Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

So, as I’ve been talking with parents and others involved with teenagers of the past few months one concern keeps coming up again and again: that adolescents are engaging in oral sex more often and at younger ages than ever before. I have been surprised at both the prevalence and the strength of this belief, so I decided to see what I could figure out in real numbers.

It’s pretty hard to assess what people are doing right now. It takes so much time to design a study, get permission to run it, ask people questions, analyze their answers, and get the data out in published form, that it’s hard to find really current data. Here is some of what I have found. It is important to note the differences in the populations mentioned! The 1996 data includes only virgins. The 2002 and 2005 data includes all adolescents.

• In data published in 1996, 9 - 10% of adolescent virgins had engaged in oral sex.
• In data gathered in 2002, 25% of all adolescents had engaged in oral sex by the end of 9th grade and 50% of all adolescents ages 15 - 19 had engaged in oral sex.
• In data gathered in 2005, 20% of all 9th graders had engaged in oral sex.
• For the studies in which the comparison was given, girls and boys provided oral sex to the opposite gender at similar rates.

There does appear to be an increase in oral sex among adolescents, but I’m still not sure what these numbers mean to individual adolescents or their parents. One important point to remember is that this increase has happened at the same time as a decrease in adolescent rates of sexual intercourse.

I am not sure yet what I think of these trends. I am concerned that adolescents are missing important information about transmission of STD/STIs, and therefore aren’t being safe in their oral sexual encounters. I am worried that adolescents do not see oral sex as sex, and are engaging in it more easily and without much thought to the emotional/social issues it can come with.

However, I think it’s a good idea to delay sexual intercourse. So is it better for adolescents to engage in early oral sex than it is for them to engage in early sexual intercourse? Is this a trade off that we should accept? Discourage?

(Which brings up another question I’ll have to talk about later: Is it appropriate for adolescents to engage in sexual activity? When? With whom? How much input/rule-making is appropriate for adults to engage in around this topic?)

I met with a young teenager today to talk about sex and sexuality. I asked her to think about and then list how a person might express their sexual being in the following six life phases:

Infancy
Childhood
Adolescence
Young Adulthood
Middle Adulthood
Old Age

The question was fascinating for her. She came up with a complete blank on anything sexual in infancy or old age. She only listed masturbation under childhood and adolescence. Once we got into the process, though, and really started expanding on the idea of what sexuality meant, and what might instigate a beginning or an end of different expressions of sexuality, her lists became much more inclusive and insightful.

I’m interested in what you think about this question. How does sexuality express itself through the life cycle?

This is from last Sunday. Made me laugh!

A friend of mine from many years ago was in serious adolescent turmoil. Somewhere in high school this smart, creative young woman just got lost. As part of loosing her direction, she lost her functional relationship with her parents.

She had her first boyfriend. He was a jerk. They started drinking together. He figured out when her period was, and then when she would be ovulating. He premeditated having drunk, unprotected sex with her when she was most fertile, so she would get pregnant and stay with him. She got pregnant. Because she didn’t have a relationship with her parents, she was sure they would disown her if they found out about her accidental pregnancy.

She had an abortion.

At least partially because abortion was so counter to her deeply held spiritual beliefs, she spiraled out of control even more. It took her many years to find her path again.

I wonder if her parents ever found out. I wonder if her parents would have reacted as strongly, as judgmentally, as she feared they would. I wonder if she had been able to tell her parents, and if they had embraced her in her pain, and supported her path, if she would have been in as much pain, wandering, for so long.

As a parent, here is the question you have to ask yourself:
Is it more important to me that I tell my teenager how strongly I disapprove of her or his actions irrespective of the strain it puts on our relationship, or is it more important to me to maintain a strong relationship, so that she or he will come to me in times of great turmoil?

Nothing.

Let me clarify. First, for the purposes of this post, I am defining sexual activities as including everything from hand-holding and romantic kissing to oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse. For much of a child’s early life, his or her parents assume he/she is not engaging in sexual activities. For much of an adult’s life, his or her parents assume he/she is engaging in sexual activities.

It’s that tricky time in between childhood and adulthood where parents are, I have found, lagging in their assumptions about their child’s sexuality. For teenagers who have not started engaging in sexual behavior, their parents almost always correctly believe their children are not being sexual. For teenagers who have started engaging in sexual behavior, parents almost always assume their teenagers are engaging in lower levels of sexual activity than they really are. Eventually, although maybe not until the wedding night, parents’ assumptions catch up with their children’s sexual behavior.

