Chapter One

[Parents are] wasting their breath if they simply command their teens to postpone sexual activity because it is wrong at their age, or dangerous, or against parental principles. None of the above tells teenagers anything they need to know.

How to Talk with Your Child About Sexuality Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Are things having to do with sex really in that much of a mess? Are the times really worse now, sexually speaking, than when we were kids, or when our parents were kids?

Yes, all the indications are that things really are worse.

In this chapter, we want to convince you that your kids are at risk morally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically simply because they will grow up in the 1990s and the 2000s. Their risks on all fronts are much greater than ours were. We also want to examine major influences upon your child's developing sexuality-school sex education programs, cultural attitudes, peer groups, and the media-to see if you can view any of these influences as allies in your efforts to raise your kids pure. Our conclusion is that parents have few if any truly reliable allies in this vital parenting task.

Nearly all parents need some motivation to push them past and through their discomfort in dealing with sexual matters with their children. The average Christian parent has wonderful intentions for raising his or her child to follow the traditional Christian sexual ethic or moral standard. The average Christian parent also has a lot of trouble talking about sex in general, and especially with her or his children. Parents frequently tell us they feel tongue-tied, inhibited, shy, intimidated, or even panicked when the time comes to talk about sex. Two basic things can help you get past these inhibitions: being motivated by the vital importance of talking to your child about sex (that is the point of this chapter), and having confidence that you have something of quality to say to your child (that is what we hope to develop in the rest of this book).

WHAT ARE TEENS ACTUALLY DOING?

The best recent estimate of teenage sexual activity comes from a survey of over 1,100 high school students conducted by the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC). The study found that 54 percent reported having had sexual intercourse at least once in their lives, and 39 percent reported having had intercourse in the last three months. Let us say it bluntly: Most kids in high school have had sexual intercourse. As kids move through grades nine through twelve, the percentages increase. Boys tend to be slightly more sexually active than girls. Altogether, about 40 percent of high schoolers are already nonvirgins by the end of ninth grade. This rate goes up steadily through the senior year, by which time about 72 percent are nonvirgins. In other words, almost three-fourths of high school graduates are nonvirgins!

It is technically incorrect to say that every young person who has ever had sexual intercourse is sexually active; after all, a young person could engage in sex once or twice and then refrain from that point on. No one knows how the nonvirgin rate relates to how frequently young people are having sex and with how many partners. But the CDC asked not just whether kids had ever had sex, but also if they had had sex in the three months immediately preceding the survey. Sadly, the rates for the latter did not lag very far behind the rates for the former. In ninth grade, about 25 percent had had sex in the last three months, whereas by the senior year this percentage had grown to 55 percent. This needs our attention: Over half of high school seniors, about 53 percent of women and 57 percent of men, have had sex in the last three months. It is perhaps right to say that over half are "sexually active" in the truest sense of that phrase.

The greatest changes in sexual behavior over the years have occurred among young women. While the sexual activity rates among young men have edged up only a few percentage points over the last four decades, the sexual activity rates for women have increased dramatically. Kinsey estimated in the 1950s that less than 20 percent of young women were non-virgins when graduating from high school. The CDC's recent estimate is 67 percent. The main result of the sexual revolution for teens has been that young women have adopted the same sexually active patterns that young men have followed for some time.

Contraceptive Use

Most studies suggest that teens are terribly unreliable in their use of contraceptives for birth control and disease prevention. The CDC reports that condom usage is slowly increasing. Their survey found that about 45 percent of high school students said they used a condom in their last experience of intercourse. This is a higher estimate than most other studies have produced. A recent report in Newsweek stated that "Although many adolescents say they use condoms, experts think most don't." The fact that about one million adolescent girls become pregnant each year, and that the lion's share of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur in people under thirty, would suggest that contraceptives are not being used frequently or correctly, and that such methods are not the answer our young people need.

Pregnancy

Here are a smattering of the most frightening facts about teen pregnancy in the United States:

* "More than one million pregnancies occur each year among American teenage females, which is equivalent to one adolescent pregnancy beginning every 35 seconds."

* Thirty thousand pregnancies per year occur to girls fourteen or younger.

* Four out of ten girls now at age fourteen will get pregnant during their teen years.

* About one out of five girls who have ever had sex get pregnant every year.

* About a half million babies are brought to live birth by teenage mothers each year.

* The majority of girls who get pregnant before age seventeen will get pregnant again before age nineteen.

Consider the resources devoted to dealing with this problem, including the emotional agony of families; the time, energy, and cost of medical attention to the mothers; and the legacy of difficulties faced by the child born to a teenage mother. Is it any wonder that teen pregnancy is universally regarded as an epidemic that is out of control?

Abortions

The research branch of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America estimates that 2.8 percent of all women have an abortion each year. But the rates are much higher than this for women under twenty: An estimated 3.1 percent of women between fifteen and seventeen are reported to have an abortion each year (about one out of every thirty-two women in this group), and 6.3 percent of women aged eighteen and nineteen are reported to have an abortion each year (about one out of every sixteen women in this group). These statistics mean that in 1985:

* 16,970 abortions were performed on women under age fifteen.

* 165,630 abortions were performed on women age fifteen to seventeen.

* 233,570 abortions were performed on women age eighteen to nineteen.

