Nearly half of the pregnant teens in Shanghai were impregnated
by boys they met on the Internet, a local doctor has said.
Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor at No 411 Hospital who oversees the
city's first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, said 46 percent of the
more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past
two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the
Internet.
And most of the fathers disappeared after learning about the
pregnancy, and some of the mothers did not even know the fathers'
names.
Zhang blamed the situation on adult websites, videos and books
and appealed to parents, teachers and society at large to pay more
attention to sex education.
Zhang said most of the girls the center dealt with did not
understand sex and considered abortions to be harmless. She said
about 10 percent of them had had as many as three abortions.
"There were some who were unaware they were even pregnant until
very late," she said.
One teenager who visited a hospital because of stomach pains was
surprised to discover that she was more than five months pregnant.
She had an induced labor, Zhang said.
The doctor said the hotline had been receiving more calls since
the summer break started. It received 285 calls in the first week
of this month, a 12 percent increase over the same period in the
preceding month.
Zhang said many teens got their information about sex from the
Internet rather than from school or parents.
A survey by Zhang's hospital found that only 7.9 percent of the
parents queried talked to their children about sex, and 79 percent
high school and university students said they got their ideas about
sex from the Internet.
The survey involved 2,043 parents, 2,680 teachers and 1,577
teenagers.
Forty-six percent of the students said schools did not provide
enough sex education and 15 percent said schools should tell them
about birth control.
A quarter of the teachers said schools should teach students
about birth control.
Sixty-six percent of the teachers said parents, teachers and
society at large all have roles to play in teaching students about
sex.
Meanwhile, 46 percent of the parents said it was up to schools
to teach their kids about sex, while 11 percent blamed "society"
for causing early pregnancies.
(China Daily July 10, 2007)