*Teenage pregnancy rate in Denmark

Fewer Danish teens getting pregnant

Girls are more educated and prefer to start a family at an older age

The number of teenage mothers in Denmark has fallen by 40 percent from 995 in 2008 to 584 last year.

The decline in teenage pregnancies is even sharper compared to 1973, when 4,708 females under the
age of 20 had a baby.

A senior researcher from the Danish National Centre for Social Research explains that teenage
girls receive more effective sex education and many highly-educated women prefer to wait until they
finish their studies.

The average age for first-time mothers in Denmark is 29.1.

The number of teenage girls who get an abortion has also fallen: from 2,895 in 2008 to 2,051 last year.

The youngest mother in 2015 was a girl aged 13, according to figures from Statistics Denmark.

*Challenges of sex education in Denmark

A characteristic of school-based sexuality education is that it navigates between, within and across
a private domain – normally considered the business of the family – and a public domain – normally
considered the business of the state. This is the challenging space occupied by teachers. They have to
address issues that are elsewhere thought of as personal and sensitive, and they are expected to do this
in the public space of a classroom – where pupils, colleagues, headmasters, parents and other
stakeholders, in principle, are looking over their shoulders while doing it. With this in mind, it is easy to
understand that teachers in Denmark, as well as in many other countries, find sexuality education
challenging.

In the case of Denmark, it is even more problematic, because the topic is not a systematically integrated
and mandatory part of teacher education, despite the fact that the formal curriculum is highly ambitious
in its approach to the topic.