Preventing teen pregnancy requires long-term, intense effort. One six-week program will not have much lasting effect, nor will a couple of classroom hours. And, since a new crop of teenagers arrives on the scene every year, prevention efforts must be constantly reinvented. Communities can unite around the need to address teen pregnancy without expecting unanimity about ways to prevent it. Sometimes strategies even seem to conflict with each other, but that is not necessarily a problem.
Parents are important influences on their children's decisions about sexual behavior.
They should be supported in their roles and included in planning and developing strategies to prevent teen pregnancy. Focusing on boys and young men is critical to any effort to prevent teen pregnancy. Girls are indeed the ones who get pregnant, but it takes two to cause a pregnancy. Focusing on the Kids opens with an overview of the promising programs that can help prevent teen pregnancy. The other chapters explain how to tailor programs to stages of adolescent development, to create interventions for girls, to involve boys and young men in prevention efforts, and to involve young people themselves in developing and implementing programs.