The nation’s campaign to get more teenagers to delay sex and to use condoms is faltering, threatening to undermine the highly successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy and protect young people from sexually transmitted diseases.
New data from a large government survey show that by every measure, a decade-long decline in sexual activity among high school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007, and that the rise in condom use by teens flattened out in 2003.
Moreover, the survey found disturbing hints that teen sexual activity may have begun creeping up and that condom use among high school students might be edging downward, though those trend lines have not yet reached a point where statisticians can be sure, officials said.
“The bottom line is: In all these areas, we don’t seem to be making the progress we were making before,” said Howell Wechsler, acting director of the division of adolescent and school health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducts the survey. “It’s very troubling.”
It also was predictable.
Has Dummy U done anything that did not F up in the last 7 years.
Probably an immigration/poverty effect. Plus shows like Sex and the City promoting promiscuity.
>>Plus shows like Sex and the City
>>promoting promiscuity.
Only a gaybob would watch that show, MikeN.
No Mike, it’s most likely the direct result of a federally-funded program which explicitly avoids teaching about birth control and STDs. Fortunately my local school has some sense, as do most in the region where I live.
Perhaps what is needed is a surge. Bush could authorize billions of additional emergency tax dollars to the church towards the war on sex.
While both my wife and I were virgins on our wedding night, I’ve never understood the idea the of “abstinence only” education. I believe “saving yourself for marriage” is a worthwhile goal, but its short-sighted and impractical to think that most people can achieve it. Only those of us who are highly self-disciplined even stand a chance, and even then, its extremely hard.
We are teaching our children that we would like them to wait, but at the same time we are ensuring they know about other methods. We often quote my grandma’s saying when they go out: “Be good. If you can’t be good, then be safe. If you can’t be safe, then don’t name it after me.”
The problem is that this is an endless loop. The people who buy into abstinence only education keep thinking for themselves and having unprotected sex, then they have accidental kids and teach them abstinence… and so on.
Maybe the best way to start the conversation is to ask what your purpose is…are you interested in delaying or enabling?
Schools need to educate teenagers about sex (just the facts mam) and try not to indoctrinate them. That is the parents job. Of course, nowadays, if a teenager really wants to learn about sex all they need is Google it. I wish I would have had the Internet when I was that age.
I still think a good, church based abstinence education is what would work best…like, say..those nice Mormon sort of folks down in Texas….^_^
The right wing folks who pushed this anti-sex-ed policy are insane and always wrong. The concept they push that if you don’t talk or teach sex education, kids won’t HAVE sex, or have less sex has NEVER been true.
Humans don’t teach deer, cows, dogs, cats, or rats sex education, but darn if they don’t have sex ANYWAY. You don’t have to teach mammals to have sex, that’s just hormones and nature. But you DO have to teach humans how to use birth control if you want to reduce pregnancy.
Didn’t we always say the Nut-Job Cons and Religious Whackos were Effing Idiots !!! And they think they are “Qualified” to teach kids !!! NOT !!!
I’ve never understood why “abstinence only education” should have anything to do with the education of STDs. STDs should be discuss in your standard health class. There is no need for special classes on that topic.
It’s as stupid as having a special class on “flamable liquids and gasses” because someone may light themselve on fire (Side Note: I’ve know a few people stupid that ended up at in the ER due to playing with fire. So lack of education wasn’t an issue =).
I’m sure if you walked into a high school class room and asked everyone if they know what STDs are they could name one or two.. If you asked those same kids if they think they could get a STDs without sexual intercourse I suspect most would say “no” and they’d be dead wrong.
Thus this aspect is a health class issue like with the education of personal hygiene and simple first aid.
As for teaching them the basics for sex education.. I have always supported the idea that a school has such a program [My personal preferrence is the school encourages them to hold off in destorying their lives until after high school, but that is me =], but with the requirement of approval from their parents. I know a few schools that do that, and it seems to keep both camp happy because it leave the control up to the parents.
– Ben
You’ll see teen pregnancies go down when someone finally explains to both kids and adults that activity that can create new human life is as critically serious as destroying a human life. Instead of the culture that equates wanting sex with the same casualness of wanting cool clothes.
RBG
Teen pregnancies DID go down when we taught overall sexual education. It goes UP when you stop talking to kids about it. If you DON’T want unwed teen mothers (or abortions) teach the little darlings how to use birth control, the consequences of NOT using it, and the adult consequences of sex as a whole.
