Opinion discussion: How do you feel about public schools distributing

[SKL]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

 The pew data show both decreasing pregnancy and abortion rates. Both have declined, in tandem. There’s no evidence of media causing a significant increase in teen sex.

1) I didn't say media causes an increase in teen sex, though I do think it encourages more casual premarital sex if you compare to before the media started getting ridiculous during the sexual revolution.  I don't have the stats, but it is obvious that when practically every modern movie has young people engaged in casual sex, that is going to have an influence that parents need to respond to.

2) pregnancy and abortion rates leave out the rate of teens who are using birth control.  Thus it leaves out a big chunk of the "teen sex" statistics.  I was not able to find stats for trends in the overall teen population using birth control.  (Articles I've seen focus on the subset of sexually active teens who use it.)

[SKL]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

It's not so much "practice parenting"  On larger scale, we have removed responsibilities from our young people.  From preventing kids getting their licenses until age 17, to employers that will only hire adults for jobs that used to be done by teens, to paper routes that are now all done by adults in cars, even down to people calling the cops because parents didn't go to the park with their 10yr old.   When I was a kid, we lived on a cul de sac and the bus stop was at the end of the street.  The street had a bit of a curve, so no one in the cul de sac could see the bus stop.  And yet, every morning, even in Kindergarten, I and my friend would walk down the street, out of sight of my house, and wait for the bus.  When my oldest was in high school, the bus stop was on the corner of our street, just 2 houses down.  I would send my kid out the door......and then my next door neighbor (so 3 houses down from the bus stop) would open her garage door, back her van down the driveway, drive her kid to the corner, and sit there in the van, and of course, invite my kid to sit in the van with her.  Have we really reached a point in society where two 15yr old girls can't handle standing outside on the corner for 10 minutes waiting for the bus just houses down from their own? 

You'll be happy to know my kids have been taking themselves to and from the bus stop since the bus started running when they were 7.  😛  Yes, we have to manufacture some responsibilities because of ridiculous changes in society.  It is a pet peeve of mine too.

[Momto6inIN]

38 minutes ago, SKL said:

I didn't say media causes an increase in teen sex, though I do think it encourages more casual premarital sex if you compare to before the media started getting ridiculous during the sexual revolution.  I don't have the stats, but it is obvious that when practically every modern movie has young people engaged in casual sex, that is going to have an influence that parents need to respond to.

Yes to this.

Teens were still having sex back in my grandparents' day but it was typically with their "steady" and they usually ended up married to them more often than not. Casual sex wasn't a thing for teens, by and large. Nowadays casual hookups are considered the norm, which is a big change, and the media has had a huge impact on that phenomenon.

[ChocolateReignRemix]

4 minutes ago, Momto5inIN said:

Yes to this.

Teens were still having sex back in my grandparents' day but it was typically with their "steady" and they usually ended up married to them more often than not. Casual sex wasn't a thing for teens, by and large. Nowadays casual hookups are considered the norm, which is a big change, and the media has had a huge impact on that phenomenon.

Teen sexual activity is actually declining in recent years.  Fewer teens are also having sex with  multiple partners. In general, teens today are having less sex, and it is generally safer.

http://recapp.etr.org/recapp/index.cfm?fuseaction=pages.StatisticsDetail&PageID=555

--Between 1991-2015, the proportion of students who ever had sexual intercourse decreased from 54% to 41%.3

--The percent of adolescents who are having sex at earlier ages has decreased since 1988 and contraceptive use has increased since the 1990s. Together these two factors have contributed to the U.S. reaching its lowest teen pregnancy and birth rates in years.

 

[Janeway]

Does not bother me at all. Assuming they are not keeping a register of which students are getting condoms of course. 

[HS Mom in NC]

18 hours ago, DesertBlossom said:

 

I really don't understand this idea that teenagers are mature enough to have sex but not mature enough to be responsible for paying for their own supplies.

