It certainly does happen frequently where I live!

A couple of years ago there was a high proportion of young, single mothers pushing their prams in our village - don't see so many now that the €2,500 'cheque bebe' has been stopped

The family next door to us consist of grandparents - in their 80s, their son & daughter - 40s, grand daughter & boyfriend - 20s and great-grand daughter, just turned two.

The grand daughter is unmarried, as was her mother, and she recently became pregnant again and had an abortion. The abuelos appear to take it all in their stride!

IMHE these things run in families...
if mother has baby young it will follow on down the generations
if mother has baby in say late 20's early 30's it will follow on down the generations

I know - I am generalising again but think about it
there is always the exception
but I remember Butlins (?) used to do glamourous granny and a woman I knew won it aged 38. I remember this well as I very nearly became her SIL

Yes - but that doesn't explain the high number of single mums in our local village does it? And I was replying to the statement that 'it rarely happens'

Plus it was all about them being unmarried - not young!

Of course it's nonsense, why do some imagine Spain is so different to everywhere else, some sort of puritanical stronghold in sea of unwanted pregnancies. They might be a bit behind, but they are catching up fast. And the fact that there aren't the financial supports in place in Spain as in UK, makes it even more regrettable.

how can anyone here explain the high number of single mums in your local village ?
something in the water ?
something in the air ?

do they all look like the same father ?
(do you know the father ?)

people only post here what they see and know. in their experience it is rare. perhaps the women have all been sent away as fallen women. perhapps your village is where they are being sent to.

Eire had a long line of pregnant women queueing to visit relatives in the uk so they could get a termination. Eire had a very low figure of out of wedlock births.

Sure it does happen, especially in the long lost villages.

However, teenage pregnancy rates in Spain are much much lower than in the UK and US. The UK has twice the EU average of births from teenage mothers while the US has even more.

Last time I looked at the data, Spain had one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancies in the whole of the EU

Out of interest I have looked up the teenage pregnancy rates in Western Europe, I cannot vouch for the figures but this is from The Independent.
Lowest
Denmark 1.28%
Sweden 1.59%
Italy 1.69%
France 1.96%
Spain 2.83%
Ireland 4.15%
UK 7.09% second only to the USA.

Don´t know whether this helps the discussion or not.

Graham

Statistics,statistics...... C'man.
Maybe if it were possible to factor in all the many thousands who had a brief "holiday" inthe UK for termination you might get a nasty shock.
The fact that most forms of birth control were frowned on and discouraged for so many years, maybe still are in some backward villages, certainly didn't help.
On a sidenote, I was quite surprised at the huge amount of inbreeding in some of those remote inland villages in Andalucia.

Sure, don't believe the stats, believe DD

How do you spot inbreeding btw? You go around doing genetic tests or spotting people with 6 fingers?

Like the East Anglian fens? Inbreeding and bestiality.

I find it strange how many married people with kids have an age gap of 6 to 10 years between the children. Also the fact that so many only have 2 children. Before moving here I thought that they would have smaller gaps and more children. This is probably because there are no benefit incentives.

Rosemary

It changed when women had to start to go out to work full time just like the men.

My OH has three siblings. The oldest is 40, most of his friends also had 2, 3 or 4 siblings. My OH is 30 and most her friends had only one sibling. Now most children in Spain only have one sibling or are an only child.

As you say, the benefits for having children arent good, certainly not good enough for the mother to choose to stay at home, so families have less children and the grandparents in Spain (bless them) do an incredible amount of work bringing up the children

Take a look around on the street in the week. You'll see most children are walking around with their grandparents rather than their parents.

HEY !!
WATCH IT !!

are you sure they aren't a late blow ??

Yes, the secret is when they call them abuelo/abulela/toto/tata etc