Women under twenty account for over one-quarter of all abortions. At the rates reported in 1985, it is estimated that approximately one out of eleven young women will have had at least one abortion by their eighteenth birthday. It is estimated that by age twenty, almost one in six will have undergone an abortion.

The most frequent reasons given for teenagers to choose abortion include the following: "concerned about how having a baby could change her life," "is not mature enough or is too young to have a child," "can't afford a baby now," "doesn't want others to know that she has had sex or is pregnant," "has problems with relationship or wants to avoid single parenthood," and "is unready for responsibility."

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs)

A recent research summary reported that sexually active teenagers have a higher rate of contracting STDs than any other age group. Why? There are two basic reasons. First, teenagers are more likely to have multiple sex partners. Second, they are more likely not to use contraception, and if they do attempt contraception they tend to use methods that are ineffective at preventing the spread of disease (such as withdrawal). People are most likely to use contraceptives reliably in stable, mature relationships, which teenagers are very unlikely to have. Most married couples find they must adjust to the use of a birth-control method.

In spite of numerous education programs, most teens are ignorant of contraception and believe numerous fallacies about birth-control methods. Contraceptive use seems particularly lacking among teens who have poor communication with their parents (also a risk factor for engaging in sex, unfortunately); who have friends who get pregnant; who do not have high hopes for doing well in school or in life; who are anxious; and who have low self-esteem, little hope, and a low sense of personal effectiveness. And so, these teens are at much greater risk of contracting a disease.

Once they get an STD, teens are less likely than adults to get effective treatment and are more likely to have complications from it. Young women in particular are in a process of rapid physical change and development anyway, and an STD may complicate their physical development and affect them for the rest of their lives. Further, many teenagers are not aware that many of the STDs do not produce dramatic symptoms. Some diseases may thus go largely undetected, possibly causing the young woman to sustain lifelong damage to her reproductive system and resulting in other long-term medical complications. During this time, she can infect numerous other people.

Until the advent of AIDS, none of the STDs was considered life-threatening. But now AIDS is one of the most dreaded killers on the public health front. It took over nine years for the number of full-blown AIDS cases in the United States to reach one hundred thousand, spanning the years from 1981-1990. The number of AIDS cases then doubled in less than two years, rising to two hundred thousand early in 1992. Recently released statistics, reported widely in the popular press, suggest that one out of every hundred men and one out of every two hundred women are currently infected with the HIV virus and thus destined, as we currently understand it, to die of AIDS. AIDS is no longer a disease of just adults; it is currently the sixth-leading cause of death among fifteen-to twenty-four-year-olds. And HIV infection is increasing much more rapidly among heterosexual young people than in any other group in our country.

Drug and Alcohol Use

Research suggests that sexual activity rates are highest for teenagers who also use alcohol or other illicit drugs. And sadly, alcohol abuse and drug use are rampant in our society and among our young people. It is reported that about one-third of all high school students have consumed five or more drinks in a row at least once in the previous two weeks. Forty-eight percent of high school seniors report having tried marijuana or some other illicit drug; 29 percent of high school seniors have tried some drug other than marijuana. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that "this nation's high school students and other young adults show a level of involvement with illicit drugs which is greater than can be found in any other industrialized nation in the world." Overall, there appears to have been a significant but modest decline in alcohol and illicit drug use over the last decade. But these are still alarming statistics, especially when we consider that kids who use alcohol and drugs are more likely to engage in sex, and in a way more likely to result in pregnancy and transmission of diseases.

Rape

With the rise in premarital sex has come an additional and truly frightening trend, an increase in rape. Experts are clear that the most common form of rape is date rape or acquaintance rape. One study found that almost 60 percent of rapes occurred in dating relationships and about 85 percent of rape victims knew their assailants. Studies of female college students on public university campuses have found that at least one in sixteen and possibly as many as one in five women report having been forced to have sexual intercourse on a date against their will. Men have apparently come to believe that women want sex even when they say they don't, and a polite refusal is no longer enough in many relationships. A substantial number of men, especially those involved with pornography, express attitudes about sex that put them in the role of a predator and the woman as the prey. Studies of rape in high school or earlier are practically nonexistent, but most authorities believe there have been dramatic increases in this group as well.

Teenagers are engaging in a lot of behavior that is contrary to God's intended design and to the wishes of their parents. The stakes have always been high when teens have played with the fire of premarital sexual experimentation. But more teens than ever before are taking the gamble. And more teens than ever before are losing that gamble. Where can the concerned parent find an ally?

DO OUR "SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS" SUPPORT THE CHRISTIAN SEXUAL ETHIC?

It appears in some ways that our society is still quite morally conservative. For instance, one recent survey found that approximately 90 percent of the American population agrees that adultery is always or almost always wrong.12 In fact, it appears that negative views of adultery have actually been getting stronger over the last two decades. The same survey suggested that between 70 and 80 percent of the American populace judge homosexual relations to always or almost always be wrong. This percentage seems to not be changing much.

But the public appears to take a much more "tolerant" view of pre-marital sexual relations. The same study found that less than 40 percent of Americans regard premarital sexual activity to be always or almost always wrong. Another study found that slightly over 50 percent of those surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "Sex before marriage is okay, if a couple loves each other." Clearly, the opinions of most adults in our society do not support the traditional Christian sexual standard of chastity. A strong majority agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "Methods of birth control should be available to teenagers even if their parents do not approve."

Continues...