Posted on 12/10/2004 11:36:01 AM PST by DBeers
Hey Kids! Want Good Sex? Try Abstinence.
Warren Throckmorton
As a mental health counselor, I am really troubled by the numbers of adolescents that I have counseled who cried for days and hurt for years because they engaged in "safer sex" within dead end, unfulfilling relationships. Sadly, they learned that “safer sex” can be hazardous to their emotional health.
I think the current political debate concerning abstinence vs. contraceptive based sexual education has failed to include an important variable in the discussion of what to teach in school: sexual well being.
In many contemporary sexual education curricula, young boys and girls who listen carefully in health class will be schooled in the virtues of condoms. They may learn the mechanics and become involved in “safer sex” without the result of pregnancy or deadly disease. Sadly, though, such programs rarely inform them that their emotional and sexual adjustment would be enhanced if they would wait for the marital bed. What a disservice to a generation of young people.
I am raising this point because I just finished authoring a report, with colleague David Blakeslee concerning proposed changes in sexual education curriculum in Montgomery County, MD. Among other innovations, these changes offer students a PG-13 experience in watching a condom application demonstration, featuring a female and a cucumber. Further, the curriculum explains to students that it is harmful to have risky sex (meaning sans condom) but says next to nothing about any problems associated with engaging in pre-marital sexual relationships, provided condoms are on board.
In other words, 10th graders, we will tell you that applying condoms may prevent disease and pregnancy but we will not tell you that your long term sexual and emotional satisfaction may be enhanced by saving sex until marriage. The curriculum says in places that the only sure way to prevent disease and pregnancy is through abstaining but there is no mention that one’s overall well being might be enhanced by waiting.
Since you won’t hear this in school, here are a few survey findings from research concerning abstinence. According to 1996 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, lower sexual activity among adolescents is correlated with higher levels of well being. In fact, sexually active girls are over three times as likely to report depressive symptoms than their abstaining counterparts and sexually active boys are over twice as likely to report depressive symptoms. Amazingly, these two groups report higher incidence of suicide attempts; boys in particular are at 8 times the risk for a suicide attempt if they are sexually active.
Young women are particularly vulnerable. According to the sex survey Social Organization of Sexuality, by Edward Laumann and colleagues, “young women often go along with intercourse the first time, finding little physical pleasure in it…” The report notes that there are “dramatic costs for young women” which are “increasing as young women have intercourse earlier in the life course.” (p.347). Sounds like delaying sexual involvement is a good thing both emotionally and sexually.
Concerning marital sex, the same report indicates that “a monogamous sexual partnership embedded in a formal marriage evidently produces the greatest satisfaction and pleasure.” (p. 364). Further, religious women are more likely to report being sexually satisfied than non-religious counterparts. These are the women who are more likely to have waited until they can follow the teachings of their faith about being “embedded in a formal marriage” before they have sex. However, presumably abstaining works for those of all faiths and those with none.
Why don’t health educators want kids to know these things? Good question. Ask it sometime at school board meeting.
Instead religious people and those who favor abstinence until marriage are usually portrayed as prudish, repressed folks afraid to talk about sex, let alone practice it. Rather it appears those smiles may be more than religious euphoria.
Given the positive health and mental health benefits of abstinence, it looks to me like these research findings should be prominently featured in sex education curricula. That is unless all we want to do is get latex around the problem.
However, often the research results reported above are not even mentioned. Not in the Montgomery County curriculum and almost never in public debate concerning the best form of sexual education.
So kids, want great sex? Now you know what to do. Or should I say: what not to do.
Warren Throckmorton, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the College Counseling Services at Grove City College (PA). He is co-author, along with David Blakeslee, Psy.D. of the recent report, Health Education as Social Advocacy, which is available at http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf. He can be reached at ewthrockmorton@gcc.edu .
I agree 100% with your comments and IMHO you are not a bleeding heart liberal!
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Many thanks. It's too bad that such a beautiful flower became linked to liberals. I was trying to think of some appropriate epithet for those people, but "liberal" was the worst I could think of, lol.
Believe it or not, there is a deeper place for human experience than the sex organ. That's what I'm referring to. I'm not saying sexual experience without a lifelong commitment is miserable sex. I'm saying that even a rousing fireworks sexual experience doesn't touch the core of the heart. Especially if it is outside the confines of lifelong etc.
There is a saying I read somewhere, goes something like this: "After sex, even animals are sad."
It's a question of identity. I am convinced, through years of study, practice, and experience, that my identity is eternal soul; that the body is merely a vehicle, and that this can be realized - experienced, while still in the material tabernacle. The smallest, slightest experience of spiritual identity (in Sanskrit called "brahmananda") is so far greater than anything the sex organ or any other bodily pleasure has to offer that even the most extraordinary sexual experience becomes pale and more or less uninteresting in comparison.
One thing that does a huge disservice to kids is to give them moral permission to have sex before marriage. Notwithstanding religious belief, kids have absolutely NO BUSINESS having sex. They are not equipped to deal with consequences AT ALL. They can't deal with pregnancy, or STD's, or the emotional fallout from it. They simply do not know what they're getting into, and more often than not they do it for the wrong reasons knowing full well that in 99% of the cases, their relationships will not last.
Kids think that if they don't act like adults, they're not "mature". They don't want to cut themselves the slack that they simply aren't mature enough for these kinds of things... If you're fifteen and you decide sex isn't for you at this point in life, it doesn't make you a baby or a prude. A lot of people don't get that. I didn't get that for a long time. Happily I did in time to commit myself to chastity without having had intercourse.
But the reason adults don't send this message, is because many of them are so immature themselves, they don't believe it...
Right on target. Moral values should be taught by our parents. Unfortunately, too many parents don't believe or don't work on proactive encouragement to discourage bad behavior.
"My comment sounded really arrogant!"
I didn't take it that way.
"I am interested in your quote file. Mine is random, just stuff I find here and there."
Mine, too. Whenever I run across something that motivates me to open the file and paste it in.
"I am singularly uneducated, so things that may be really obvious and well known are astonishing to me."
I am medium-well educated, and it happens to me. I think it's part of the human condition.
"To quote Billy Crystal..."
Not to quibble, but that's "Women need a reason to have sex; men just need a place."
GL ""Sexual attraction is like duct tape. It sticks really well the first time, but if you peel it off it doesn't stick so well the next time. After five or six go 'rounds, it hardly sticks at all...""
MB "Well, I can see that you are still stuck at the emotional level of a fourteen year old."
I think what gridlock meant was that sexual attraction alone is insufficient to sustain a long-term relationship.
"Well, "Gridlock," is still wrong.
Sexual attraction is still high over here, after many years of marriage and several kids later. Can you imagine being single and reading that? Not much of a recommendation for marriage."
Surely a marriage such as yours is not based on sexual attraction ***alone***. Surely it is founded on love and mutual respect as well, isn't it?
What gridlock seems to be saying is that the love and mutual respect are *necessary,* that sexual attraction ***alone*** is inadequate to sustain a long-term relationship.
bookmark
Self respect bump.
Hey there, Spooky! Good to see ya.
Have you seen this?
(((((hugs))))))
Thanks for the ping, Victoria. That's a great post of yours.
I've enjoyed reading both of your posts.
You both share a lot in common.
LisaMalia: from reading MBombadier's posts I don't think she's a bleeding heart liberal.
God bless both of you and Merry Christmas.
Luckily, I have a strong curiosity and always want to learn. That's why I love FR!
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