Well, maybe there’s a culture gap. In where I grew up (about 8 KMs from my current home) there was no special issue involving sex. Sex just happened (but not to me :D) and it really wasn’t a big deal to the students.
Sure, there was a few abortions and what not but over all us teenagers (from 12-18) dealt with it. As abortions are free and “no questions asked” over 16 (I think) teenagers were able to deal with pregnancy effectively (sure, it might be against your morals but I happen to think having that choice open to anyone is a good thing).
I think another divide is the use of the wording “let a 13 year old have” and “should a 13 year old” have sex. I don’t think it’s a good thing for very young people to have sex but I’m not going to stop them or use my own morals to force them in another direction. I’d want to educate them and let them decide if they’re mature enough to cross that line. It’s really one of the first REAL choices one has and we harm a lot of kids in making it seem that there’s a right and wrong path. Even the people in this thread have shown that young sex doesn’t mess up people!
When we hit puberty at age 13 or so, sex is all we think about because that’s the way we are programmed by nature. The glands are jangling, bigtime. All we want to do is screw - it’s the biological imperative (yes, I’m using generalizations - it shortens things).
However, in today’s world, humans live past the age of 30, so there is no need to reproduce at the midpoint of the lifespan. Nature hasn’t gotten that message yet, so we have to teach our kids that they can - and should - wait to screw so that they will be better educated and more mature and can take better care of the resultant offspring. At least in theory.
All we can do is educate them at all levels. Parents should teach kids about sex early on so the “mystery” is removed from it. Schools should reinforce that. Schools should NOT be the primary source of sex education for the kids.
In today’s world (keeping religion of out it) sex doesn’t have to make children. In fact, most sex doesn’t end with a pregnancy even without protection (as women are only fertile ~5 days a month with sperm lifespans reaching another few days). I think nature is right on course, our sex drive lets us devise other methods of “getting off” (I’m sure “nature” didn’t figure on oral sex as it doesn’t lead to children).
I completely agree with the education angle and I think schools should be teaching more of it and include take home books for parents to read and teach their children. Too many parents just ignore the whole sex thing as if not talking about it fixes the problem.
Well, catsix, not every thirteen year old was as mature as you were. There are always exceptions to the rules, but the vast majority of people are still immature at thirteen, at least in our society. Good for you-you had oral sex at thirteen and you’re fine now, it didn’t harm you. Bully for you. But for every person like you, I’d say there are about five who shouldn’t be allowed to handle sharp objects at that age, let alone have sex. The consequences are too large to risk it.
Is it now wrong to want the very best for your kids?
When a woman gives birth to a baby, when she dreams of the future she wants for that baby, does the idea of sex at 13 enter her mind? No, your average parent, while they may not expect their kid to wait until marriage, at least wants them to postpone sexual involvement until they’re ready and capable of making good decisions and picking good partners. (Doing everything right with birth control and avoiding STDs does not a good sexual decision make. It’s a start, but it’s just the beginning.)
Does she hope that, some magical day, her 13 year old daughter will come home from school crying because she’s been branded a whore because her boyfriend blabbed to his buddies what she’s willing to do behind closed doors?
Do parents hope that when their son hits his teen years, he’ll see girls as nothing more than potential vacuums that he can expect to service him, because they’re terrified of boys not liking them or not being “cool?”
There’s a lot of things we don’t let kids do because they are simply not mature enough to handle it. I’d no more wink at a 13 year old kid having sex than I would a 7 year old watching a porno. Those things are better left to a time in life when we have enough in our head to know how to process that particular information. To expect children to process something in an adult way when exposed to an adult situation is cruel. To accommodate them, turn a blind eye altogether or just shrug and go “kids will be kids” when they get into those adult situations is heinous. What the hell is wrong with a parent that is afraid of saying no? Who’s running the house here?
Sure, a 13 year old can, theoretically, have sex. But to lower the bar and go “oh well” is such a pitiful, sad disservice, especially from parents. It’s your JOB to create boundaries, say “no” and insist, until they’re 18, that they make the best decisions for themself, rather than what they can get by with.
Well, yeah, but we do agree that sex can end in pregnancy even if all precautions are taken? And that a 13-year-old might be too inexperienced, too irresponsible, or too embarassed to make sure they are? I think we can agree on that.
That understood, is it not often true that for teenagers in general, even more so with young teenagers, that it’s inconceivable that you really could honestly have a baby that you take care of for the next eighteen years? In my anecdotal experience, young teenagers are more likely to want to keep a baby, since they have this fantasy all about it. And, hell, it’s not like they’d be keeping it, in the long run, right?
The young teenagers I know all have a “won’t happen to me” attitude that, of course, you can find in some adults but far more often in young people. While most sex does not end in babies, I don’t think you should be having it unless you can deal with the full consequences of your actions, which might include a traumatic abortion or pregnancy.
I’m with Guin and Abbey. Personally, I feel 13 is way too young for having sex, no matter what orifice things are being placed in. I understand that there are cultural issues, and that some people mature faster than others. My daughter matured much faster than my son, and we taught both of them about sex long before they were 13, but that didn’t make them anywhere close to being ready for sex at that age.
And I don’t know where LonesomePolecat grew up, but neither I nor any of my friends knew of any groups of 13-year-old boys having oral sex with each other in my town. There was talk about kids having sex by age 16, but nobody believed the boys, and any girl that admitted it was looked down upon.
I think thirdwarning was referring to students such as myself at 13. Sure, I don’t do my homework, but I couldn’t possibly fail! No, that could never happen! That only happens to bad students! :smack:
Same thing was going on with girls at my highschool and even college–Sure they didn’t use a condom, but they couldn’t possibly get pregnant, or get an STD! That only happens to sluts! :smack: :smack:
This is the same reason people don’t wear their seatbelts, smoke, play the lotto, etc. Just because they have the knowledge doesn’t mean they will use it. And to expect a 13 year old to buy condoms, get on the pill, make her partner use the condoms…etc, is really reaching. At least when the college student gets pregnant (how could that happen?! Wail!) she is a full grown woman who can better handle pregnancy, birth, motherhood, adoption, abortion, or whatever.
