Following on from Granjura's post, even Catholic schools have to teach sex education and that includes birth control, and I agree with your post Granjura that some young girls know about birth control but nevertheless will knowingly become pregnant. I think there may be several reasons for this, a) They think it will move them into the adult world and somehow validate their lives b) They think a baby will give them unconditional love, which would possibly be lacking in their lives and c) and probably this is the most contentious reason, but I know several girls, that one of my son's went to school with who did this very thing, they knew that it wouldl give them access to a whole load of benefits, so they could set up home, away from their mother and quite often "the stepfather" half siblings and sometimes a whole load of chaos. Another factor that I often think is pertinent, this often happens to girls whose mother did the very same thing and I think in some cases we could well be on the third generation of a self perpetuating cycle. Can it be a coincidence that England and Ireland, who both hand out far more lucrative state aid to single mothers, have the highest rates of teenage mothers? Even it the more traditional Catholic countries Italy and Spain now have some of the lowest birth rates in the Western world, they also have very minimal state aid as far as supporting young single mothers, could there be a correlation here? Their low birth rates across the whole of their societies also demonstrate to me that they are no longer in thrall to the Catholic church which I would see as good thing in that the women in these countries have taken control of their own lives. Cristina Odone, on Question Time a couple of weeks ago said she thought it was ridiculous the way flats would be handed out to young people in this country. She actually said in Italy most young adults would have to live with their parents, and also pointed out that it was common knowledge in Italy that they had to resort to having their sex lives in their cars. I imagine like we all did 30 or 40 years ago when our whole raison d'etre was NOT to get pregnant. What was it we knew then that they don't know now? and yes there are always going to be "the occasional accident" but lets face it there is far more on offer now what with morning after pills and implants than our generation had at their disposal. Possibly it was the fact that you just knew you couldn't go home to your parents and tell them you were up the duff and possibly we also knew there would be no state aid forthcoming that somehow focused the mind. When Jerry Hall was still married to Mick Jagger, he managed to pull yet another "girlfriend and love child" out of the hat who was more or less the same age as their youngest, Jerry was magnanimous enough to allow him to bring that child to her house and let him mix with his half siblings, although she did chide him at the time saying his mode of behaviour "just causes chaos" even with money!