Great OP-Ed in today's NY Times. - Let’s Talk About Sex

[BrklynLiberal]

<snip>
In fact, a 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark held that title. But, its teenage birthrate was one-sixth of ours, and its teenage abortion rate was half of ours.

If there is a shame here, it’s a national shame — a failure of our puritanical society to accept and deal with the facts. Teenagers have sex. How often and how safely depends on how much knowledge and support they have. Crossing our fingers that they won’t cross the line is not an intelligent strategy.

To wit, our ridiculous experiment in abstinence-only education seems to be winding down with a study finding that it didn’t work. States are opting out of it. Parents don’t like it either. According to a 2004 survey sponsored by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, 65 percent of parents of high school students said that federal money “should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives.”
<snip>

more at...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/opinion/06blow.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[RC]

1. How is a person supposed to know how to deal with life as an adult

if they are kept ignorant of the things they need to know to function as healthy adults?

[PDJane]

2. Young people will have sex.

That's a fact of life. Mother nature designed the human animal that way.

Whether young people have children depends on the kind of education they get and the kind of alternatives they have. Abstinence only education is a complete waste of time. If adults can't manage to restrain their urges to get flat and naked with inappropriate people at inappropriate times, why do we expect teens to do so?

[young_at_heart]

3. What is McCain/Palin or Palin/McCain's view on sex ed?

I can only guess this joined-at-the-hip unit doesn't care much for sex ed!

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Abstinence only...

REALLY!!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[kurt_cagle]

4. Sex and the Religious Mentality

One of the common threads that runs through most evangelical fundamentalist communities is the belief that while conversion of outsiders to evangelical causes is always desirable, raising children from birth as fundamentalists is far, far better - such children will be less likely to "relapse", are more malleable in their beliefs, and are less likely to question the beliefs of the church (or those who pronounce them) as they get older. This is why such religious sects strongly encourage their parishioners to have as many children as possible ... Sarah Palin is in fact fairly typical of evangelical fundamentalists because of that.

Marriage, in turn, also acts as a way to insure that the people marrying are in fact both godly and of the church. Sexual congress out of wedlock doesn't have the approval of the church, and the fear of course is that if you provide some form of contraceptive you are also encouraging the concept that sex can occur without being sanctioned. If you control someone's sex life, you control everything else - something that's been known by church officials for centuries.

The more contemporary mindset differentiates sex and having children, recognizes that teens will, unless very well supervised, do what their bodies are telling them to do, and that the most effective strategy in that regard is to insure that some form of contraceptives are in place. Not surprisingly, families with this mindset are usually smaller, and typically more attention is spent on each child as a consequence.

Unfortunately, in the aggregate what this may mean is that in the long term demographics favor the fundamentalists, even if economics don't necessarily. A diminishing birthrate makes sense in a world where there are fewer resources and an overtaxed environmental system, such as what is currently happening, but the fanaticism of the fundamentalist mindset tends to be focused on what's better for that person, not for humanity overall (especially godless heathens).

That's a part of the reason why there is such a personal, almost visceral polarization about Palin - you either are of the opinion that the faithful must reproduce (by whatever means necessary) or you are of the opinion that this type of action is barbaric, demeaning to women and nonsensical in a resource constrained world.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. I am one of the people who agrees with the latter...

All these folks with their litters of kids are going to be very upset when the "end" does not come when they expect it...and they and their descendants are forced to live on a planet that can no longer sustain them.

The really maddening thing about that is that the rest of us who are trying to conserve resources..that includes only reproducing ourselves... are going to be forced to survive in the same hostile environment as these folks who are doing nothing to prevent it...and are in fact doing everything possible to hurry the destruction of our planet.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. ..and that is an excellent analysis. thanks.

[blue neen]

8. Great post.

You explained the situation very well!

[SoCalDem]

9. There's more to this than "just sex"..

There are many, many, many, many young girls (and boys, boy-men, men) who see nothing positive about their lives.. They see no future for themselves.. Adolsecence has always been tough, but these days, kids are more and more unsupervised, and without much attention from adults, many feel unloved, unappreciated, and unable to manage their lives.

These kids are easily drawn to the idea, that the sooner they "start their real lives, their adult lives", the better. Sex is one sure way to get there in a hurry, and if a baby results, so what..Babies are cute, babies signify that "you are grown up" ...and no stigma really exists anymore anyway.

If kids grow up feeling loved, and knowing that their future is anything they want it to be, maybe they are more willing to take their time...but if you see your own future as a grim succession of dead-end jobs, and living hand to mouth forever (maybe like your parents are doing), "NOW" becomes more important.

A few generations ago, delayed gratification was what most of us learned.. study hard NOW, and LATER you will go to a good school and get a GOOD job.

Mow the lawn NOW, and later you will get paid

Save your money, and then you can buy that TV, washer, couch, car, house, whatever.

Wait until you are grown up/married , and then have a baby.

We are in the NOW , and it's not surprising that so many young people don't "wait" ..for anything..

[n2doc]

10. You sure have that right

I really saw it in south Texas. Go to the mall and there were amazing numbers of teen girls pushing strollers. Starting "young" was just part of teenage life. Probably the same elsewhere and with other groups, I just was shocked by it when I moved there.

[Tallison]

11. THIS is what's distinctive about the US

You hit it in on the head with our first statement, that the playing field is so unlevel here, that opportunity so predicated on geography and socialeconomic class that to many parenthood is a more realistic aspiration than homeownership, a livable income with benefits, a high school diploma, never mind a bachelor's. Like Noam Chomsky said, freedom without opportunity is the devil's gift.