Most people don't think teenagers are mature enough to have sex.  Most people think teenagers are short sighted, impulsive, and prone to thinking they're fairly invincible, and irrational when horny (or not horny), which exactly why they would be willing to allow schools to provide them with condoms to limit the spread of disease and babies born to such parents. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

It's not so much "practice parenting"  On larger scale, we have removed responsibilities from our young people.  From preventing kids getting their licenses until age 17, to employers that will only hire adults for jobs that used to be done by teens, to paper routes that are now all done by adults in cars, even down to people calling the cops because parents didn't go to the park with their 10yr old.   When I was a kid, we lived on a cul de sac and the bus stop was at the end of the street.  The street had a bit of a curve, so no one in the cul de sac could see the bus stop.  And yet, every morning, even in Kindergarten, I and my friend would walk down the street, out of sight of my house, and wait for the bus.  When my oldest was in high school, the bus stop was on the corner of our street, just 2 houses down.  I would send my kid out the door......and then my next door neighbor (so 3 houses down from the bus stop) would open her garage door, back her van down the driveway, drive her kid to the corner, and sit there in the van, and of course, invite my kid to sit in the van with her.  Have we really reached a point in society where two 15yr old girls can't handle standing outside on the corner for 10 minutes waiting for the bus just houses down from their own? 

This is my thinking and why ITA with what Bluegoat posted. It’s a wide-scale infantalizing of young people that I do not see as a net societal benefit. “We” treat teens like we don’t expect them to plumb the depths of their resourcefulness for any purpose. There’s so much talk now - as we were just discussing on these boards a week or two ago - about upper teens not being “ready” to learn to drive. We’re talking about having kids do a Gap Year because they aren’t “ready” to go to college. And I have had the same thought about the bus stops; bus stop when I was a kid served all kids on my cul-de-sac and a few kids several houses down the main road. Now buses stop 500 times it seems like, in front of each individual house. 

 

 

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

Most people don't think teenagers are mature enough to have sex.  Most people think teenagers are short sighted, impulsive, and prone to thinking they're fairly invincible, and irrational when horny (or not horny), which exactly why they would be willing to allow schools to provide them with condoms to limit the spread of disease and babies born to such parents. 

Presumably they don’t have sex in the hallway outside the nurse’s office so I don’t know why these impulsive, irresponsible horny kids are supposedly well-equipped with the foresight necessary to pick up their raincoats from the nurse on Friday, yet couldn’t be relied upon to go buy their own. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, Momto5inIN said:

Yes to this.

Teens were still having sex back in my grandparents' day but it was typically with their "steady" and they usually ended up married to them more often than not. Casual sex wasn't a thing for teens, by and large. Nowadays casual hookups are considered the norm, which is a big change, and the media has had a huge impact on that phenomenon.

I agree; it is only in modern times is there a casual vernacular of “friends with benefits” or “f**k buddies.” I’m not saying there was never such an arrangement as F-buddies decades ago, but you didn’t advertise it or tell your friends at the soda fountain. 

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

1) I didn't say media causes an increase in teen sex, though I do think it encourages more casual premarital sex if you compare to before the media started getting ridiculous during the sexual revolution.  I don't have the stats, but it is obvious that when practically every modern movie has young people engaged in casual sex, that is going to have an influence that parents need to respond to.

2) pregnancy and abortion rates leave out the rate of teens who are using birth control.  Thus it leaves out a big chunk of the "teen sex" statistics.  I was not able to find stats for trends in the overall teen population using birth control.  (Articles I've seen focus on the subset of sexually active teens who use it.)

Teens didn’t have routine access to birth control until the 70s. Still, the declines in sexual activity have been inexorable as the Atlantic piece pointed out.

[Momto6inIN]

43 minutes ago, ChocolateReignRemix said:

Teen sexual activity is actually declining in recent years.  Fewer teens are also having sex with  multiple partners. In general, teens today are having less sex, and it is generally safer.

http://recapp.etr.org/recapp/index.cfm?fuseaction=pages.StatisticsDetail&PageID=555

--Between 1991-2015, the proportion of students who ever had sexual intercourse decreased from 54% to 41%.3

--The percent of adolescents who are having sex at earlier ages has decreased since 1988 and contraceptive use has increased since the 1990s. Together these two factors have contributed to the U.S. reaching its lowest teen pregnancy and birth rates in years.

 

That's great, I'm glad to see that it's declining from what it was when I was in jr high and high school. But that's not really the time period I was referring to. The studies you cited gave data from the late 80's to 2015, when hookup culture and the media's celebration of that was already well established and had been thriving for some time. 

[Sneezyone]

59 minutes ago, Momto5inIN said:

Yes to this.

Teens were still having sex back in my grandparents' day but it was typically with their "steady" and they usually ended up married to them more often than not. Casual sex wasn't a thing for teens, by and large. Nowadays casual hookups are considered the norm, which is a big change, and the media has had a huge impact on that phenomenon.

