Do teens have sex more or less often now than...whenever?
(Do You?)
Do teens have unprotected sex more or less often now than...whenever?
(Do I?)
You, of course, may share anything here you wish. After all, this is a private blog site and no one with whom you wouldn't ordinarily share intimacies will ever see anything. That reminds me of a Rodney-line: "When I first had sex, I mean, I was really scared! After all, I was all alone!" (Thank you, thank you; I'll be here all week....)
So here's the LTSN--Latest Teen Sex News:
These numbers are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as reported in Tuesday's New York Times. (They're in Atlanta, a hot place, so I find the data already suspicialicious.) The latest information's from surveys taken between 2006 and 2010.)
. 43% of unmarried teen girls have had sexual intercourse at least once.
. 42% of unmarried teen boys have had sexual intercourse at least once.
. In 2002, 51.1% of teen girls reported sexual intercourse at least once.
. In 2002, 60.4% of teen boys reported sexual intercourse at least once.
That's quite a drop-off.
Are our kids grown
Uglier?
Marginally Less Stupid?
Brighter?
Both?
All Five?
. Latest numbers--from 2010--indicate that 78% of girls and 85% of boys used contraception (a three-point increase over eight years for girls and boys).
. The latest teen birth-rate for teens 15-19 is 39 per 100,000, the lowest on record. (In Canada, Italy, and Germany, these rates are lower still.)
. Girls have higher rates of the STDs chlamydia and gonorrhea than boys.
. Syphilis is lower in teens than in any age-group.
The National Center for Health Statistics also says that "the percentage of teenage girls who have sex is the same across ethnicities." This is the first time there has been such a finding. (Stereotypes? See Ya!)
Here's a set of interesting charts.
(I love charts bc they make me think I can do math.)
Perhaps just as interesting is that the most common reason both boys and girls give for never having had sex is that it runs counter to their religion/morals.
Wait. That sure as hell doesn't account for why I don'..... Let's move on.
Back in 2002, the second most stated reason boys said they abstained from sex was to avoid getting a girl pregnant. Yet now, the second most common reason why boys who haven't had sex say they haven't is that they had yet to find the right person. The James Dean in me is skeptical. Maybe it's my Inner Alfred E. Newman. Or My Inner Lenny B. Or My InnerInner Rod Serling.
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Comments
r
HUGGGGGGGGG
I've gotta fly.
Seriously though, I have met a lot of young women (as patients) in their mid/late 20s who were virgins until marriage and whose partner was also a virgin, or they aren't married but have been mutually monogamous for a long time. Aside from fear (disease, pregnancy, getting tied down to wrong person, finances), it seems like religion is really the driving force.
Have you ever read a book called Generations, by Strauss and Howe? It would help explain the phenomenon you're reporting. The contention is this: Different generations have different behavioral characteristics, mainly based on their parents correcting what they viewed as the mistakes of previous parents. While they correct one set of mistakes, some of what they do will be viewed as mistakes by their successors. This is cyclical. Upbringing predicts lifelong behavioral trends. There are four types of generations and they occur in order (though one of the four sometimes doesn't appear in a cycle). In the US, they've taken this analysis back at least to the 1600's. We are way better off when major crises happen at certain places in the cycle. It's scary how well it works. By the way, we are generationally at the beginning of a crisis sweet spot - in other words, at a place in the cycle where we'd handle one well. We were in the sweet spot during WWII and during the American Revolution. We were in the wrong spot during the Civil War.
I myself gave up on teenage sex a long time ago. Been there, done that, and it's not really any of my business any more.
Rated.
Yes,I do believe that religions have still control over the matter.
Pope John Paul in SA...or Africa...or else.
If we believe in Sex as a natural force,what else is there to say?
Teenagers + self-reporting = unreliable data
When will I be able to buy a book on you satirical comments?
You two are ever so funny.
I'm glad to know about small gains in sense and responsibility on the part of teens having sex. If they're going to have it, nice to see they'll at least give the nod toward trying not to get infected with STD's or end up in the family way long before they're ready to be parents.
rated
rated with love
What alarms me about the numbers is the gap in percentages between teen boys and girls in 2002. Does this mean teen boys are having sex with older women? R
I'm always suspicialicious of sex statistics, especially when the results are self-reported. They'll show that 50% of married men cheat but only 10% of women, which means there are either some very busy women or a lot of people telling lies.
I think teenagers are more responsible these days, because they see adult behavior in the news every day and think, "I'm not going to behave like that!"