Most teenage mums – 80 per cent – say pregnancy was unintended, and nearly a third resort to abortion, with 10 per cent delivering then abandoning their babies at hospitals, the Department of Health says.

The woes of teenage mums do not end there, as they are at risk of depression or even suicide, as their marriages often end in divorce.

Dr Jiraporn Arunakul, an adolescent medicine specialist at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, told a recent press conference that problems stem from the fact that most teenagers lack the mental and social maturity to support a premature pregnancy.

Jiraporn said teen pregnancy also caused emotionally instability – stress, depression, poor school performance or suicide, if the family and society continued to pressure them. She cited a hospital’s study that 42 per cent of polled teenage mums had pre-natal depression while 20 per cent had post-natal depression. This affected young mums’ and infants’ health; 18 per cent of babies were prematurely born and had substandard weight, while some died right after birth.

Young parents’ lack of parenting skills also reportedly led to lower growth and slower development rates in infants than their peers, she said. Many teenage couples ended up divorcing, so this led to a rise in single mums under 15. Many of them had no educational opportunities, she added.

Obstetrics and gynaecology lecturer Dr Sanya Patrachai said that from 2011-2015, Ramathibodi’s teenage mum clinic found nearly 88 per cent of teenage mothers registered for prenatal services carried babies to term while 88 per cent had babies that weighed over 2.5 kg at birth. The figures were worse for young mums who didn’t attend the clinic – only 76 per cent carried babies for nine months and only 82 per cent had babies weighing over 2.5kg.

Education and life skills needed

Paediatric lecturer Suwanna Reangkanjanaseart has said that teenagers need to be taught life skills with self-esteem promotion, as well as sex education to prevent teenage sex. They need to channel their sex drive into sport or study, art, music or meditation.

She also suggested the promotion of ‘safe sex’ to stop sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy and promoting a family’s role in taking care of teenage mums and proper and positive child raising.

Suwanna said the new draft law aiming to cut teen pregnancies and provide assistance to young mothers would be a tool to lessen the problem, as there would be clear action plans, budgets and inter-agency integration in place.

Dr Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn said the number of teens getting venereal diseases had doubled from the previous four to five years. That suggested many have unsafe sex.

Wiwat wondered if the decline in the national birth rate stemmed from “easy” access to abortion. He hoped the new draft law, when implemented, would provide mechanisms to solve the problem and halve teen pregnancies over the next decade.