Great post, CairoCarol. Agree on all points.
Yes, it would be silly to pretend that adults are exempt from the consequences. But in general they’re much more capable of dealing with them than are high school freshmen.
Pretty much most people of any age in a serious relationship are going to have sex, barring *some *religious nuts (fewer than will admit it), and I don’t think that’s healthy either (abstaining because you’re a religious nut). But young people (preteens to about age 15) having sex is really pretty risky and I can’t really imagine a scenario where there aren’t some serious emotional and/or physical consequences for a large number of them.
Catholic high school, mid-to-late 1970s. Nerd/ jock social circle (trivia bowl *and *football team - our High School trivia record was much better than our football season).
Sex as in fumbling and hands-on fooling around? Just about all of my friends, some more discreetly than others. Intercourse? Well, not me but that was because I read too many of my father’s Playboys and couldn’t translate that magazine’s “Chicks dig guys who spend a lot of money on their stereos and scotch” mindset to what high school students have available. (I was much more successful in college, where I was a 17-year-old freshman.)
So, in my memory, the disco era was the high-water mark of casual feeling-up experiences.
Most of my class (girls, UK, high achieving school) started at least with ‘fooling around’ somewhere around 15ish- with certainly over half having full on intercourse before they hit 16.
I was one of the nerds, and left it a bit later, as did a few of my friends. I lived in a small village where I basically didn’t know anyone, which probably accounted for most of that.
I seem to remember a newspaper claiming that in one of the local towns 9% of girls had been pregnant before 16, which was one of the highest rates in the UK at the time, my school was certainly way below that rate. Only one of my friends got pregnant in her teens that I’m aware of- she was 16.
del
My recollection of the 50’s rural high school in Illinois…many of the jocks and the cheerleaders were having sex, many got pregnant. So, I suppose some others were, too. I suppose, from what I recall, many of us weren’t in any sort of dating situation, let alone sexually active. Probably 50/50.
birth control didn’t exist then. I don’t think that had much effect of percentages. If the girl got pregnant, a wedding followed shortly. Most of those worked out well.
I think the term you are looking for is “nerds”.
I don’t know what high school is like these days since I haven’t been there in 20 years. My sense is that kids these days are more like the OP than not. That they have been so overscheduled and helicopter parented that all they think about is getting into the “right school” and are terrified of doing anything to “mess up their future”.
I was in high school in the late 80s and college in the early 90s. Based on the culture at the time, I think people pretty much assumed that teenagers had non-stop drunken drug and sex orgies. So because of that, I think kids acted and dressed like they were getting a lot more action than they really were.
That said, I think the reality is that a lot of kids did have sex. A lot of people dated for a long time and I doubt they went months and years never having sex. I know of two girls who got knocked up right after high school. I had sex with a couple of girls I was dating (not at the same time).
College, it was a bit easier to tell since you can see when your hall mates bring a girl home. Of the 20 guys on my hall:
4 had steady girlfriends on campus
5 I know had hooked up with a girl
3 were so off-putting that may still be virgins as far as I know
the other 8 were normal guys who may or may not have hooked up with anyone.
So overall, I think it was frowned upon to be a big slut or man-ho. But you also didn’t want to start your freshman year of college as a virgin either.
Some people actually managed to have sex without emotionally scarring themselves or their partner.
But the fact is that there are very few smart teens.
Please tell me that the above is a whoosh. “6th grade”? :eek:
John DiFool, don’t read too much into it. My mom was a sixth grade teacher for 30+ years. Once a year or so, a child would come in crying from recess because the other kids called him or her “a virgin.” They didn’t exactly know what a virgin was, mind you, but they knew it must be just awful! 
It’s possible nate’s classmates were bumping uglies (she’s also seen a few sad 5th and 6th grade pregnancies); it’s also likely they were just being jerks.
