The Lead

From The Washington Post

The nation's campaign to get more teenagers to delay sex and to use condoms is faltering, threatening to undermine the highly successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy and protect young people from sexually transmitted diseases, federal officials reported yesterday.

And:

The new figures renewed the heated debate about sex-education classes that focus on abstinence until marriage, which began receiving federal funding during the period covered by the latest survey and have come under increasing criticism that they are ineffective.
"Since we've started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity," said John Santelli, chairman of the department of population and family health at Columbia University. "The other piece of it is: Abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it's not surprising, if that's the message young people are getting, that we're seeing condom use start to decrease."

Proponents of abstinence programs dismissed the criticism, blaming "comprehensive" sex education that emphasizes contraceptive use.

"Contraceptive sex education does not provide practical skills for maintaining or regaining abstinence but typically gives teens a green light to activity that puts them at great risk for acquiring STDs or which serve as gateway-to-intercourse activities," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association.

Others blamed the onslaught of movies, books, advertising and cultural messages that they say glamorize sex.

"The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex and the City,' " said Charmaine Yoest, a spokesman for the Family Research Council. "Our culture continues to tell them the way to be cool is to dress provocatively and to consider nonmarital sexual activity to be normative."

This would seem to be an issue where a position on one issue, say the efficacy of abstinence education, would not determine, or even influence one's position on another issue: whether out cultural gatekeepers should use greater restraint in depictions of sexual behavior. No?

Comments (3)

Our "cultural gatekeepers" will use greater restraint in depictions of sexual behavior when there is no market for what they are peddling...they offer it because it sells. It's that simple.

Stop buying it, and it will go away.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that parents refuse to say "No" to their kids. They refuse to turn off the television when shows are inappropriate for their child. They don't monitor what their kids are doing on the Internet or what exactly their kids are watching when they go to see that PG-13 or R-rated movie.

Most kids can't get to the movies on their own---they have to be driven. The last time I checked, you had to be 18 to have your own cable television account--so if a child is watching inappropriate content, parents have the ability to remedy that.

And lest I sound judgmental, I will say that I struggle. I have a 12-year-old and a 7-year-old, and it isn't easy to be their parent, rather than their friend. But it's what I signed on for when I had them. It's my job to be the "bad guy."

The suggestion that proponents of comprehensive sex education are fans of "anything goes" when it comes to kids and sex is one of the most pernicious lies of the Religious Right. As an HIV educator, I believe strongly in comprehensive sex education. I believe in talking early and often about abstinence, responsibilities and values related to sex, and contraception. I see it as my responsibility to shield my kids from inappropriate media content, while giving them the information they need to protect themselves and their future partners.

So count me as a "conservative" parent, when it comes to my approach to sex as a consumer product in America---and a highly "progressive" parent when it comes to teaching my kids the facts and values I think they'll need to be healthy grownups themselves one day.

Paige Baker

Posted by paigeb | June 5, 2008 3:36 PM

I'm with you, Paige.

On another note, I don't see why there should be anything causal in the leveling off that has occurred. It could be that the programs are effective with the low hanging fruit, and there is a segment of young people who will have premarital sex or unprotected sex no matter what they are told or taught in schools to counteract their predisposition (which in part must be determined by their home life).

In the early years of a program you would then see large declines, and then a leveling off.

To get at the kids more resistent to the message, perhaps we now need to think about why there are not more parents like Paige.

Posted by John B. Chilton | June 5, 2008 6:08 PM

perhaps we now need to think about why there are not more parents like Paige.

I'm going to print that out and show it to my children the next time they tell me that I'm the Meanest Mother in the World. ;-)

Posted by paigeb | June 6, 2008 10:01 AM

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