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NASHVILLE, Tenn.-The birth rate among teenagers in the United States rose in 2006 for the first time since 1991 along with the number of births to unmarried women, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The rise comes in a culture where Jamie Lynn Spears, the star of a hit Nickelodeon children's show, is expecting a baby at age 16, popular clothing stores like Abercrombie & Fitch are promoting shirts with messages like "Make Love, Not Babies," and "Awkward Mornings Beat Boring Nights," and funding for abstinence education in public schools is under fire.CDC figures indicate the birth rate for girls aged 15-19 rose 3 percent, from 40.5 live births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 in 2005 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. The CDC said this follows a 14-year downward trend in which the teen birth rate fell by 34 percent from its all-time peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991."It's way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend," Stephanie Ventura, head of the Reproductive Statistics Branch at the CDC, said in a news release in December. "But given the long-term progress we've witnessed, this change is notable."Unmarried childbearing reached a record high in 2006, the statistics show, with the total number of births to unmarried women rising nearly 8 percent to more than 1.6 million."This represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in non-marital births began," the CDC said. "The biggest jump was among unmarried women aged 25-29, among whom there was a 10 percent increase between 2005 and 2006."Hollywood actresses like Halle Berry and Angelina Jolie appear to have no qualms about bearing children out of wedlock, and they're praised as glamorous, trend-setting stars in the modern culture.Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said those who want their children to buck the cultural trends and comprehend the sacredness of sex and childbearing should be careful to emphasize the goal of abstinence."Encouraging 'abstinence until college' rather than 'abstinence until marriage' will not help the millions of children being born to and raised by single mothers -- who are nearly five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by their married mother and father," Perkins wrote in his Washington Update Dec. 19.Chris Leland, executive director of college student ministries at Focus on the Family, said Abercrombie's sexually suggestive T-shirts and advertisements are meant to change perceptions of what's morally right and wrong."They are not out to sell clothes, even though they are a business," Leland told Family News in Focus. "They're about something bigger, which is creating sort of a cultural identity for kids. It's not surprising they would continue to push the edge of not only the advertising envelope, but sort of an ideological envelope as well."As in the days of Noah....
