OVER a thousand births by adolescent Filipinas were sired by fathers who were more than 20 years older than them in 2020, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Based on the data, some 1,121 children were born to adolescent girls between 10 and 19 years, and sired by men who were over 20 years their senior in 2020.
The data also showed 25,803 children were born to adolescent girls and sired by men who were 6 to 10 years older; and another 8,464 children were born to girls and sired by men 11 to 20 years their senior.
“Fathers who are more than 10 years older than the adolescent mothers are responsible for about 6 to 7 percent of births, every year, from 2016 to 2020,” PSA said. “However, almost one in five adolescent births do not have information on the age of the father.”
The data also showed that 2,113 children were born to 10 to 14 year olds. Majority of these or 592 births were sired by 15- to 19-year-old male adolescents.
This was followed by 418 births sired by fathers aged 20 to 24 years old and 140 were sired by fathers aged 25 to 29 years old.
The data also showed two children of 10 to 14 year olds were sired by men aged 45-49 years old; and one each was sired by a 50- to 54-year-old man and another by a 55- to-59-year-old man.
In total, some 876 children were sired by men whose ages were not stated in the birth registrations.
“While the number of total adolescent births is declining, births to mothers younger than 15 years old has been slightly increasing each year, apart from the onset of the pandemic in 2020,” PSA noted.
Between 2016 and 2020, registered births to adolescent mothers aged 10-14 years increased by 11 percent from 1,903 in 2016 to 2,113 or 0.14 percent of all registered births in 2020.
10-14-year-old moms
During this period, an average of five to seven births daily are to mothers 10-14 years old. Moreover, the birth rate in 2016 was 37.2 per 100,000 females 10-14 years old, which was up by 8.4 percent in 2020 or 40.3 births per 100,000 women aged to 10-14 years.
Meanwhile, among the 15- to 19-year-olds, the majority of their children or 66,850 were fathered by those aged 20 to 24 years old.
This was followed by 36,772 children sired by men in the same age group as the women or 15 to 19 years old and 18,741 children sired by 25 to 29 year old men.
A closer examination of the data also showed 31 children born to teenage girls were sired by senior citizens aged between 60 and 64 years old and 22 children sired by older seniors aged 65 and over.
“In 2020, 23.8 percent of live births to adolescent mothers aged 10 to 19 years old have fathers in the same age group, exhibiting an increasing trend from the registered share of 18.6 percent in 2016,” PSA.
The number of registered live births to adolescent mothers or those aged 10 to 19 years showed a decreasing trend in the past five years.
A decline of 22.7 percent in adolescent births was observed from 2016 to 2020 with 203,085 and 157,060 births, respectively. These births consistently made up about one-tenth of all live births in the country.
From 2016 to 2020, the adolescent birth rate has been declining each year. Between this period, a decrease of 24 percent was observed from 20.1 per 1,000 females aged 10 to 19 years in 2016 to 15.2 per 1,000 females in 2020.
Majority of births to mothers 10 to 19 years old, in the period 2016 to 2020, were first-order births accounting for more than 80 percent of the total adolescent births in the country each year.
Meanwhile, between 15 and 17 percent of the births are second-born to mothers 10 to 19 years old, while the remaining 1 to 2 percent were third or higher-order births.
In 2020, BusinessMirror reported that bef-re celebrating their 15th birthday, a total of 59 children got married in 2017, according to data released by the PSA.
An overwhelming majority of these children, 51, were girls. PSA added that around 32,353 teenage girls between 15 and 19 years old got married in the same year.
While none of these teen brides were married in the Roman Catholic Church, 31 of them were married according to Muslim tradition and 17 were married through a tribal ceremony. The data showed two were married through other religious ceremonies and one was married through civil rites (full story: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/10/18/becoming-30-at-12/).