 

This is more legend than fact. Seriously, kids today really are having less sex with fewer people than in your day. Both US and European studies are showing this.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

 

 

 I know you were being a bit light-hearted, but I am not so sure we want a society where people are waiting until their 30s for sex. 

Truly. We could end up like Japan.

[Momto6inIN]

5 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

This is more legend than fact. Seriously, kids today really are having less sex with fewer people than in your day. Both US and European studies are showing this.

Than in my day (in the late i9's ealy 90's after casual hookups in media were already the norm), yes. Than in my grandparents day (well before that in the 40's and 50's), no.

[Bluegoat]

4 hours ago, SKL said:

Sounds like some are suggesting maybe we go back to the ideal of females starting families as teens, partly to help "grow them up."

I suggest that we have substituted teen motherhood with other responsibilities, mainly preparing for and starting a career / activity that helps the community.

I do think it is regrettable that we don't have as many opportunities for young people to "practice" parenting - when I was a teen, I spent many hours on a daily basis taking care of my younger siblings and babysitting other kids.  I hope my kids will find opportunities to help out with kids before they have their own.

 

I think its not a good thing that really very artificial ways of managing the rather artificial workforce has pushed aside the more natural biological and honestly, important elements of family life.  It's not just teens either - it's slowly creeping up so that people often are not in a good position to start a family until their late 20s or early 30s, which is not really ideal in a lot of ways.

It's not even that people collectively sat down and decided that was the best way to do things.  It's a combination of historical accident, the model of the workplace for women simply copying the model men had, and what is good for industry. There is no reason we could not change our expectations about this - if women take of a certain number of years to be mothers, it  doesn't matter in a real way whether that is at the beginning or middle of their careers - in fact there would be many advantages to doing it at the beginning.

I don't think the responsibilities we give teens are very comparable to real work or responsibility.  It's not  the same having the responsibility to do well in your education, or even volunteer, as it is to have others dependent on you.  Parenthood isn't the only way to do it, but in some ways its the most profound, but we've put any strong form of it outside the reach of most teens.  The ones most likely to have that experience are from working class or poor backgrounds whose family contributions are really needed to get by.

[Katy]

5 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

Teens didn’t have routine access to birth control until the 70s. Still, the declines in sexual activity have been inexorable as the Atlantic piece pointed out.

 

At least two of my grandparents discussed widespread use of lambskin condoms in their tiny towns in the 1950's.  I've never used them and don't know how much more likely they are to break, and I know they allow the spread of viral STI's, but I'm under the impression they were pretty good birth control even then.

[SKL]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/

See Figure 2 which shows that the % of sexually active school-aged teens has increased quite a lot since the beginning of the "sexual revolution" and remains significantly higher than before.  Yes, it has gone down a little bit, but to suggest the "sexual revolution" / messages since then didn't have an impact (and continue to) is unsupported.

[Bluegoat]

30 minutes ago, Quill said:

This is my thinking and why ITA with what Bluegoat posted. It’s a wide-scale infantalizing of young people that I do not see as a net societal benefit. “We” treat teens like we don’t expect them to plumb the depths of their resourcefulness for any purpose. There’s so much talk now - as we were just discussing on these boards a week or two ago - about upper teens not being “ready” to learn to drive. We’re talking about having kids do a Gap Year because they aren’t “ready” to go to college. And I have had the same thought about the bus stops; bus stop when I was a kid served all kids on my cul-de-sac and a few kids several houses down the main road. Now buses stop 500 times it seems like, in front of each individual house. 

 

 

 

Here the kids are not allowed to walk to or from the bus stop themselves.  If the driver stops and a guardian is not there to pick up, they don't let the kid off the bus.

As someone who walked much farther than a bus stop, like, five blocks, in K, I find that crazy.

[Sneezyone]

11 minutes ago, Momto5inIN said:

Than in my day (in the late i9's ealy 90's after casual hookups in media were already the norm), yes. Than in my grandparents day (well before that in the 40's and 50's), no.

 

So early marriage is preferable? Because that's how the old folks got around the whole 'urge' thing. I'm not suggesting casual sex is a great thing. I'm just not understanding why so many are conflating that with tons of sex/frequency. I'm not sure that a single, casual, teen sexual encounter is any more preferable than multiple sexual encounters over years with the same partner. Especially when we know that the former results in fewer pregnancies and abortions when compared to the latter.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Bluegoat]

4 minutes ago, SKL said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/

See Figure 2 which shows that the % of sexually active school-aged teens has increased quite a lot since the beginning of the "sexual revolution" and remains significantly higher than before.  Yes, it has gone down a little bit, but to suggest the "sexual revolution" / messages since then didn't have an impact (and continue to) is unsupported.

