CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 354Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive HealthReproductive Health and ContraceptionIntimate Partner and Family Violence

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 27 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Relationship dynamics and teenage pregnancy in South Africa

Jewkes, Rachel, Vundule, Caesar, Maforah, Fidelia, Jordaan, Esmé·2001·Social Science & Medicine
DOI 10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00177-5
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Teenage pregnancy is extremely common in South Africa. Whilst its 'problematic' nature is a subject of debate, it reflects a pattern of sexual activity which puts teenagers at risk of HIV. Currently one in five pregnant teenagers is infected with the virus. This creates a new imperative to understand teenage pregnancy and the pattern of high risk sexual activity of which it is one consequence. This was an exploratory study undertaken to investigate factors associated with teenage pregnancy amongst sexually active adolescents in an urban and peri-urban context. The study used a matched case control design, with 191 cases and 353 school or neighbourhood, age-matched controls. Subjects were under 19 years and recruited from township areas of Cape Town. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain information on socio-economic factors, contraceptive knowledge and use, and sexual behaviour. Conditional logistic regression was used to analyse the relationship between teenage pregnancy and the factors investigated. The results presented focus on relationship dynamics and their association with the risk of pregnancy. Both groups of teenagers had been dating for a mean of two and a half years and about half were still with their first sexual partner. The partners of the pregnant teenagers were significantly older, less likely to be in school and less likely to have other girlfriends. The pregnant teenagers were significantly more likely to have experienced forced sexual initiation and were beaten more often. They were much less likely to have confronted their boyfriend when they discovered he had other girlfriends. Multiple modelling shows that both forced sexual initiation and unwillingness to confront an unfaithful partner are strongly associated with pregnancy and also related to each other. We argue that the associations are mediated through unequal power relations within the relationship which are reinforced by violence. We further discuss indicators of greater intimacy within relationships of the pregnant teenagers which may suggest that more of the pregnancies were wanted than was suggested. Both of these conclusions pose critical challenges for health promoters.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00177-5

Cites

24 of 24 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 27 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Flisher, 1993, Risk-taking behaviour of Cape Penninsular high-school students. Part VIII. Sexual behaviour, South African Medical Journal, 83, 495
  2. Mathai, M. (1997). A study of the knowledge and problem solving ability of family planning nurses in Mdantsane. Unpublished thesis, MPhil (Maternal and Child Health), University of Cape Town, Cape Town
  3. Ncayiyana, 1989, Pregnant adolescents in rural Transkei, South African Medical Journal, 75, 231
  4. Varga, C. (1998). Placing adolescent child-bearing in perspective: antenatal health-care utilisation and pregnancy outcome. Paper presented to 4th Reproductive Priorities Conference, Van Der Bijl Park, South Africa, 18–21 August.
  5. Vundule, C., Maforah, N. F., Jewkes, R. & Jordaan, E. (2000). Risk factors for teenage pregnancy amongst African adolescents in metropolitan Cape Town: a case control study, South African Medical Journal (in press).

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–200 of 353

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Jewkes, R., Vundule, C., Maforah, F., & Jordaan, E.
Affiliations
  • South African Medical Research Council (ZA)
  • Government of South Africa (ZA)
Corresponding author
Jewkes, Rachel
ORCID
Jewkes, Rachel
Venue
Social Science & Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2001-03
Volume
52
Issue
5
Pages
733-744
ISSN
0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00177-5
OpenAlex
W1976460573
Cited by
354
References
27
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 34 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 25
FWCI
18.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Social Science & Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • LSHTM Research Online (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Reproductive Health and Contraception
  • Social Sciences › Health › Intimate Partner and Family Violence
Keywords
adolescent pregnancy, relational dynamics, adolescent sexual behavior, intimate partner violence, contraceptive use, HIV risk, unwanted pregnancy, Cape Town townships
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior, Contraceptive Agents, Female, Female, Fertility, Humans, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Male, Pregnancy, Pregnancy in Adolescence, Surveys and Questionnaires, Risk Factors, Sexual Behavior, Socioeconomic Factors, South Africa, Logistic Models, Case-Control Studies, Domestic Violence

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review