China: Web to blame for rise in teen pregnancies

Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China's financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet, state media said on Tuesday.

Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor who oversees the city's first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, said 46 per cent of the more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the Internet.

"Most of the fathers disappeared after learning about the pregnancy, and some of the mothers did not even know the fathers' names," the China Daily said.

Zhang blamed the situation on adult Web sites, videos and books and appealed to parents, teachers and society at large to pay more attention to sex education.

A survey by Zhang's hospital found that only 7.9 per cent of the parents queried talked to their children about sex, and 79 per cent of high school and university students said they got their ideas about sex from the Internet.

Chinese attitudes towards sex have relaxed in recent decades, triggering a boom in extramarital relationships which the ruling Communist Party blames on middle-class attitudes imported from the West.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.