 

Yeah, I think this is kind of important.  I think there are a few reasons that sexual activity in teens has gone down in the last few years, but comparing the last 10 or 20 years isn't necessarily giving a window to a really changed attitude to sexual questions.  You have to look back to the first half of the 20th century for that.

There are various reasons for that as well of course, without reliable birth control available the risks become greater.  Without antibiotics, multiple partners becomes a huge risk too.  But it's no chance thing that the sexual revolution came after the pill and after antibiotics.

[Sneezyone]

10 minutes ago, SKL said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/

See Figure 2 which shows that the % of sexually active school-aged teens has increased quite a lot since the beginning of the "sexual revolution" and remains significantly higher than before.  Yes, it has gone down a little bit, but to suggest the "sexual revolution" / messages since then didn't have an impact (and continue to) is unsupported.

 

That report is pretty much meaningless because people so frequently married in their teens. Those teen urges didn't go away they just tucked them into early marriages. I don't see that as inherently preferable to marriage-free, pregnancy-free, delayed sex.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sneezyone

[SKL]

16 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

I think its not a good thing that really very artificial ways of managing the rather artificial workforce has pushed aside the more natural biological and honestly, important elements of family life.  It's not just teens either - it's slowly creeping up so that people often are not in a good position to start a family until their late 20s or early 30s, which is not really ideal in a lot of ways.

It's not even that people collectively sat down and decided that was the best way to do things.  It's a combination of historical accident, the model of the workplace for women simply copying the model men had, and what is good for industry. There is no reason we could not change our expectations about this - if women take of a certain number of years to be mothers, it  doesn't matter in a real way whether that is at the beginning or middle of their careers - in fact there would be many advantages to doing it at the beginning.

I don't think the responsibilities we give teens are very comparable to real work or responsibility.  It's not  the same having the responsibility to do well in your education, or even volunteer, as it is to have others dependent on you.  Parenthood isn't the only way to do it, but in some ways its the most profound, but we've put any strong form of it outside the reach of most teens.  The ones most likely to have that experience are from working class or poor backgrounds whose family contributions are really needed to get by.

Not trying to be macro about this, but just a thought - natural population control below old age is all but nonexistent now.  I don't think we want to turn that back, but it does affect the overall balance of things.

Personally I'm OK with lower and later fertility.  I am not worried that there is some underlying problem in delayed fertility that is going to bite us someday.  And I don't believe that raising kids is the only or best way for young people to get ready for serious life.  It does, however, concern me that society doesn't seem to think serious responsibility is important to human development.

Edited January 22, 2019 by SKL

[Sneezyone]

15 minutes ago, Katy said:

 

At least two of my grandparents discussed widespread use of lambskin condoms in their tiny towns in the 1950's.  I've never used them and don't know how much more likely they are to break, and I know they allow the spread of viral STI's, but I'm under the impression they were pretty good birth control even then.

 

I was specifically thinking about access to the most reliable forms, particularly BCPs, which didn't happen until the late 60s.

[SKL]

5 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

That report is pretty much meaningless because people so frequently married in their teens. Those teen urges didn't go away they just tucked them into early marriages. I don't see that as inherently preferable to marriage-free, pregnancy-free, delayed sex.

I'm specifically focusing on high school aged minors, about ages 14-17.  The rates for ages 14-16 were clearly much lower, and most of that was not because the kids that age were married.  Age 17 may have been a gray area back then, partly because many teens dropped out of school at 16 or so, and the idea of a typical woman having a career to prepare for was not prevalent.

[Tanaqui]

27 minutes ago, Momto5inIN said:

Than in my day (in the late i9's ealy 90's after casual hookups in media were already the norm), yes. Than in my grandparents day (well before that in the 40's and 50's), no.

 

Can you cite this, or do you expect us to simply believe it based on your saying so?

[EmseB]

4 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

That report is pretty much meaningless because people so frequently married in their teens. Those teen urges didn't go away they just tucked them into early marriages. I don't see that as inherently preferable to marriage-free, pregnancy-free, delayed sex.

