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In order for sex education to be all encompassing by the time a person reaches sexual maturity in adolescence, it must start early.
My five-year-old daughter knows that once a month, when the moon is half full, I have my period. She notices the moon as it changes, and often asks me on the days my period comes, or one or two days before or after, if I have started bleeding yet. She knows that the blood would stay inside me to help a baby grow if I were pregnant.
She doesn’t have a concrete understanding of sex yet, but she doesn’t need to. She is starting to understand my body, and by extension what her body will become. That’s what early sex education means.
Sex education is a highly political topics these days. The current administration has set a high priority on abstinence-only education. Other sex education strategies focus on pregnancy and STD prevention. The ways these topics are discussed (or not) with adolescents has the potential to have a serious impact on their sexuality, both now and in the future.
Therefore, I consider it imperative that in assessing the politics of the current presidential candidates, sex education is clearly and openly discussed. In order to make the presidential candidates’ views clear, I will ask each candidate to reply to two questions about sex education. Here are the questions I will ask:
Because there are so very, very many men and women running, I will only include those who have actually announced their candidacy, and will post their answers over several weeks. There are several potential candidates who have established exploratory committees, and I will be sure to include them when/if they officially announce their campaigns. The list of official candidates includes:
Democrats
Republicans
A friend of mine from junior high school came from a very conservative Catholic family. She was not so conservative, or so Catholic. She started dating boys in 8th grade. Her parents were, they thought, fairly strict with her. So if she wanted to visit with boys, the boy had to come to her house when the parents were home. My friend and her boyfriend could spend time in the common areas of the house or in my friend’s room with the door open. The parents figured that was pretty good. So my friend had sex for the first time in her room, with her bedroom door open, when her parents were home. Someone else I know had sex for the first time in the backyard, when her parents were home. Another at a well chaperoned party. Another at school. Another at church. None of these young people used a condom correctly.
The point is, sex feels good, and any teenager can find a time and a place to have sex. Because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t take all that long. Proper knowledge is the best way for adolescents to keep themselves safe, not force through rigid rules.
I am so sad for the children I am about to write about, but the adults who have responded to them make me angry at the unthinking way they responded, and also slightly nauseous because of the continuing emotional turmoil they are inflicting on the children. Here are a few facts that I know about, and I’ll try to be clear with the facts of the matter before I outline my outrage:
One week ago, in rural Louisiana, four students - ages 11 through 13 - had sex in an unsupervised classroom in front of their peers. They are being charged with obscenity, which is a felony, and a fifth student who stood as a look-out, will be charged as an accessory. They will be arraigned in Juvenile Court. More details are in the Washington Post.
My outrage at this train of events knows no bounds. A teacher was negligent in her job, leaving a group of 5th graders alone! She created the situation in which obscenity happened - if anyone is charged with a felony, it should be her! The people being charged are children! Children! Certainly, the two 11-year-old girls were. Because they were involving themselves in adult actions shows the unfathomable deficits in the adults around them, not in the children.
These children, simply by their age, necessarily have very little understanding of the depth and breadth of the issues involved with them having sex. These children, and maybe some of the other ones who were in the classroom, have indicated through their actions a serious need for counseling and inordinate amounts of attention from adults showered on them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for years! They need to be loved, to be shown what love is, to be held in the hopes that very careful and gentle love might possible, hopefully, allow them something of a safe space to heal their hearts, their souls, and their bodies. Not, of all things, to be arrested, to be judged, and to be punished with a FELONY! for their outrageously inappropriate sexual behavior that was clearly a group of children calling out desperately for help and attention from adults!
Of all of the stupid, inappropriate, harmful, and inexcusable reactions that I have ever heard of adults having in reaction to children or adolescents having sex, arresting them for a FELONY! is the absolute, dead-last, worst!
Gilbert Herdt wrote a fantastic summary of the issue with American sex education yesterday on the Voices of American Sexuality Blog. (Ignoring, of course, the blatant outrage that is abstinence-only education.)
The Trouble with Kids — Parents’ Sexual Literacy Kids need sexual literacy and parents are a prime source. The trouble is: most parents are reluctant, fearful or ill prepared about what to say, and when to say it. Studies have consistently shown that American parents fail to teach their children about sexuality. Ironically however polls reveal that parents want their offspring to have comprehensive sexuality education. How do we explain the contradiction? Poor parental sex literacy.
Americans have not received the literacy they need to have comfortable conversations anytime, anywhere, with their kids. Mature teens may suffer from the illiteracy the most. Psychologist Robert Epstein suggests that US culture is too restrictive of older adolescents who demonstrate good judgment and decision-making. Older teens should have the right to vote and drink and “have sex with whomever they want.” When adults condescend to youth, the young people fail to mature, learn good judgment. Others, such as John Cloud did in his Time magazine article in the April 9 issue, are not so sure that we should affirm young people’s judgment when it comes to sex. That is a conversation parents need to have with their kids. But they are not doing it out of fear and shame.
Parents in The Netherlands learned long ago that mature young people are going to have sex—it is not a matter of conjecture—and that it is better to acknowledge the fact and talk about it. As sociologist Amy Schalet has shown, Dutch parents apply this practical attitude with mature teenage sons and daughters, allowing them to sleep with their boyfriends or girlfriends in the parental household. The next morning the parents have the right to ask about what happened, however, and whether the sexual relations were done in an appropriate and safe way. That may seem fantastic to some Americans. But it seems to work: the Dutch have low rates of unintended pregnancy, HIV, sexual violence, and other sexual problems, compared to the US.
We need a new campaign to help parents be sexually literate and more comfortable with such conversations with their young. The trouble with kids begins with the parents.
Even if you (or your child) get an STD, everything will probably be okay. I want to take Robert’s comment from a previous post, and make sure everyone read it:
The risk of a list like this is that it can over stress STDs, you want to give good information, but you don’t want to come off like a sexual version of Reefer Madness. Most the STD’s listed are relatively difficult to contract. Many are very easily curable. You don’t want to understate the risks, especially of things like HIV, but if you overstress it, I have a feeling that teenagers’ BS meter will start ticking.
This point is a very, very good one. Most STDs are generally curable. Information, good choices, and access to good health care will carry most everyone through just fine.
The New York Times has a recent article talking about “amazing girls.” These are the girls who are padding their college resumes beginning in 7th grade. They volunteer at Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, and their church, they take advanced classes in foreign language, science, English, and history throughout high school, they are in theater, band, student government, and participate in a rotating sports team as the season changes.
I am horrified by this. At the same time, I admit, I probably could have been classified as an over-achieving, resume-padder when I was in high school too. It’s hard to buck the trend, when college admissions (which, it seems at the time, will determine your successes and failures for the rest of your life) is looming.
I’m ready to slow my life down. And, as the article points out, so are many parents of amazing girls. So why are the teenagers pushing, pushing, pushing? I can only believe that this wouldn’t be as it is if adults weren’t pushing it in some way or another. So what I can do to slow teenage girls’ lives down? What can you do to slow teenage girls’ lives down?
And as long as I’m asking questions, what about the boys?
As a partial follow-up to yesterday’s post, here is some information on STD transmission during oral sex. First, it is very rare that HIV is transmitted through oral sex - there have been no studies on whether the risk is increased when ejaculate is swallowed. Next, here are the risks associated with giving and recieving oral sex for both men and women:
The take-away message for me, ladies and gentlemen, is that oral sex is safer among women. All of this information comes from the City of San Fransisco Department of Public Health Free Clinic website. It’s a great resource.
(Thanks for the question, Ruth!)
