P
to understand by What there are girls and adolescents in Mexico is necessary to analyze some structural factors. In principle, knowing that Mexicans join or marry at an early age. Despite the marriage before the age of 18, before completing them, 18.2 percent of the girls are joined by a fifth! These are legitimized unions in the communities of belonging, of patriarchal guidelines that have been persist for centuries, more frequently in rural communities, native peoples, isolated areas or in extreme poverty.
In many cases they are marriages arranged by parents who impose on daughters, or sons, and there are also teenagers who decide as social reproduction of the environment. There are broad regional differences in the country that are direct expression of the inequality of opportunities.
The entities with the highest percentage of early unions are Guerrero, where 35 percent join before 18, in Chiapas (27.6), in Zacatecas (27.1) and in another 13 other entities more than 20 percent. They are marriages that contrast with states with less than 14 percent of these early unions. In Mexico City 7.3 percent; in Aguascalientes, 11.4; In Querétaro, 13.5, and Jalisco, 13.7 percent.
Another structural factor is access to education. It has been documented in various countries that the greatest schooling leads to postpon the age of union and motherhood. In Mexico after 15 years, school attendance is significantly reduced, to 15 years 83 percent of Mexican adolescents attend school; At age 17, 69 percent are already 18 years old, only 53 percent. Among the reasons for school abandonment, 36 percent indicate that it was because it failed subjects, he did not like to study or already reached his educational goal; 28 percent for lack of money or need to work; 6.3 percent stopped studying because he joined or married and 5.6 because he got pregnant or had a son; Another 3.4 percent because her family did not let her continue studying, she had to devote himself to home tasks or the couple did not leave her (Inegi, National Survey of Demographic Dynamics, Enadid, 2023).
These structural factors show that early maternalities are one of the expressions of poverty. After a stagnation in the fees, in recent years there was a reduction in the fertility of adolescents (from 15 to 19 years) of 30 percent in the last 10 years (it went from 77 to 50 births per thousand adolescents). The decline in the fertility of adolescents occurred in all entities of the country, probably related to the improvements of family income that were reported in recent days (the departure of more than 10 million Mexicans from poverty) and the reduction of school abandonment at the upper middle level (from 14.5 to 11.6 in the last six years) driven by scholarships, although with regional differences that express the socio -economic inequalities. The contrasts are visible: while in Guerrero 82 births are recorded per thousand adolescents aged 15 to 19, and in Chiapas 79 per thousand, in Mexico City the rate is from 19, in Baja California Sur and Querétaro is 39 births per thousand adolescents. Within the entities the most isolated municipalities show and with less accessibility to services. Thirteen percent of adolescents have a child before the age of 18, and among indigenous adolescents the percentage is 20 percent. Among the next variables that accompany the decrease in the fertility of adolescents, the impulse of the integral education of sexuality must be indicated both in the contents of the study plan and textbooks of the new Mexican school, as well as the expansion of the friendly services of the health sector, the increase in the use of adolescents of adolescents reached 67 percent (seven more points in five years). Seventy -nine percent of adolescents report that their first sexual experience was by consent, and 21 percent indicate that there was no ( ibid).
The phenomenon of mother girls under 15 has its own characteristics. More than 90 percent occur in girls of 13 and 14 years, 52 percent were united (or married) when giving birth, and among those under 10 years 80 percent they declare not having consented to the first sexual relationship, that is, they were victims of rape. Last year, 8,200 births of mother girls were reported, with a decrease of 21 percent in six years (in 2018 10 thousand 500 were reported), many of them speakers of indigenous language, who have a rate of five births per thousand girls (that of non -speakers is 2.4 per thousand). The largest volume of indigenous mother girls is recorded in Chiapas (282), Oaxaca (145), Chihuahua (98) and Guerrero (67). 40 percent of their parents were teenagers, 37 percent do not point to age and more than 20 percent are over 20 years (Inegi, vital statistics, 2024).
This week the Secretary of the Interior presented Phase III of the National Strategy for the Prevention of Pregnancy of Adolescents, a policy with a high state priority that from the National Population Council (CONAPO) and the Secretariat of Women coordinates the inter -institutional work and that of 32 state groups, and that will be focused on the municipalities with the greatest need to accelerate the decrease of adolescent mothers and eradicate that of the children Autonomy and well -being.
* Conapo technical secretary
