting my daughter in Paris, the Metro had these posters all over the place. Even though most of it is in French, the message is clear: Let’s talk to our kids about sex! It says: What’s the Big Deal? (It says some other stuff, too, but I don’t speak French. I sure hope it’s blog-appropriate!)
(I couldn’t resist – I took a photo. I’ve never seen anything like this in public around here!)
So, how does the good old USA compare to other countries when it comes to pregnancy rates?
Well, I decided to first look at the countries that have checked out my blog. (I know, I’m so clever, aren’t I?)
Here’s what we have:
|
Countries |
Number of births per 1000 15-19 year old women in 2011 |
| Slovenia*Denmark |
1.4 5.3 |
| Netherlands |
6.0 |
| France |
6.6 |
| Australia |
12.9 |
| Canada |
14.4 |
| United States |
32.7 |
| India |
36.4 |
| HaitiDominican Republic |
42.9 101.4 |
|
Countries*(Would you believe that right after I finalized this post, I checked my stats (again) and saw that Slovenia had just read my blog? I had to do a last-minute add-on to my list! And look at their pregnancy rate! Fantastic!) |
Other countries I thought you might be curious about are:
|
Number of births per 1000 15-19 year old women in 2011 |
|
| Austria |
5.5 |
| Sweden |
6.4 |
| France |
6.6 |
| Belgium |
7.4 |
| Ireland |
9.9 |
| European Union (EU) |
11.7 |
| Poland United States
Mexico |
12.7 32.7 64.6 |
I promise I’m not making this up! You can find this information through the United Nations Statistics Division. Just google UNdata. Or, to make your life easier, here’s a link. You can plug in whichever countries you want to check out.
http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=birth+rate&d=WDI&f=Indicator_Code%3aSP.ADO.TFRT
If you want some more detailed information about these statistics, Planned Parenthood has a great fact sheet. I will be referencing it again in future blogs. You can access it with this link:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/pregnancy_teens_2010-01.pdf
But why are our pregnancy rates so much higher than our European counterparts? And can we do what they do to bring our rates down? Hummmm….. I think that will be a good discussion for another blog….. But if you want a hint, review the photo up above. Remember, this poster was in a PUBLIC place and geared for PRE-TEENS….and they actually mention the word SEX.
Until next time….
