Everyone knows that it takes two to create a pregnancy, but until recently teen pregnancy prevention efforts too often left boys and men out of the equation. This two-chapter report includes a summary of the roundtable meeting co-sponsored by the Family Impact Seminar and the National Campaign on involving boys and men in teen pregnancy prevention held in the winter of 1996, as well as an analysis of 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) data, Partners, Predators, Peers, Protectors, on the various roles that boys and men play in causing and preventing teen pregnancy. The NSFG data provide information on involuntary and unwanted sex among adolescents.

Using data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, researchers examined the wantedness of intercourse among women ages 15-24 and whether the experience was voluntary. Found that 24 percent of girls ages 13 or younger at the time of their first pre-marital intercourse reported the experience to have been nonvoluntary. About one-quarter of respondents who reported their first intercourse as voluntary chose a low value on the wantedness scale. Women whose first partner was seven or more years older than themselves were more than twice as likely as those whose first partner was the same age or younger to choose a low value. Authors conclude that characterizing women's first intercourse as simply voluntary or nonvoluntary is inadequate. Measures that take into account degrees of wantedness may help elucidate relationships between sexual initiation, contraceptive use and teenage pregnancy.

Two-thirds of a sample of 535 young women from the state of Washington who became pregnant as adolescents had been sexually abused: Fifty-five percent had been molested, 42 percent had been victims of attempted rape and 44 percent had been raped. Compared with adolescent women who became pregnant but had not been abused, sexually victimized teenagers began intercourse a year earlier, were more likely to have used drugs and alcohol and were less likely to practice contraception. The abused adolescents were also more likely to have been hit, slapped or beaten by a partner and to have exchanged sex for money, drugs or a place to stay. Young women in the abused group were also more likely to report that their own children had been abused or had been taken from them by Child Protective Services.

In the 1987 National Survey of Children, the question was asked: "Was there ever a time when you were forced to have sex against your will, or were you raped?" Among white females, aged 18-22, those who reported being forced to have sexual intercourse, compared to those who did not, had more permissive attitudes about 16-17-year-olds having intercourse and a younger age of first voluntary sexual intercourse themselves.

Data from the 1987 round of the National Survey of Children indicate that seven percent of Americans aged 18-22 have experienced at least one episode of nonvoluntary sexual intercourse. Women were more likely than men to report having had such an experience, with just under half of all nonvoluntary experiences among women occurring before the age of 14. Multiple classification analysis reveals that white women who had lived apart from their parents before age 16, those who had been brought up in poverty, those who had had a physical, emotional or mental limitation when they were young, those whose parents had been heavy drinkers, those whose parents had used illegal drugs and those whose parents had smoked cigarettes when they themselves were teenagers were at significantly greater risk for experiencing sexual abuse. Six percent of young white women with no risk factors, nine percent of those with one, 26 percent of those with two, and 68 percent of those with three or more had been sexually abused before or during adolescence.