Thanks jacqui, you have put very eloquently the direction my thinking was going.

My wife (who is not an aging hippie like me, but a very modern 33-year-old) takes the same view, and believes also that the liberalisation of peoples' attitudes to under-age and schoolgirl pregnancy - the removal of the stigma which used to attach to 'that kind of girl' - has gone a long way towards the huge rise in such pregnancies.

We knew, as teenagers in the late 50's and 60's, that shagging produced babies - we didn't need teachers to tell us about that. And condoms (or 'Johnnies' - the word condom hadn't been invented for the squeamish at that time!) were very difficult to come by (pun intended!), no supermarkets stocking them on the shelves, it was a case of having the courage to ask the barber for some. We also knew that if a girl got pregnant, all hell would break loose and we'd be in for a very tough time indeed - no hand-outs, no pats on the head and "there, there, it's not your fault", no council-houses paid for by the tax-payer - just crap heaped on you from a very great height.

Yet there were far fewer teenage pregnacies. Food for thought.