Adolescent pregnancies increase after three-year decline
In 2022
Following a three-year decline, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported a rise in adolescent pregnancies among Filipino girls in 2022.
During a forum on Thursday, Feb. 29, Marizza B. Grande, Assistant National Statistician for Civil Registration Service at the PSA, said that the number of births to mothers under 20 years of age in 2022 had reached 150,138, showing a 10.2 percent increase from the previous year.
This growth follows a gradual decline in adolescent births in 2019 (180,916), 2020 (157,060), and 2021 (136,302).
Grande revealed that one in 10 babies born during that year were the outcome of teenage pregnancies.
The highest proportions of these teenage births were observed in Calabarzon at 12.7 percent, Region 3 at 11.4 percent, and Metro Manila at 8.4 percent.
Grande also said that the fathers of these children were typically three to five years older than the mothers.
Conversely, the youngest father reported in that year was 10 years old, while the mother was only 11 years old.
Teenage marriage
The same uptrend was also observed in adolescent marriages, which increased to 11.2 percent in 2022 coming from a record-low 11.5 percent in 2020 and 16.7 percent in pandemic-year 2021.
This translates to a total of 18,549 or 4.1 percent of registered marriages involving an adolescent male or an adolescent female.
Of the total 18,549 registered marriages, about 4.1 percent involved an adolescent male or an adolescent female.
Most of these marriages were between younger females and males who were older than them by one to nine years (71.1 percent), while 12.5 percent comprised marriages of male and female under 20 years old.
Only 6.1 percent of adolescent marriages come from both male and female of the same age, based on the 2022 PSA data.
The government has been campaigning against teenage pregnancy and marriage through pushing for policies in the legislative body and advocacies.
The Commission on Population Development (POPCOM), for an instance, eyed to collaborate with pro-contraceptive organizations such as Bayer Philippines, the FORUM, among others to enable Filipinos enjoy their rights to family planning and contraception.
Meanwhile, former president Rodrigo Duterte signed into law the Republic Act 11596 or "An Act Prohibiting the Practice of Child Marriage," which criminalizes the union of an adult with minor.
Under the law, any person who arranges child marriage will be subject to fines and/or prison time, and be behind the bars of up to 12 years if the perpetrator is a parent, step-parent, or guardian of the minor.
Those who will perform or officiate the formal rites of child marriage will also receive fines and/or prison time, and those in positions of public office will be disqualified from office.