Giving teens the information they need
August 05, 2009 9:08:03
by Lee
Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
I was browsing the Planned Parenthood website recently, when I found a piece of information that absolutely floored me. There is apparently a contraceptive method about which I have been sorely misinformed. This method is extremely easy to use, involves no complicated procedures, and it doesn’t cost a cent. And, ladies and gentlemen, it is almost as effective as a condom. What is this magnificent new technology, you ask? It is the time-tested method of “pulling out.” Yep, withdrawal. According to the PP website, as well as a study published this May, with perfect use (male withdraws in time, every time) withdrawal has a failure rate of 4%, compared with a 2% failure rate for condoms.
Now, if your junior high sex ed. class was anything like mine, your head may have just exploded in disbelief. That was certainly my reaction upon reading this information: this can’t possibly be true, I thought. Because in my junior high sex ed. class, pulling out was the laughingstock of all the contraceptive methods. Pulling out was like a contraceptive wanna-be. An idiot’s game—virtually the same as no contraception at all. To find out otherwise gave me quite a shock.
Shocked as I am, however, it is not my intention to discuss the merits of pulling out as a contraceptive method. The PP website lists the benefits and drawbacks more concisely than I could here, and I don’t really even know what I think about it myself—except that as a self-proclaimed control freak, 4% sounds like a frighteningly high failure rate to me (frankly, even 2% is a little risky for my tastes). But this new revelation did get me thinking about all the myths I was told in sex ed. Based on the (accurate) information I’ve learned as an adult, I’ve realized that my sex ed. class was pretty much a haze of euphemisms, gross exaggerations, missing pieces, and flat out lies. For example, I learned in sex ed. that condoms will protect you from all STI’s (wrong—exhibit A, genital herpes); that if you ever have sex without contraception you are basically guaranteed to get pregnant (wrong again—as one of my struggling-to-conceive friends exclaimed after researching fertility cycles, “it’s actually a miracle anybody has ever gotten pregnant!”); and the most recently uncovered big whopper: that pulling out is totally useless and you might as well not even bother doing it. And no, these weren’t playground rumors—these “facts” came straight out of the mouth of my sex ed. teacher. Even more than that, what wasn’t mentioned in my sex ed. class seems almost more striking to me now than what was mentioned. In my sex ed. class, abortions did not exist, homosexual sex did not exist, people who had sex before marriage and went on to lead normal healthy lives did not exist, and female enjoyment of sex did not exist.
Which leads me to ask: why are we feeding our kids all this misinformation? I know sex ed. has probably changed a bit since I took it, but apparently it hasn’t changed enough. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cited on the PP website), by age 25, half of us will have an STI. Half. And this year, 750,000 teen girls in the U.S. will become pregnant. Clearly, whatever we’ve been doing in sex ed., it isn’t working as well as it needs to.
At this point, it seems pretty clear to me that too many of our decisions about what to teach our kids about sex stem from fear. But what are we so afraid of? Are we afraid that the information about contraception and protection is too complicated for them to understand? That they are incapable of making good decisions? Are we afraid that if we admit sex can be a whole lot of fun they’ll all turn into sex-crazed maniacs? Really?
Okay, now I encounter a lot of teenagers in my day job, and I know they are not famous for being the best decision-makers. In fact, the frontal lobe of the brain, which controls executive function (the part that helps us with self-control and planning for the future), doesn’t fully develop until the early 20’s. But I think we need to give teens a little more credit. They may be impulsive, they may be emotionally driven, but they’re not stupid. Every day, they make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. In every other important arena, we almost beg them to find out more information. Which college to attend? Do some research. Play hockey or soccer? Find out more about both teams. So do we really think sexuality is different? Do we really think teens will make better decisions about sex with incorrect or incomplete information? This just doesn’t make sense.
What if we reconsidered? What if we trusted our children to do the right thing, whatever that is for them, and what if we armed them with the best information out there? And what if we taught them not just the dry statistics about sex, but information about how to grow into their sexuality? What if, instead of trying to scare them away from ever having sex, we taught them how to make that decision for themselves, not based on an age or a wedding date, but based on their own feelings and maturity? What if we faced our fears, and did right by our kids instead of ignoring the problem and pretending abstinence is the only answer?
It makes me sad that I can barely even envision what that might be like. But I can promise you this—I’d rather have taken that sex ed. class than mine.
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