Sex is a good thing, a fun thing and as natural as eating, breathing and sleeping.
As such it should be openly discussed with kids from a very young age with no option for parental veto (we don’t let them veto maths). Contraception should be free and freely available without any parental involvement. Kids should know the risks involved and implications of unprotected sex on their health and future plans. Then let them get on with it (they will anyway).
Take away the mystery and make sure we empower boys and girls (particularly girls) to be in charge of what they want and able to make their own choices. I don’t have a particular problem with young, educated teenagers having safe consensual sex for pleasure so I see no need to try and introduce a new form of enforced chastity and puritanism.
To quote Cecil Adams, “scientifically speaking, animals always do it for fun. The only critters who do it because they have to are Catholics. Take it from your Unca Cecil.”
I ceased to be a virgin at the age of 21, so I’m sort of in the situation that you appear to be recommending across the board for everyone.
I don’t join you in that recommendation.
If I could go back and have things work the way I’d have ideally wanted them to, I would have had girlfriends the entire time from 4th grade on, and somewhere along the line between the age of 13 and the age of 17 would have gone all the way with someone I was comfortable with and cared about.
Newsflash. People were “trying to do it before 20” back when both boys and girls were slut-shamed (girls were sluts, and boys got a reputation so “nice girls” wouldn’t date them.) My sister’s best friend eloped at 17. She’s now 75 and still married to the same man.
Instead of trying to turn off adolescent hormones, maybe you should be calling for improved sex education and access to contraception.
isnt it until the mid 1900s (20s and 30s) a lot of people were married with kids between 15 and 21 espically in farm country it leaned on the younger teen years
I mean my mom wasnt married until she 21 and didnt have her first kid until she was 24 (me) and the community (michigan/indiana) she came from made it sound like she was an old maid …
she spent most of her first summer after hs going to friends and classmates weddings (some hurried up affairs and some planned since their sophmore year ) …
I live in Arkansas. We rank 49th in the US for high teen pregnancy numbers. Babies having babies. When the lil’wrekker graduated of a class of 120, no less than 12 were pregnant. A few already had toddlers. None were married. One boy had impregnated 3 girls by the time he graduated. He now washes cars at the local Ford dealership. Our rate of graduates going to college is lower than most states. Do you know what is needed here? I can tell you exactly what’s needed. Parents. Parents who care enough to get their daughters on birth control. Parents who care enough to teach their sons about safe sex snd condoms. Parents who are interested in what their children are getting up to on the band bus( yes we had a sex scandal on the band bus) or after school dances and ballgames. Maybe be a chaperone. Parents who take an interest in the classes the children are taking. Parents who expect their kids to do as well as they are able. And tell the kid so. Parents whose heads are not so far up their own asses that they cannot see. It’s happening right in front of our faces. Parents need to open their eyes.
If I was counting on god to explain teen pregnancy and to teach them about sex education when my children were teens, I would still be waiting. I decided to do it myself. It worked out. None made a baby or had a baby while in their teens. My youngest will be 20 this year. I think maybe I made the right decision.
Education definitely begins at home, you are to be applauded for doing so in an environment where it sounds like it isn’t the norm.
I’m interested in whether your school system allows parental opt-outs regarding sex-ed and what the rate of that might be?
My two were given whatever facts they appeared interested in regarding sex and reproduction from the time when they were able to ask for it. That included the mechanics, contraception, the recreational nature of it, the fun involved the risk involved. It is no bigger deal than them wondering how bread “works”. That has been backed up with age-appropriate school courses from the age of 8.
What I sincerely hope is that they feel confident and comfortable enough to say either “yes” or “no” at a point of their choosing, not to feel shame regardless of that choice and to be able to ask for any help or info they need.
Good education is is no guarantee against teenage sexual problems but if we don’t equip them with the facts in the first place how the hell are they going to make informed decisions?
This is the problem when you fail to put any real thought into your proposal. You think that making people wait longer to have sex will somehow significantly reduce the abortion rates? How do you account for the fact that the majority of abortions are not performed on teenagers? In 2014, only 3% of abortions involved 15-17 year olds. 61% of all abortions were on patients aged 20-29. The 25-29 age group accounted from almost a third of all abortions.
Tell us again how your stupid idea holds any merit??
Oh, and you think marriage has anything to do with it? Or you want people to wait to have sex until their late 20s because that’s when people have kids, and somehow that will reduce abortions? How do you account for the fact that 59% of abortion patients already had at least one child? Or the fact that less than half (46%) of abortions were done on patients who were not married or cohabitating? So basically, people who are married or living with their partners, in their late 20s, who already have a child… those people account for a very large percentage of abortions–a far greater percent than 18-19 year olds who only account for 8%.
It took me 5 minutes to find this data. I have a feeling that it was 5 minutes longer than the effort you put into this…
I’ll google if need be, but my understanding is that divorce rates were very low until they exploded in the 1970s and 1980s and have slowly declined since then. But a bit part of that is because younger people are typically not getting married until they are older and financially stable as cohabitation is not seen as the evil that it once was.
Probably several reasons. What I was thinking of when I wrote that is that 1)I know now that I enjoy sex more in a loving and committed relationship and 2) I know that I have found a partner that is much more compatible with me sexually than others. If I had not had a few (or more) prior experiences, I’m not sure I’d be so confident that I’m doing it right now. I might be wondering what I’m missing. Maybe not. Who knows.
I will say, I don’t regret for a minute most of the sexual experiences I have had outside marriage. (there are, of course, exceptions. Life is like that.)