You're listening to Latinx Therapy. The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional and is not a substitute for psychological diagnosis or treatment. I'm your host, Adriana Alejandra Alejandre, licensed marriage and family therapist.

This is my first solo episode, and I'm going to be talking about teen pregnancy.

So let's define teen pregnancy.

Teen pregnancy refers to someone who has a child between the ages of 13 and 19.

While Latin exers currently have the highest teen birth rates,

they have also had a dramatic recent decline in rates.

Since 2007, the teen birth rate has declined by 58% for our Latinx community,

compared with declines of 53% for African Americans and 47% for Caucasians.

In our culture, there have been certain factors that have certain factors that are beliefs that have contributed to the high rates of teen pregnancies for Latinas. Let's talk about a huge one. In our culture, birth control means you're

having sex and that means we are whores or hoes. That's how parents may think of us.

Some parents are too scared to talk to their kids about having sex because they think they're

telling them it's okay to have sex. Research shows that teens who talk with their parents about sex,

relationships, birth controls, and pregnancy begin to have sex at a later age. Use condoms and birth

control more often if they do have sex. They also have better communication with romantic partners

and have sex less often according to the CDC,

the Center for Disease Control.

There's also a belief that anytime a child makes a mistake, it reflects back as to how the

parents raised that child.

So I often hear,

Why did you do that to me?

What did we do wrong?

What did we do wrong?

...