Posted on 12/17/2007 4:28:08 AM PST by Kaslin
Could preteen sex actually be a good thing? In what’s being billed as a blow to conventional wisdom, recent news stories have heralded two studies that appear to assert positive benefits to early sexual experience. The Washington Post reported results of an Ohio State University study finding that “youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.” Even more recently, ABC News ran a piece with a headline trumpeting “Losing Virginity Later Linked to Sexual Problems,” and a sub-head adding, “Those Who Have Sex Later, Particularly Men, Seem to Experience More Sexual Dysfunction.”
Certainly, the issue of teens and sex has always been a controversial one. But in the past, disagreement focused on whether youths could, in fact, be convinced to remain abstinent; there remained a common assumption that sexual restraint was better for teens and pre-teens than sexual activity. By purporting to suggest that abstinence could actually be affirmatively harmful in certain contexts, these studies represent a radically different challenge to current public consensus about teen sexual activity.
But before Americans begin to reformulate public policy (or rethink plain common sense) based on these results, there are plenty of reasons to be wary. In fact, the authors of the study finding those with a later age of sexual debut experience more sexual problems admit that they found no causal relationship between the two phenomena. In other words, there’s no evidence that waiting to have sex increases the likelihood of sexual dysfunction. Rather, there’s simply a link between the two – which means that it’s just as likely that those who already have sexual problems delay sexual activity in the first place.
As for the study finding that those engaging in consensual teen or pre-teen sex are less likely than their abstinent cohorts to be delinquents, it ignores one important fact right at the outset. Because the age of consent across America is 16 or older, a substantial portion of teen and all pre-teen sex is illegal – and thus constitutes delinquent behavior on its face.
Before teen and pre-teen sex is recast as little more than another recreational activity that will help keep kids out of harm – a slightly more interactive version of midnight basketball, as it were – it’s important to recall that it imposes substantial social costs of its own. Every year, one in four teens is diagnosed with an STD, and the lifetime direct medical costs of just eight of the sexually transmitted diseases contracted by those 15-24 in 2000 alone will total a hefty $6.5 billion. What’s more, it’s been estimated that the cumulative public costs of the teen childbearing between 1991 and 2004 totals $161 billion, even after accounting for factors like race, ethnicity and socioeconomic class.
The individual costs of early sexual activity are likewise substantial. For girls in particular, in addition to the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, sexual activity also poses substantial emotional and psychological risks. Psychologists have noted that as a result of poor sexual decision-making, girls can experience regret, anxiety, shame, a loss in self-esteem, heartbreak, disappointment and a lifelong inability to trust men. What’s more, one study conducted by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that sexually active girls were three times as likely to suffer from depression as their abstinent peers; another, in the Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that even modest sexual experimentation increases the risk of depression among girls – effectively rebutting claims that depressed girls were more likely to act out sexually in the first place.
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with conducting research on teen sex and then using it to adjust public policy. What’s dangerous, however, is to allow the results to be misinterpreted, especially by anyone with a preexisting political agenda. It’s worth noting that authors of both studies used them as a predicate for attacking federal abstinence-only programs, a stance reported approvingly in both news stories.
No doubt it’s important to learn what the facts are – whether sexual dysfunction accounts in part for delayed sexual activity, for example, or delayed sexual activity results in dysfunction. But it’s likewise essential to know whether preconceived opinions are driving the research, or whether research will be used to formulate policies that are as consistent with common sense and collective experience as they are with “science.”
Hormones injected into the foods. Either that or global hormone warming.
Welfare bureaucrats must be thrilled with their future enrollment graphs at their planning meetings.
Well, one has to hope that at least it would keep them off the streets!
Only a strictly biological level, this is unnatural. Animals don’t mate without reaching sexual maturity.
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On the other hand, boys and girls reach sexual maturity many years before they are considered to be of marriageable age in today’s society. Going for years with raging hormones and no outlet can take a young fellow’s attention away from the things he ought to be learning. I am not advocating sex for the very young, I am simply making an observation. I wish my parents had shown some understanding of what I went through growing up. The only message I remember is,”don’t even think about it”. That is not very practical advice.
That's why teen pregnancy rates are low to almost nonexistent in America's highest-crime neighborhoods.
Looking back at my frustrated teen age years it makes me sad to remember all those wasted years of confusion, frustration and rejection. I could have done better and obtained a lot more goals in life if I was to have been able to just shut it off, its no wonder elderly people like my self included make more money and have better concentration cause we are not thinking about it so often.
I wish more study could be done to enable the use of drugs to slow it down safely so our children can go through it easier.
“Well girls are born with ovaries and boys are born with testes so I guess they do have the tools.”
The transgenders take issue with that statement.
As a society I’m beginning to believe that sexuality is beyond our ability to responsibly manage.
A slam dunk?
Totally believe the hormones theory. I think it also explains the unusually larger breast sizes in girls under 20 as well.
My left wing liberal atheist father-in-law gave my 16 year old son an article about this - behind my back! I threw him out of the house with some choice words to go along with it!
I am not a prude man by any stretch of the imagination. However, some years ago I came to the conclusion that all this sex ed for the last 40 years has contributed to the rise in sexual related health issues (like teen pregnancy, rising levels of STD, spread of HPV, etc.). Its not even education anymore at this points; its flat out encouragement to do it in the road and does not teach any consequences.
“If something is wrong
then not thinking about it
is how we should think!”
Kids are taught that booze, smoking, fighting and so on are bad for them. We don’t take the attitude that “well they’re gonna do it anyway”, instead we encourage them to avoid as much of the negative things in life as they can.
However when it comes to sex the reverse is true. Is this because of the abortion industry seeking new customers or because of the pedophiles seeking new conquests? Perhaps both?
Off the court, Chamberlain was also a successful businessman, authored several books and appeared in the movie Conan the Destroyer. He was a lifelong bachelor, but became notorious for his claim to have had sex with 20,000 women,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilt_Chamberlain
Choose someone else to emulate.
” ... more girls are beginning menstruation before the age of 11.”
Yet something else to lay at the door of increased obesity/body fat.
Please see post #55. For older girls and young women who take contraceptive pills, hormones undoubtedly play a role in breast enlargement, quite apart from body fat.
I understand that, and for girls who take BCP for endometriosis, they will have the side effects, including weight gain. I’m referring more to the hormones in milk and meat, which have more than likely caused ‘maturation’ to occur earlier in girls.
Very easy for you to say but telling a healthy fifteen year old boy not to think about sex gets about the same results as telling a starving man not to think about food.
“Very easy for you to say but telling a healthy fifteen year old boy not to think about sex gets about the same results as telling a starving man not to think about food.”
Perhaps you should give that 15 yr old something else to do?
You can pretty well figure out who likes to have sex with children by seeing who is in favor of dreck like this.
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