Researchers confirm what Sex Drive readers already know:
Early condom use by teens reduces risk of sexually transmitted disease: study
(CP) – A U.S. study finds that teens who use condoms the very first time they have sex are half as likely to test positive for sexually transmitted diseases several years later.The survey involved more than 4,000 sexually active adolescents who were questioned between 1994 and 2002. In addition to having lower rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, they were 36 per cent more likely to say they had used a condom in their most recent sexual encounter seven years later.
This, plus the recent legislation that requires public school sex ed to be medically accurate, reassures me that we are thinking about these things, we are trying to find the right balance, and that while change doesn’t happen as fast as (many of us wish, it does happen. (It’s hard enough getting 9 people to agree on a restaurant; getting millions to figure out a sex ed policy is at least as complicated, don’t you think?)
4 responses so far ↓
1 Nathan // Apr 27, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Personally, I would like to think that teenagers would abstain from sex till marriage, however, I know sex happens and that an informed participant usually correlates to a safe participant. I’ve been saying that there needs to be some form of sex ed policy for a few years now, but as the old saying goes, “easier said than done.” I’ve even considered taking on extra schooling for a degree that would benefit me if I so chose to attempt to develop and implement said policy, but I clearly see that this issue is far above a single person. Besides, when the topic of sex is brought up to children/teenagers, parents become beasts in a league all their own.
Nathan
2 Adri // Apr 29, 2007 at 8:13 am
“I would like to think that teenagers would abstain from sex till marriage”
I think I just realized the fundamental disconnect in this statement. All teenagers should stay abstinent until marriage. How many teenagers do you know who are married? Isn’t it much more common these days for people to remain single throughout their 20s and many times well into their 30s?
MAYBE it’s reasonable to teach/expect teenagers, who our society deems as unready to make their own legal and social decisions, not to have sex, but it’s certainly completely unreasonable to hold adults to the same restrictive standards of behavior designed to “keep the children safe.”
Ideally, our sex education programs would provide teenagers and adults with the information and context they need to make informed decisions about their own physical, mental, and emotional health when it comes to sexual behavior.
3 Nathan // Apr 29, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Point taken, but I still think that if proper education and abstinence promotion would lead to teenagers making more informed decisions if they decided to have sex. I back abstinence due to my personal opinions. I, in no way, think that adults should be held to this, and I would like to think that sex education wouldn’t have to be taught to adults. I’d even argue their true status of adulthood if they had to attend a sex education course.
However, I do feel that adults that have been taught sex ed and abstinence as an option as teenagers would produce much more desirable results that
4 Nathan // Apr 29, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Bah, a slip of the wrist and all my bad grammar is exposed.
If you can decipher that above, I only have this to include.
I do feel that teenagers that have been taught sex ed AND abstinence as an option produce much more desirable outcomes than those taught only sex ed in the most general of forms.
I could also argue the fact that most people in their 20s are not ready for sex. Psychologically speaking, some 20 year olds do not have the capacity to handle all that is involved with sex. Legally, yes, socially and psychologically, not always.