I wonder if this is true? A person who commented on the Daily Mail website on the story below, wrote:
In The Netherlands a single mother with a child is not entitled to claim benefits or social housing until aged 22. This makes young women more likely to be careful about teenage pregnancy and get on with their education and lives instead of stuck in a hole of state dependency.- Adam, UK
If this is indeed true, it casts a different light on the debate on teenage pregnancy in the UK. Usually the argument is all about sex education and I think, if memory serves, it is suggested that the Netherlands has a particularly open form of sex education which, it is suggested, does no harm because the teenage pregnancy rate is lower that Britain's. But if this commenter on the Daily Mail website is correct, it would seem quite possible that in fact any lower teenage pregnancy rate could be due to the benefits system rather than the nature of sex education. It might be that the benefits system is the most influential kind of sex education around.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Parenting • Welfare benefits
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I used to have a Dutch Lodger she said that in Holland single mums have to start work when their child is 6.
Posted by: David at February 20, 2008 04:34 PM
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I thought that this was common knowledge?
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2007/12/pregnancy-targets-to-be-missed.html
scroll down to bottom
Posted by: Mark Wadsworth at February 15, 2008 01:31 PM