Preventing Teen Pregnancy

Amplify Youth Development

is the pregnancy prevention arm of CareNet of DuPage.  By equipping teens to make healthy decisions and encouraging parents to reinforce the message, Amplify helps teens remain abstinent, reducing teen pregnancy and abortion. 

Our trained educators use interactive classroom activities to help teens discover the value of abstaining from sexual activity until marriage.  Each lesson engages teens with medically-accurate facts and relatable, real-life stories that approach the concept of sexual wellness within the broader context of healthy relationships.  We teach the Relationship Attachment Model (RAM) to build relationships that will last.  Don’t touch unless you are both committed, don’t commit unless they are reliable, don’t rely until you know they are trustworthy and don’t trust them until you know them.  

Amplify equips teens with skills to implement a decision to commit to abstinence until marriage.  Resisting peer pressure, developing boundaries, and goal setting are all part of the curriculum.  Amplify’s program is presented in both middle and high schools for 3 or 5 days as part of a health curriculum.

Health education meets character education.  We explain how the decisions people make about sex influence their health throughout their lives.

 

"A lot of kids want to be abstinent, but they’ve been at the receiving end of a lot of advertising that scripts them to be sexually active at a very young age and with as many people as possible,” said Andrea Nelson, Director of Amplify.  “We give students permission to rewrite the script of their lives so that the choices they make now will help them build the futures they want.”

Amplify is Effective

"You made me realize how important it is to wait for sex. I used to think it was no big deal." – High School Student

In 2011, Amplify served 8,648 students in 35 public and private schools.  Today, over 40% of teens graduating from DuPage County schools have participated in Amplify's program and there has been a 17% decline in teen pregnancy since 2001!

 

After participating in an Amplify presentation:

“We’ve been dating for a long time and a lot of people have told me that sex is no big deal, and I should just do it. I am now surer about my decision to not involve sexual activity. Thank you for giving me that confidence.” – Program participant

  • 81% agree that they may be harmed by physical consequences if they choose to have sex (compared to 64% before the program).
  • 82% of middle school students said they could identify "high-risk" situations that would make remaining abstinent difficult (compared to 61% before the program).
  • 68% of teens were more in favor of abstinence than before the program.

 

Today’s Sexual Culture

Many factors contribute to the rise of sexual activity in today’s youth. 

  • Popular culture normalizes sexual behavior and ultimately exerts pressure on teens to become sexually active.  Today, teens feel that sex is not only normal, but expected in any relationship, almost immediately. 

“Being a teenager nowadays you are pretty much expected to do sexual things. My past relationships didn’t go very well and everything you taught me made me understand why.” –High School Student

  • Teens are naturally susceptible to poor decision-making.  A person’s pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs critical thinking and that anticipates consequences, doesn’t fully mature until age 23 or 24.  Otherwise sensible teenagers can be blind to potential consequences without the help of parents and mentors.
  • The internet and cable television have increased access to pornography, especially for young audiences. Today’s young people are the first generation “raised” on porn and  many teens are less inhibited than they were 20 years ago.
  • While parental values and religious involvement still have a powerful impact on teens’ choices, moral relativity and tolerance have largely eroded the foundation of most young adults’ decision-making.

The State of Sexual Activity Among Teens

  • 46% of high school students have had sexual intercourse.
  • 14% of high school students have had 4 or more sex partners during their lifetime.
  • 55% of males (54% of females) aged 15-19 had engaged in oral sex and more than 11% of males and females aged 15-19 had engaged in anal sex in one study.

 

The Outcome of Teenage Sexual Activity

STDs

  • 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD (sexually transmitted disease). In another study, 1 in 4 sexually active high school students got an STD by graduation.
  • 1 in 2 sexually active young people contract an STD by age 25.
  • There are more than 25 known STDs (prior to 1960, we knew about 2)

Pregnancy

  • Up to 30% of all teenage girls will get pregnant at least once by age 20.
  • Today, over 40% of all children born in the U.S. are born to single mothers.
  • Only 1.6% of mothers who have children before 18 complete college by the age of 30.

Emotional Consequences

Teens who have sex are more likely to be depressed (while over 60% of teenage girls who are abstinent report that they "rarely or never" feel depressed).

Relational Consequences Teenage girls who have sex are more likely to divorce later in life.

Couples that become sexually active quickly (before engagement or marriage) are more likely to be dissatisfied or unstable later in the relationship. Couples who wait until marriage to have sex have the highest levels or relationship satisfaction and stability.

 

Effective Pregnancy Prevention Strategies

Effective strategies engage teens at the emotional and relational level. Because a teen's "logic center" (prefrontal cortex) is underdeveloped until the mid-20s, teens often act on an emotional-relational impulse. Amplify Youth Development offers teens an engaging role model who will build a relationship with them – not just another public speaker.

"I liked how you connected everything to your own life. I have a lot of respect for you for waiting. It definitely makes me really think about abstinence." Program participant

 

 

Pregnancy prevention strategies need to focus on risk avoidance, not risk reduction. Around 48% of women with an unintended pregnancy said they were using birth control during the month they got pregnant. Effective programs don't falsely promise teens "protection" where none exists. Amplify answers teens questions about risk reduction, but our message is clear: the best protection is also the healthiest choice: abstinence.Research shows that parents are the most important voice in a teen's life when it comes to sex. For that reason, Amplify offers a variety of services for parents , enhancing their ability to positively influence their child's choices.Effective programs are age-appropriate and medically accurate. Ampilfy's program is adapted for the middle school or high school level, targeting the particular struggles of each age group. In addition, educators receive over 100 hours of training and pass two different certifications to ensure accuracy within the classroom.