I do because marriage and family are stabilizers for society in most cases. They reduce poverty, they reduce environmental impact/footprints, they create emotionally healthy and stable kids who turn into adults, they create environments where elder care is more tenable...all sorts of things that are empirically good for society with stable families. And there's something to be said for being done childrearing before you are hitting your late-50s/early- to mid-60s.

I do not endorse teen marriage FWIW, but yeah, I see a bunch of stable families in society with people having kids younger much, much more preferable than marriage-free, childfree, delayed sex, which seems to by symptomatic of an overall delayed adulthood/prolonged adolescence.

I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, btw, and I'm not directly trying to argue with you except to offer a different perspective. But having a family to take care of as a purpose in life, I think, is one of the great stabilizing forces in society as a whole and is good for most everybody. And I don't think it is matched by a lot of other things like pursuit of a career or hobby, for example.

 

[Bluegoat]

2 minutes ago, SKL said:

Not trying to be macro about this, but just a thought - natural population control below old age is all but nonexistent now.  I don't think we want to turn that back, but it does affect the overall balance of things.

Personally I'm OK with lower and later fertility.  I am not worried that there is some underlying problem that is going to bite us someday.  And I don't believe that raising kids is the only or best way for young people to get ready for serious life.  It does, however, concern me that society doesn't seem to think serious responsibility is important to human development.

 

Do you mean infant mortality and death of mothers?

In general, I think we don't want to up our worldwide population, so I am not thinking in those terms, that people would have more kids.  And if people want kids later that's fine.  I don't think though there is really any substantial reason we should be so opposed to young families, to the point where people discourage them and our education and workplaces make that approach a problem.  Generally I think when we work with people's biological tendencies,  avoids certain problems.  Like, setting up a workplace that makes it a big deal for people to go pee is always going to be a problem of one kind or another.  Much better to take account of the whole bladder thing and build it into the work arrangements.

Is raising kids the only way - no, but it's an example or part of a larger problem.  We infantilise teens, and that's part of why we are so negative about teen parenthood - we can't imagine that they are really up to it. But most of that, so far as it is true, is artificial, not about their innate abilities.

I think people not being sexually active at all is also a good thing - I don't see this idea that sexual activity is something we all need, or should have if we want it, is particularly positive for adults or teens.  Which is to say, I tend to see the issue of having sex or not as very similar for high school aged teens and adults.

 

[Sneezyone]

5 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I do because marriage and family are stabilizers for society in most cases. They reduce poverty, they reduce environmental impact/footprints, they create emotionally healthy and stable kids who turn into adults, they create environments where elder care is more tenable...all sorts of things that are empirically good for society with stable families. And there's something to be said for being done childrearing before you are hitting your late-50s/early- to mid-60s.

I do not endorse teen marriage FWIW, but yeah, I see a bunch of stable families in society with people having kids younger much, much more preferable than marriage-free, childfree, delayed sex, which seems to by symptomatic of an overall delayed adulthood/prolonged adolescence.

I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, btw, and I'm not directly trying to argue with you except to offer a different perspective. But having a family to take care of as a purpose in life, I think, is one of the great stabilizing forces in society as a whole and is good for most everybody. And I don't think it is matched by a lot of other things like pursuit of a career or hobby, for example.

 

 

Thanks. I don't agree, obv., but I appreciate the perspective.

[Bluegoat]

2 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I do because marriage and family are stabilizers for society in most cases. They reduce poverty, they reduce environmental impact/footprints, they create emotionally healthy and stable kids who turn into adults, they create environments where elder care is more tenable...all sorts of things that are empirically good for society with stable families. And there's something to be said for being done childrearing before you are hitting your late-50s/early- to mid-60s.

I do not endorse teen marriage FWIW, but yeah, I see a bunch of stable families in society with people having kids younger much, much more preferable than marriage-free, childfree, delayed sex, which seems to by symptomatic of an overall delayed adulthood/prolonged adolescence.

I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, btw, and I'm not directly trying to argue with you except to offer a different perspective. But having a family to take care of as a purpose in life, I think, is one of the great stabilizing forces in society as a whole and is good for most everybody. And I don't think it is matched by a lot of other things like pursuit of a career or hobby, for example.

 

 

If family life is being compared to single life doing your own thing, I tend to agree, on a macro scale.

There are other possibilities though for the celibate.  Military life.  Being a scholar.  Something like monasticism.  All of those involve purpose and living in community.