I graduated high school in 1992, shortly before the whole “is oral sex sex?” national conversation occurred. It astounded most of us to find out that oral sex was sex. To my peer group, it was what you did (along with other activities) instead of “real” sex!
I went to a rather large suburban school, so there was no way to keep track of everyone’s sex life. I didn’t even know everyone’s name. But certainly people talked and acted as if “making out” was commonplace and accepted, and penis-in-vagina sex wasn’t unheard of, although it wasn’t assumed or taken lightly, either.
The very Christian girls were known for being into anal, as it allowed them to maintain their technical virginity and keep their (usually older, in college or working) boyfriends. But there weren’t very many of them.
I think we pretty much reflected the national averages.
WhyNot
White AP student 2 weeks pregnant at graduation
Are we really so removed from the actual experience that this pat dismissal is necessary? Teens manage to make the honor roll, excel in academic and athletic events, hold jobs, drive 3,000 pound machines while obeying traffic laws, enlist and fight in wars. Teenagers have been prime candidates for fertility and fecundity since we were swinging in trees and it’s silly to pretend that the drive to copulate ought to correlate with maturity and experience.
Teens, including those reading here, shouldn’t be handwaved away from “adult” matters. They should be respected and encouraged to regard all potentially life-changing activities equally: as a great privilege and responsibility. We can’t merely state “you aren’t ready” if their bodies are primed for sex, they will find the opportunity. The best we can do by our kids is to help them to be safe, make good decisions, and avoid being pressured into anything.
I went to a small public high school in Australia and graduated in 2009. I was pretty much a social outsider - if people were having sex, I wouldn’t have heard about it. I do remember one incident when I was 15, when one of the girls in my photography class quizzed the rest of us about the topic. Out of the 10 girls in the room, I was the only virgin (or at least the only one who said I was).
Now it’s my turn to compliment your post.
I went to high school in the late 80s / early 90s and you can’t even imagine how scary AIDS was. At first people weren’t really sure of the transmission risks of heterosexual sex… People looked at sperm like it was uranium. It all seems so far away now, but in 1989, sex was NOT a fun casual thing for a teen growing up, it was For Serious and might kill you. It was a very strange time to come of age sexually. Lots more making out, oral sex, very little penis-in-vagina.
Anyway separate from all that stuff I went to a high school with very intense academics, most of my friends didn’t date (as in going out with just one other person) until senior year. However, after college acceptances came it was like the entire senior class hooked up. Pretty funny actually.
Large suburban Southern California high school back in the early 70s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. I was definitely a nerd, but I had a number of friends in just about every social group. By senior year I’d say most were having sex. If you weren’t, you weren’t trying. Everybody knew the “easy” girls, and this was before herpes and AIDS, so being actively active was just a matter of making sure she was on the pill. I knew very few people who were “going to wait,” and all of those had caved in by freshman year of college.
So, if your current crush showed up in your bed tonight, naked and willing, you would kick him or her out of your bed ?
I think he actually would.
Last I heard, the worldwide average age for first time having sex was 17 years old. That means a lot of kids have it before then.
But being a virgin into college is hardly unusual either. And it really does depend on what crowd you run with. While I didn’t have sex until I was 19, my friends in high school mostly started having at 14 or 15, and went on steadily from there.
I personally didn’t engage in any sexual behavior until my senior year, and then it was just oral or heavy petting. I didn’t have intercourse until my Junior year of college, and then it was only one guy. I think my experience was pretty typical of my peers. We understood the dangers and consequences of sex and were cautious about how and when we did have sex. I always used protection when having intercourse with my college boyfriend. I know if the situation had been different and my high school bf had pressured me more, I probably would have engaged in intercourse sooner. I was not aware of who was and wasn’t having sex at my high school since I was worried about other things like grades, friends, etc. It wasn’t something we talked about or obsessed over.
oh, crud I take back my first sentence. I did get into heavy petting when I was 16, but that was o with a guy I only dated for a week. LOL Totally forgot about him!