The further problem is that we’ve got a crazy puritan/Catholic holdover attitude. If you teach people about birth control, that means they might (will) have sex that’s pleasurable but not leading to a pregnancy. Sex to these right wing loonies is evil and ‘naughty’. The body itself is shameful and bad. The very idea of someone potentially have sex purely for ‘fun’ is just evil to them.
This what the phuk happens when you phuk with phuking. It gets all phuked up. So I say phuk the phuking holy rollers.
Ah..I see my problem with understanding the conservative thought process about sex and sex education. Sex is the same as murder!! Wow. Now it all becomes clear why they get so upset….sex education is like taking a bunch of teenagers and training them how to kill people…like..say..the army….
Oh wait..they think that’s a good thing. Now I’m confused again…
#15, Mustard,
Maybe something like suggesting the WTC 7 fell because some kid had the clap real bad would work.
8)
I blame Hollywood for not producing more movies that feature wholesome role models, and show children who have only healthy urges to do their chores and respect their parents.
I will protest against Hollywood in my usual way, by downloading a free movie.
Back in the days before they invented dirt when I was in school, they taught us all available methods of birth control at the time and their effectiveness levels. They hadn’t quite gotten to the level of explaining about condoms preventing transmission of STDs, but then AIDS was probably just about at the point of being named.
For my part, I took the information seriously and have never had unprotected sex.
I realize that isn’t a statistical universe. However, the statistics really do seem to show that when you educate kids about sex before they start having it and teach them about birth control and AIDS, they do something really surprising.
They learn.
Um, I just read an article making the opposite point the other day. Google news search: teen sex drugs. Ah ha:
“US teens having less sex, drugs” based on a CDC study.
The flawed assumption that the abstinance crowd always makes is that sex ed and the availablility of birth control has some bearing on how much sex teenagers have. It’s been a very long time since I was in school, but I seem to recall there were at least 10 other more pertinent factors that were better predictors for sexual activity (who your friends were, how many zits you had on your face, what clothes you wore, etc.)
I have a feeling that if you had a school with a mandatory 2 hours of sex ed a day, and every teen had to carry a pocketful of condoms, you wouldn’t increase the amount of sexual activity at all.
But I bet the STD rate would plummet.
#22 – you poor, dim troll. So, you read a Fox Snooze article about a telephone survey and that matches up to a couple decades of nationwide record-keeping. In your mind.
Cripes, you’re not even up to nutball status in this neighborhood. Just another reactionary twerp grasping at straws.
How about hitting the kids who have sex with a paddle until they start bleeding?
>>For my part, I took the information seriously
>>and have never had unprotected sex.
Jeez, Scottie. Why don’t you and the Missus get tested, and then just do it the way the Good Lord intended?
That teacher can write whatever she wants — the kid can’t read it ’cause he’s staring at her tits.
>>Average failure rate for condom: ~9%
>>Planned Parenthood
>>http://www.ppscny.org/birth_control_quick_facts.htm
I don’t see the 9% figure at that link. Could you point it out?
And does that include the “abstinence only” set who don’t know how to put a condom on??
#27 – Mister Mustard,
Jeez, Scottie. Why don’t you and the Missus get tested, and then just do it the way the Good Lord intended?
Um … I said never unprotected. Vasectomy counts as pregnancy protection. No need for an AIDS test when two people have been in an exclusive relationship for 23 years and neither has had a transfusion or risky illegal drug behavior.
Didn’t I already mention my receipt of The Golden Snip award for reproductive responsibility?
But, I think we were talking mostly about teen sexual behavior. So, I was mostly referring to those days. It’s still true that I have never had unprotected sex. It’s just more interesting that I didn’t even when I was young and stupid and making lots of other mistakes.
#25 – RBG,
Even if true about the failure rate for condoms, which sounds a tad high, but well within the range I’d have expected, what else stops transmission of AIDS as effectively? In these days when sex is a life or death issue, only condoms work for that. Perhaps it would still make sense to take other precautions regarding pregnancy. Or, perhaps today’s crowd may need to double up. 0.09 * 0.09 would give a failure rate of 0.0081 or less than 1%.
Obviously abstinence only isn’t going to get that rate, or even the 9% condoms give because people simply will not abstain in high enough percentages, especially without sex ed.
This Mayo Clinic Rport states:
So, training and proper use is highly important. No one is going to get that from an abstinence only course.
Yes, Scottie, you’ve mentioned the Golden Snip award. I’m a recipient as well. But what you said was “I have never had unprotected sex”, which I took to mean that you’d never had unprotected sex. Sorry for the misunderstanding.