(pretending your entire post whooshed me except that bit) You mean I coulda taken Econ in HS and it woulda been an easy A? Cuz I’m reading up on it some and, between the overreliance on math and the preposterous suggestions of how a real market works, it’s not coming together in my head.
Oh, and what catsix and Critical1 said about sex. Coming to Econ from an Anthropology background, what some people expect humans, especially teenaged humans, to do can be hilarious.
:dubious: And what is the value of the people believing an illusion? Especially one that is not, in and of itself, even desirable? Premarital sex is mostly harmless, even healthy, so long as it does not lead to STD transmission or unwanted pregnancy. The most important societal change would be for people to acknowledge that.
Abstinence is not a worthwhile goal. Virginity is not a virtue. The goal is not less sex.
The goal is to reduce unwanted pregnancies and STDs, so let’s start handing out condoms and teaching kids how to use them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with sex. It can be risky, but that risk is manageable. One must only stay informed and prepared. That formula is useful in other areas of life, as well.
if you want a consistent message about abstinencean then your goal must not be to reduce teen pregnancies and STDs because the studies are in and abstinence messages don’t work. Everyone has sex, no matter how consistent is the message about abstinence they receive.
I couldn’t disagree more. That’s tail-wags-dog thinking. The Dutch have much lower STD and teen pregnancy rates than the US. How do they do it? They accept active sexuality in teenagers, and emphasize responsibility. How novel: accept what is, and make the best of it.
Let’s give it a try.
We’re talking teen sex, not premarital sex in general. Through a lot of history there has been a consistent message, It didn’t work. It has never worked. Society managed to hide it by sending the pregnant girls away and putting the children up for adoption. Or forcing marriage. In Shakespeare’s time many if not most brides were pregnant.
The simple solution to the problem is to find a good reason, like regularizing periods, to put every teen over 15 or so on birth control. It might increase the amount of teen sex, but that is something I’m willing to accept for a big decrease in pregnancies - and abortions. If you want to have some kids sign a virginity pledge also, fine with me. They still won’t get pregnant if they lapse.
I’m too geezerly to know this for sure, but isn’t it possible that the decline in teen pregnancy is related to the acceptance of oral sex instead of intercourse?
Like “just say no”, abstinence only sex ed is a massive failure. No surprise.
Better on both counts to offer scientific, objective, non-biased information.
There should be no place for “sex ed” including morality based on religion in the public schools. Just the facts, ma’am.
Fact is, teenagers fuck. They always have and they always will. The only question is if they are informed and enabled enough to do so responsibly or not.
I think the data indicating more risky behaviour in those participating in an abstinence only approach most likely indicates a mind-set of denial…if you refuse to accept that sex among physically mature individuals is natural and not a sin, you are far less likely to accept responsibility for contraception/STD protection should the event arise. Both out of not “planning on it” or wanting to be seen as planning on it :rolleyes: or out of some subconscious idea that IF you have sex, you SHOULD get pregnant or infected.
All that said, not a damn thing wrong with prolonging virginity a while, intentionally or not. But let’s be real. Most don’t, and to pretend otherwise and offer half-assed “education” aimed at that fantasy is a form of religious descrimination, imo.
Unfortunately, that is not the only question. There is also the question of whether they are capable of doing so responsibly.
I can’t think of anything more vulgar.
I misunderstood LHOD’s thesis, it seems.
I missed that link. Can you point out where it is, or repost? Thanks…
Linked in post #35.
Me too. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with ways pledge takers could get more STD’s, and for the relationship not to be causal.
Yes, the people studied all have the same backgrounds. However, I don’t see how the study *could *account for those predisposed to think premarital sex was wrong without forcing teens who think premarital sex is OK to sign up, and not allowing teens who think it’s wrong to pledge.
The fact is, some teens went in thinking premarital sex was wrong, and they were probably more likely to take the pledge. So the cause of both signing up and later being ill-prepared when caving in to instinct could be the pre-existing belief that pre-marital sex is wrong. The pledge-signing didn’t do them in - they would have been ill-prepared even if they hadn’t taken the pledge.
Big Fat Whatever. Pledging is a bad idea.
I’ve heard the argument made that we don’t teach kids how to use drugs safely, etc. so why would we teach them how to have sex safely (this relates to the earlier post about initial effectiveness of anti-smoking campaigns). The answer is that absent any social/peer pressure, humans will want to have sex but will not seek drugs or cigarettes.
One scenario I’ve read is that some teens who’ve taken abstinence pledges don’t intend to have sex but just get carried away. Therefore they haven’t prepared with birth control.
This rings true. While (hopefully) this is less and less the case, there are women who insist on condom use but won’t carry them so as not to give the impression that they’d be so bold as to anticipate sex.
I’d be interested to know what sort of setting teens are in when they take their pledges, if it’s something done in a ‘public’ setting (e.g. church group or classroom). Also, what sort of education and info the teens are given. As someone mentioned, when condoms are brought up in abstinence only education, it’s to claim that they don’t work (and not with the intention of encouraging people to use back-up BC methods).
And married younger.
Really, if you marry your daughters off starting at fifteen or so in marriages that are often more or less arranged, you have far fewer worries about pre-martial sex. Teen sex still happens.
If you want to prevent teen sex teach them to be socially awkward and inept. It sure prevented me from sex as a teen.
This is a very important point. People in general, teenagers but also adults, are much much less rational in their thinking than we like to think. If people were rational thinkers there would be many fewer conflicts and problems in the world. What made adult people aware that smoking causes cancer was not the scientific facts. Those were known long before it was accepted by society. It was the constant hammering of the message “smoking causes cancer” for a long, long time. Same thing for drunk driving etc. That the message may be true may help only so slightly but it is the constant repetition and societal pressure which condition us much more. If the message is repeated often enough even false messages can be widespread and can be seen multiple times in history. Now, if that is true with adults, it is a hundred times truer with teenagers with raging hormones. I still rememebr when I was 20 and at that age I did not think much of consequences or of anything else except that I wanted, I needed, I desperately needed to get laid. I’d deal with the consequences later assuming there were any consequences. For now let’s just take our clothes off.
As they say, you cannot reason someone out of a position where they did not arrive by reason. Teenagers want to fuck (just like the rest of us only much more so), not because they have thought about it and concluded it is a good thing but because their raging hormones direct them that way. Giving them all sorts of technical explanations about the workings of the mammalian body might be good but it will perceived as quite disconnected from their most urgent need which is getting laid.
In my view it is futile to try to lay on schools the entire responsibility of the education of kids. Schools may teach a few bits of technical knowledge but the bulk of the core values are learnt at home by example.
Sorry, there are no standardized tests for those.
-Joe
We should hand out video games in the schools. My NES worked to keep me at home and not out having sex when I was in high school.
When I was a kid it was still a no-no, and people weren’t getting married at 15. Though I admit I didn’t live in Arkansas. 