PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Pre-marital pregnancy among teenagers poses a serious and widespread health and social problem especially among those aged between 10 and 19. This study aims to find out the extent to which this out-of-wedlock childbearing by a teenager is associated with exposure to sexually explicit material or pornography. It is hypothesised that frequent exposure to sexually explicit material or pornography could have an association with an increased rate of teenage pregnancy. This is a case-control study where pre-marital pregnant teenagers between 12 and19 years were selected (as the cases) from government shelters throughout Malaysia, and non-pregnant teenagers were randomly selected from several secondary schools around Kuala Lumpur (as the control). A total of 114 pre-marital pregnant teenagers and 101 non-pregnant teenagers participated in this study. Participants from both groups completed a questionnaire about their frequency of exposure to pornography. Pre-marital pregnant teenagers were almost ten times more likely to have had frequent exposure to pornography compared with non-pregnant teenagers (OR = 9.9 [CI 4.3 - 22.5]). Hence, frequent exposure to pornography was shown to have a significant association with pre-marital teenage pregnancy.