International Article
Demographic characteristics of fathers of infants born to adolescent mothers in Taiwan

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Abstract

It has been well accepted that effective programs for prevention of adolescent pregnancy should involve adolescent women and their partners. Using data from certificates of live births in Taichung County, Taiwan, in 1994, the demographic characteristics of fathers whose infants were born to adolescent women were compared with a matched group fathers whose infants were born to women aged ≥20 years. Most of the fathers of infants born to adolescent women were adults: 57% of the fathers of infants born to women aged ≤15 years were ≥30 years of age. Fathers of infants born to adolescent women had a lower educational level than that of matched fathers. These demographic characteristics of fathers should be carefully interpreted and taken into consideration in developing intervention programs.

Section snippets

Methods

The civil registration system in Taiwan is one of the most complete systems in the world. Every newborn is registered at the local household registration authority with a certificate of live birth, in which parental sociodemographic information including age, educational level, occupation, and residence is recorded. Data on the father’s age, educational level, and occupation were derived from certificates of live birth for all recorded resident births in Taichung County, Taiwan, in 1994. There

Results

Among the 20,318 recorded live births in Taichung County in 1994, 1.3% of the fathers were teenagers aged ≤19 years, compared with 4.2% of the mothers. The missing rates of demographic data on live birth certificates in this study were only 0.4% for mother’s age, 0.9% for father’s age, 1.2% for father’s education, and 2.4% for father’s occupation. Table 1 shows the percentage distribution of the fathers by age, according to the adolescent mother’s age. Most of the fathers of infants born to

Discussion

The civil registration system in Taiwan started at the end of the last century is one of the most complete systems in the world. Every newborn is requested to register at the local household registration authority and is given an identification number at the time of registration. In addition, the certificate of live birth contains relatively complete sociodemographic information about parents of newborns.

The most important findings in this study were that about two thirds of fathers of infants

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