Sexually active but not pregnant: A comparison of teens who risk and teens who plan

Previous studies have compared contraceptive users with nonusers, and pregnant teens with nonpregnant ones. This paper reports the findings of a study of a sample of 119 women aged 21 and under who visited the Young Adult Clinic at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City during 1981. All of these women had been sexually active for a year or longer, but had never been pregnant. The expectation that such a sample would include mainly consistent users of contraception was unwarranted; within this special population were found young women who had never used contraception or who had only been sporadic users, as well as the consistent users. Moreover, there are many more similarities than differences among these groups, and their stated motivations for not becoming pregnant are the same. The consistent contraceptors were more likely to live with their mothers, to have mothers who worked, to indicate that their parents would help them have an abortion, and to indicate they would have an abortion should they become pregnant. The similarities between these young women are very important for programs, which often rely heavily on stated motivation or even on a clinic visit as evidence that a young woman intends to use a birth control method. There is nothing here to support this simple view. Instead the notion is substantiated that many adolescents may lack cognitive consistency on this subject or may lack the future orientation to be effective contraceptive users.