How many girls become teenage mothers?

In 2020, 1,194 children were born to a teenage mother. In 2010, that figure was in excess of 2,500 children. This makes the Netherlands one of the countries in the European Union with the lowest number of teenage births per thousand 15 to 19‑year-old girls.

In Denmark, too, comparatively few children are born to girls under the age of 20. In the Netherlands, 2.5 girls per thousand 15 to 19‑year-olds had a child in 2019; in Denmark that figure was 2. The EU country with the highest number of teenage mothers is Bulgaria (41 mothers per thousand girls). As in the Netherlands, the number of teenage mothers in the EU as a whole has decreased over the past decade.

Number of teenage mothers halved in ten years

Most teenage girls who gave birth to a child, over 80 percent, were 18 or 19 years of age. A small share is 16 years or younger when giving birth to their child. The number of teenage births has fallen in all age categories. The number of teenage mothers has been falling for some time. At the beginning of this century, there were around 3,500. That amounted to 7 to 8 mothers for every thousand girls aged under 20. Whereas in 2010 this was still 5.2 per thousand, this figure had fallen to 2.4 per thousand girls in 2020.

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Teenage mothers
jaar	Under 16	16 yrs	17 yrs	18 yrs	19 yrs
2000	94	230	482	878	1673
2001	103	268	564	957	1677
2002	100	235	501	977	1703
2003	105	212	468	941	1614
2004	70	176	421	836	1501
2005	70	156	387	726	1456
2006	56	161	351	691	1290
2007	63	151	370	676	1283
2008	62	131	346	757	1257
2009	71	123	382	763	1297
2010	47	128	310	730	1321
2011	56	115	300	674	1220
2012	60	110	298	638	1097
2013	49	108	235	544	965
2014	47	88	229	494	938
2015	37	94	207	401	831
2016	27	68	192	403	802
2017	24	67	187	364	768
2018	28	55	160	358	722
2019	14	49	151	333	712
2020	23	54	148	328	641

Children of teenage mothers less likely to live with two parents

Compared to children with older mothers, children of teenage mothers are less often born to parents who are married or living together. Almost a third of the children of teenage mothers are born to two cohabiting parents, compared to 90 percent of the children with an older mother. Proportionally, they are more often born into a single-parent family (27 percent) or into another household (41 percent). This picture has not changed over the past ten years. Previous research showed that children of teenage mothers relatively often end up in a so-called three-generation family, in which the teenage mother lives with the child with her parent(s).

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Live births, by age of mother and type of household, 2020 (%)
leeftijd	Couple	Single-parent household	Other household
Under 20	31.8	27.4	40.8
20-24 yrs	73.1	15.5	11.4
25-29 yrs	90.1	7.7	2.3
30-34 yrs	92.6	6.3	1.1
35-39 yrs	89.0	10.0	1.1
40 and over	80.9	18.0	1.2

Teenage mothers

Teenage mothers are girls who had a child in the year under review and who were under the age of 20 on the day their child was born.

The Youth Monitor reports on all girls who were younger than 20 at the beginning of the year and had a child. In 2020, this group counted 1,643 girls; in 2010, this figure was 3,207.

Sources

StatLine – Births; key figures

StatLine – Births by mother’s age

Eurostat – Live births by mother’s age and newborn sex

Relevant links

Dashboard – Population

Youth Monitor – Young people and families

Empty cell	figure not applicable
.	figure is unknown, insufficiently reliable or confidential
*	provisional figure
**	revised provisional figure
–	(between two numbers) inclusive
0 (0.0)	less than half of unit concerned
2016–2017	2016 to 2017 inclusive
2016/2017	average for the years 2016 up to and including 2017
2016/’17	crop year, financial year, school year etc., beginning in 2016 and ending in 2017
2004/’05–2016/’17	crop year etc. 2004/’05 up to and including 2016/’17