Yet only one-third of pregnant teens receive adequate prenatal care. Babies of young mothers commonly suffer low birth weight and childhood health problems. Later, daughters of teens are likely to drop out of high school and become teen moms themselves. While girls in the developing world starve without choice, American girls starve themselves. As young as age 10, girls begin diets that can lead to anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
Teen girls are twice as likely as boys to report that they suffer from depression.
World Vision offers a range of programs from tutoring to assistance to pregnant teens through community partnerships in urban centers such as Chicago, New York, the Twin Cities, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Pacific Northwest. Some 74 percent of girls who had sex before age 14 report that it was involuntary. Alan Guttmacher Institute Girls in the United States are sexually abused almost three times more than boys.