Introduction

The high rates of teenage pregnancy among Anglophone countries are striking and New Zealand is no exception in this regard. Three quarters of all 760,000 births to teenage mothers are accounted for by the six Anglophone Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In 1998, there were 29.8 births to women below the age of 20 per 1,000 15- to 19-year-olds, which is the third highest rate among the OECD countries, behind the UK (30.8) and the US (52.1) (UNICEF, 2001). Meanwhile, Western and especially Northern European countries record rates between one half and one fifth of this. Equally striking is the stark divergence between teenage pregnancy rates among Maori New Zealanders (74 per 1,000) and non-Maori ‘Kiwis’ (18 per 1,000). Yet even this much lower rate compares unfavourably with the record of most of Western Europe.

There are a number of general international trends in teenage pregnancy that apply to New Zealand. The first one is the great paradox, alluded to in a UNICEF study on the phenomenon (UNICEF, 2001), that teenage pregnancy as an empirical phenomenon has actually decreased since 1970 – in New Zealand, the rate has more than halved from the 1970 rate of 64.3 per 1,000 births. Meanwhile, the average age of mothers at first birth has increased. Thus, while the phenomenon itself has decreased in magnitude over time – although remaining at constant rates in New Zealand since the early 1980s – it has increasingly become considered socially deviant and regarded as a social policy problem. Similarly, while out-of-wedlock births have increased across Western societies as more couples have embraced non-conventional forms of partnership, the fact that most teenage mothers are unwed seems to contribute to their portrayal as engaging in irresponsible behaviour. Thus, in 1998, 58% of all New Zealand mothers were married against only 6% of new teenage mothers. Just as elsewhere, overall fertility has also decreased rapidly since 1960, from 4.24 children per woman in 1960 to 1.92 in 1998 (Castles, 2004). Finally, comparative studies highlight the fact that higher rates of teenage pregnancy among minority ethnic communities are not unique to New Zealand (Cheesbrough et al, 1999; Dickson et al, 2000).