Well, that settles it, eh? Despite the blip in teen pregnancy, teenagers actually aren’t screwing around so much. Another “myth” busted by the New York Times!
The skeptical reader raises an eyebrow. Less teen sex, more teen mothers? Skepticism is arguably justified. Social science cannot provide a perfect measurement of how much sex teenagers are actually having. The fundamental problem is the reliability of self-reported survey data about sex. “Sex being an extremely private matter, it is nearly impossible to verify self-reported data about sexual behavior, and some self-reports are certainly false,” as one noted authority recently wrote.
In contrast to the necessary ambiguity of self-reported survey results, birth statistics are solid data, and that data confirms that some teenager are, we might say, living la vida loca.

Perhaps you haven’t yet guessed the identity of that “noted authority,” so you’ll have to read my latest Taki’s Magazine column to find out.