Parents Speak Up, Your Kids are Listening. If you don’t talk to your kids about sex, someone else will. Everyday, your children are bombarded with sexual messages from the media, their friends, the Internet, and other sources. These challenges are universal. But they have a unique impact in the Hispanic community. Did you know that:
- Each year, 9 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur among young people aged 15-24; this is the group with the highest STD rates in the U.S.1
- Hispanics have the second-highest teen pregnancy rate:
- 131 young women per 1,000 compared to 75 for the national average.2
- Hispanics have the highest teen birth rate.
- 83 per 1,000, more than double the national rate.3
- 51% of Hispanics/Latinas in the U.S. become pregnant at least once before age 204. And in 2005, nearly 80 percent of Hispanic teen births were to unmarried mothers.5
But this is a solvable problem, because we have you.
- 9 out of 10 teens say that it would be easier to wait to have sex if they could talk with their parents about it.6
1. American Social Health Association. Retrieved in March 2007.
2. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. October 2006.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 56, No. 6, pp. 55, 57 (December 5, 2007).
6. See supra note 2
