Here’s some (hopefully useful) answers to your questions:

1. Try it on. It shouldn’t be notably tight or loose.

2. There are bunch of reputable brands - Lifestyle, Trojan, and Durex are all well-respected and pretty easy to find. For more information on finding the right condom for you, take a look at the information provided here: http://www.ripnroll.com/condoms.htm

3. Deciding if you’re ready for sex isn’t something that I can do by just knowing your age. Sex is something that is much deeper than a number. It’s a huge decision to make, and you should really be talking with your partner (or potential partner) about whether your not ya’ll are “ready.” Here are some guidelines on a few topics ya’ll should talk about openly before you move forward: http://karenrayne.com/2008/10/21/top-ten-things-to-do-before-you-have-sex-a-list-for-teenagers-2/

4. Yes. Unless either you or your partner has allergy issues, lubricated condoms are nice. (There’s more on lubricated condoms in the link in answer #2.)

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions as they come up.

When I sent a much older sibling Karen’s blog on the outing the reaction was “That’s so cool why didn’t you do this for me? I still haven’t had the guts to buy a condom myself yet I always hope my partner has one”
As adults we need to honestly remember how uncomfortable we were having conversations with our parents about puberty and sexuality. The programs I experienced in school with their ‘talking’ sperm were severely lacking in content and did not answer many of my questions. Kids tend to depend on their friends for information on sex which is a notoriously bad source. No matter what your belief system or religion I would encourage every family to find someone as trustworthy and educated as Karen to be there to answer those questions your child would never ask you. Remember talking about sex doesn’t make you do it more it just makes you think first!

Yes, I essentially disagree with you - shall we say we both pick which studies we believe? - but there is something substantially useful and informative about talking about these issues across the belief line.

Now to your question: If abstinence-only sex education is only effective for a short time, why not simply do it more often? Because all people need a full, comprehensive knowledge of sex and sexuality There are two primary reasons for me:

First, most people have sex eventually - even people who wait until they are married - and so will need a comprehensive introduction to sex education eventually.

Second, not everyone will wait to have sex until after marriage (in fact, most Americans don’t), and will need the information before then. My husband has a lovely saying: “There are two times to learn something, before you need it or after you need it.” When things are as high-stakes as sexual activity is, it is critical that they know it before they need it.

And to your point about abstinence: I talk about how critical abstinence is in all my classes. I talk about it with my middle school students as the best possible choice for them, and I talk about it with my college students as a relevant and legitimate choice that must be respected. My middle school students mostly learn about condoms rather than the full range of contraceptive choices, but we talk about failure rates and I try to drive home that point that if they are having heterosexual intercourse, they can get pregnant. It doesn’t matter how perfectly they use condoms, there is always a chance that the woman will get pregnant. Condoms work really well much of the time, but they are not perfect. Abstinence is the only perfect contraceptive option. Any sexuality course that doesn’t face that fact straight on isn’t worth it’s weight in salt.

My degree had nothing to do with sex education or anything similar, so I do not have the resources, background knowledge, etc. to really be able to have an in-depth discussion on studies and the people behind them. I had read long ago that the study that did not recommend abstinence had not taken into account short term effectiveness, only long term in their recommendations. The question was asked, how can children who are taught abstinence be expected to retain that 4 years later with all the sexual messages in our culture?

If the only 100% guarantee of no STDs or pregnancy is abstinence and abstinence only ed is effective short term, wouldn’t it make sense to do that, but do it more frequently? Say every other year or something?

It was so long ago, I had even forgotten! I spent only a few moments searching to find that link and only read it a little to refresh my memory. It isn’t unusual for organizations to ignore studies which do not support their views. I see this in both liberal and conservative circles. I actually don’t follow very many organizations (conservative or liberal), but there are a couple.

As for peer-reviews in universities . . . That is another discussion entirely. Universities are notoriously liberal, full of biased teachers. I went to one that was private Catholic, (I am not Catholic, nor ever have been) and was stunned to see that even there the professors are extremely liberal in their views. These are the people teaching, and these are the views graduates are often coming out of school with and passing down to the next generation of students. I wouldn’t be too quick to trust everything proven by a university and supported by their peers. Even if the study is accurate, it may not take everything into account.

To tell you the truth, it is really bizarre for me to even be having this discussion. Normally I would not have commented on the blog of someone whose expertise is in an area I have disagreements. I am already at a disadvantage not being in that field myself. I actually came here through a link on a forum and read your post thinking that you were a typical blogger who talks about all sorts of things, probably a public school teacher since you were obviously teaching. Lol! And most of my early comments were with that in mind. Oh well! Hopefully, something good will come of it.

The paper’s conclusion: “Well-designed and well-implemented abstinence education programs can reduce teen sexual activity by as much as one half for periods of one to two years, substantially increasing the number of adolescents who avoid the full range of problems related to teen sexual activity.”

Unfortunately, performing some research on the authors of that paper led me only to this group: http://instituteresearch.com/, which has no academic or professional standing anywhere. In fact, their website contains only generic “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,” text. And while I see several papers of theirs referenced by conservative groups like Concerned Parents of America and the Coalition for Marriage and Family, I don’t see their research referred to by more mainstream organizations like the Center for Disease Control or the Surgeon General’s office. Do you have more information about this group and why you consider it’s research would be more reliable than the peer-reviewed university study that I linked to, or the better known informational organizations that Dr. Rayne links to from her main page?

I don’t wish to denigrate this group, but I’d never heard of them before this morning, and they seem to have no history or expertise in this area. Can you tell me more about them?

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As to your other statements:
“I was thinking more of what the parents are teaching than what the government is teaching.”
As far as I can tell, my government teaches close to nothing on the subject of sex. In my mind, that’s part of the problem. We parents need help understanding what and how to teach our children, and that’s what sites like this are about: Encouraging us parents to reinforce our values and teach them to our children. My values are quite conservative, so I teach my children about sex (and life) from a conservative’s viewpoint. Your values may differ from mine a little, or they may not. But we as parents are the primary purveyors of our values and if we don’t pass them on to our children, they will pick them up from other sources.

“There is no good substitute for good parenting.”
I completely and totally agree. The problem is that we as a society don’t do always a good job in teaching one another the skills of good parenthood, and there’s no owner’s manual for the raising of wise and compassionate children. It’s a struggle and a blessing.

Peace.

http://www.abstinence.net/pdf/contentmgmt/IRE__Abstinence_vs_Comprehensive_Sex_Education_682007_2.pdf