Although you appear to have your mind made up, this is a debate, which means that you get to present your side, and I get to present mine. I don’t think there’s anything earth-shatteringly end of world about oral sex and 13 year old kids as long as their partners are in their peer group.
And I think a large part of the reason for that is that society attempts to force them to remain children for far, far too long.
Thay can know that pregnancy can happen. But young people have a particular itendency to except themselve from consequences when they are rationalizing. There’s a name for this, can’t recall what it is.
I’m not just concerned about pregnancy, but about the baggage issues others have mentioned. Like it or not, this society has some warped ideas about sex. Kids will be barraged with mixed messages, jokes, the hormones of their love interests, the attitudes of kids who have less enlightened parents, etc. It requires some emotional maturity and contemplation, I think, to makes sense of those messaged, and I don’t necessarily think that’s best dealt with when your jeans are around your ankles and some guy is begging you to let him stick it in your ass.
I think the teen years ARE a time for sexual discovery and exploration, but I think a lot of that should happen internally and individually. Figure out your own body and feelings before you start indulging with someone else. It ups your chances of making better decisions that look out for yourself and your own sexual health, well-being, and self esteem.
I want my children to enter adulthood with a healthy, robust attitude about sex. And I don’t think the best path to that is to have lots of it in your teens.
I’d say all the things I said about sex at 13 all over again if the topic were sex at the age of 11.
I would be 128% more worried that there might be some nasty, exterior precipitating cause of such precocious behavior in an 11 year old — an older sexually abusive relative, f’rinstance — , but the sexual behavior in and of itself would not be the problem.
I have no issues with parents who teach everything they can about sex and accept (without punishment, assault or outright anger) when their “little darlings” start getting interested in the opposite (or same) sex and get caught fooling around. It’s perfectly natural and calling it wrong is silly. Sure, we have dreams that our kids will get married and have horrible first time honey moon sex (JK) but it’s just not realistic.
I think that one should wait until they are ready for sex. I can not imagine being “ready” at 13. At 13, I was more interested in reading, music, and at most kissing boys. I don’t know, it just seems very socially-imposed for a 13-year old to give a blow job.
My younger sister was at a party a couple of years ago. Actually, I think she was 13. Anyway, I digress. She was sitting next to two boys who forced her to give them hand jobs simultaneously. After that, she became an emotional mess, and faced cruel middle-schoolers on a daily basis from then forward.
My mom taught me about sex the first time I asked a question about it. I was 8 and she told me “it’s when a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina, and a baby might come from it” (very loose paraphrase, it was 13 years ago after all). We learned about pubescent changes in 6th grade, with a very loose look at sex. We actually learned about the consequences of sex (other than the general “you might get pregnant or a disease” this was more along the lines of “this is a picture of chlamydia”) in high school. And I went to public school.
My feeling about sex has always been that it has to be someone with whom I can picture spending the rest of my life, or at least tolerating, as that’s how it might end up. I don’t want to get pregnant if it’s just some “bad boy” with whom I had sex and now have to raise a child. Maybe I’m just naive as I didn’t have sex until I was 19 (no Conan, you’re not alone). It’s not that I was without sexuality, I just prefered to wait until I was absolutely positive that I was ready in every way possible.
I’ve read thousands of essays by seventh and eighth graders, and there is something else most of them want to do as badly as have sex. Given the opportunity, they’ll ramble on for pages, expressing their frustrated longing to do this activity, and tell you all about how they can “handle it” even at their tender age, how they know exactly what to do from watching adults do it and occasionally be allowed to mess around a little under supervision, exactly who they want to do this will, where they want to do it, how often they’ll do it, and about how they would do it with maturity, and use all due caution *if only they could just… * drive.
Some of them are so obsessed with the idea of driving that they’ll tell you exactly how many days they have left until they can get behind the wheel of a car. Not just boys, mind you, girls too. They really really really want to drive.
But even though they really really really want to drive and think they’re ready for it NOW, most kids are not. It’s too much of a risk to themselves and others to give everyone at thirteen their licenses, so the very few who would be safe and responsible drivers have to wait until they’re legally old enough to drive. It sort of sucks for the kids who are ready to drive at 13, but at the same time it protects them from being run into by the kids who just** aren’t** ready to drive yet no matter how much they want to.
That’s the way it is with the age of consent too. It’s not to punish those who are ready younger, but to protect them as a whole until most of them are ready to have sex in a responsible manner. If they can handle not driving until they’re sixteen, despite really really really wanting to drive, I think most of them can handle not experimenting with less ready age-mates until the age of consent too. I can’t think of any negative effects to waiting until everyone considers you old enough to have sex, but it’s sure easy to think of the reverse.
Given the way most people are in college, I think that more sex in their teens when there is still some semblance of supervision, control, and, most importantly, guidance is probably a pretty good idea. Not to be encouraged, I’d think, but it will happen all on its own… a mechanism that probably helped us be where we are today, rather than place an unwelcome burden on the race. We prepare young people for adult lives by giving them leeway to engage in restricted adult behavior with a shield of lesser consequences, to the extent that we can mitigate them. As elfkin fails to illustrate with the automobile example.
Ya gotta be kidding! Kids having sex at thirteen?! Why, that’s . . . that’s . . . uhuu . . . uhuu . . . uhuu . . . UNGHH! . . . [gasp] . . . why, that’s utterly preposterous! Immoral even to think of such a thing!