This middle point, where parents’ assumptions are lagging their teenagers’ behavior, is a critical time, because it’s when teenagers need the most education about sex, sexuality, and relationships, and their parents aren’t even aware that they need it.

I am one of those people who is firmly in favor of contraception. I think it’s fantastic stuff, for me and other people. And I am absolutely clear about why: I think it’s great that women and men are able to engage in sexual activities without having babies, and I think it’s even greater that women and men can engage in the same activities without STD/STI transmission.

Now, many adults in America agree with that general statement. Here’s the point where everyone starts to disagree, with a large portion simply throwing up their hands and saying they don’t know: When should young people learn about condoms?

And I don’t mean learning that they exists, or even learning the words. I mean actually learning how to actually use them.

Here are some points to ponder:
1. Young women can get pregnant, and everyone can get an STD/STI the first time they have sex.
2. If the first time a young couple sees a condom outside of a package is as they’re trying to put it on, chances are they’re not going to do it right.
3. There is absolutely no relationship between knowledge/information about contraception and earlier sexual activity.

So, young people should learn about condoms early. Certainly before someone goes groping around the dark, trying to figure out which way the condom is inside out. Which basically translates to the earlier the better.

(Picture courtesy of CondomUSA. Go buy some for those you love!)

This morning’s question from a Washington Post blog On Parenting by Stacy Garfinkle was:

“How do you keep a 12- and 13-year-old girl away from junk food, cosmetics, alcohol, drugs and sex while under the influence of school, peers and TV?”

There are a couple of talking points here.

First, these are important topics to think about and talk about with your child before they are 12 or 13 years old. For example, junk food is something that even young children should learn is a rare treat, rather than part of a regular diet. Imparting your values to your children is something that needs to happen long before she starts to enter adolescence. Adolescents are in a place where they need to evaluate parental choices and values, and will do that by testing outside of your values. You just have to accept that testing as your children reaching outside of the family unit and defining their identity.

Second, choose your battles. It may be that you should just let go of the junk food, in exchange for putting all of your influence on a more important topic, like drug use or sexuality.

Third, remember that your relationship is more important than anything else. If you do not have a good relationship with your teenager, you will have absolutely no influence. So, except in truly extreme cases, don’t let go of your relationship, even if you are really hurting over what your teenager is doing. Let them know you’re hurting, but don’t let your hurt come between you.

Yesterday Judith Warner wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times about the APA report on the sexualization of girls (unfortunately, you have to be a paid subscriber to read it, but if you are, you can read it here).

Among other things, she has this to say:

We all tend to talk a good game now on things like body image and sexual empowerment. We buy the American Girl body book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” promote a “healthy” diet and exercise, and wax rhapsodic about team sports. But do we practice what we preach?

Not when we walk around the house sucking in our stomachs in front of the mirrors. Not when we obsessively regulate the contents of our refrigerators in the name of “purity.” (Did you know that there’s a clinical word fore the “fixation on righteous eating”? It’s called “orthorexia.”) Our girls see right through all our righteousness. And they hear the hypocrisy, too, when we dish out all kinds of pabulum about a “positive body image,” then go on to trash our own thighs.

Overall, I am surprised by Warner’s discussion. In general, I have found her to be incredibly supportive of mothers, and while not letting them off the hook for being selfish or inappropriate parents, she has stood against the tidal wave of guilt that our society provides in plenty for mothers.

This op-ed article, on the other hand, addresses women who are already overwhelmed with body image issues (first about how their own bodies should look and feel, and second about how they should get their pre-teen daughters’ bodies to look and feel) and tells them that they’re still doing it all wrong.

I am disappointed that Warner did not take a higher road on this issue.

Much popular attention is given to the impact that our culture has on girls. But I wonder about the impact it has on boys? Boys certainly don’t escape cultural definition of what or how they should be. There is a pervasive cultural assumption that all adolescent boys want to have sex all the time - and I know many of you are saying, “Well they do!” But that is sexualizing boys by the definition presented as sexualization in the APA report on girls. Not to mention, I am very suspicious of any cultural dictum that says all people from a certain group want to do anything all the time.