I have wondered if going on in coming years this sort of thing might become important. I think we are going to have to look at a worldwide slow decline in human population.  On the other hand, I am not sure that very small families as the norm is really best.  But those two thoughts together would tend to lead to a lot of people living in some meaningful way without a family to be that stabilising element.

[SKL]

2 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

Do you mean infant mortality and death of mothers?

In general, I think we don't want to up our worldwide population, so I am not thinking in those terms, that people would have more kids.  And if people want kids later that's fine.  I don't think though there is really any substantial reason we should be so opposed to young families, to the point where people discourage them and our education and workplaces make that approach a problem.  Generally I think when we work with people's biological tendencies,  avoids certain problems.  Like, setting up a workplace that makes it a big deal for people to go pee is always going to be a problem of one kind or another.  Much better to take account of the whole bladder thing and build it into the work arrangements.

Is raising kids the only way - no, but it's an example or part of a larger problem.  We infantilise teens, and that's part of why we are so negative about teen parenthood - we can't imagine that they are really up to it. But most of that, so far as it is true, is artificial, not about their innate abilities.

I think people not being sexually active at all is also a good thing - I don't see this idea that sexual activity is something we all need, or should have if we want it, is particularly positive for adults or teens.  Which is to say, I tend to see the issue of having sex or not as very similar for high school aged teens and adults.

 

Fertility doesn't just shut off after some ideal number of children.  If you prefer a more natural fertility pattern, yes you're going to have teens raising kids, but also those teens are going to be in their 20s having more kids, and in their 30s and possibly 40s having more kids.  Who decides when it's time to stop making babies and start the career?

Also, ageing does sap energy for work, as I'm experiencing these days.  My natural productivity right now is probably less than half of what it was when I was a young adult.  Obviously everyone decides for herself, but personally I believe I got a lot more done by doing the career thing first.  This of course assumes that raising only 2 kids is also right for me and not an unforgivable affront to nature.  If I was going to have 12 kids, I would want to have them younger, but then it would be harder to have a very productive career.

[Sneezyone]

21 minutes ago, SKL said:

I'm specifically focusing on high school aged minors, about ages 14-17.  The rates for ages 14-16 were clearly much lower, and most of that was not because the kids that age were married.  Age 17 may have been a gray area back then, partly because many teens dropped out of school at 16 or so, and the idea of a typical woman having a career to prepare for was not prevalent.

 

Except once someone married, they left the data set for that study. There's no teen premarital sex being recorded if the teen is already hitched. We know the average age of first marriage was 20. Average. So there were plenty below that line having sex. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf

This study covers the same years as what your does and looks at the age of sexual initiation regardless of whether it was marital sex or not. It even breaks it down by ethnic group with pretty stark differences there. https://journals.lww.com/stdjournal/Fulltext/2015/01000/Trends_and_Patterns_of_Sexual_Behaviors_Among.6.aspx

It provides pretty convincing evidence that our grandparents and great grandparents were having lots of sex, even in their teen years, and while there are dips and ebbs and flows in the age at first initiation, it's consistently been between 15 and 18 for the last 75 years.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Momto6inIN]

32 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

So early marriage is preferable? Because that's how the old folks got around the whole 'urge' thing. I'm not suggesting casual sex is a great thing. I'm just not understanding why so many are conflating that with tons of sex/frequency. I'm not sure that a single, casual, teen sexual encounter is any more preferable than multiple sexual encounters over years with the same partner. Especially when we know that the former results in fewer pregnancies and abortions when compared to the latter.

No, that's not what I meant. I was simply responding to some (can't remember who) who seemed to suggest that the media has played no role because "teens have been having sex forever". I do however think that on a solely emotional health level (leaving spirituality aside) having one stable partner and multiple encounters is far preferable than one casual encounter, regardless of age.

41 minutes ago, Katy said:

 

At least two of my grandparents discussed widespread use of lambskin condoms in their tiny towns in the 1950's.  I've never used them and don't know how much more likely they are to break, and I know they allow the spread of viral STI's, but I'm under the impression they were pretty good birth control even then.

My great grandma talked about hanging them on the line to dry *and reuse* in the Depression 😂

[Sneezyone]

Just now, Momto5inIN said:

No, that's not what I meant. I was simply responding to some (can't remember who) who seemed to suggest that the media has played no role because "teens have been having sex forever". I do however think that on a solely emotional health level (leaving spirituality aside) having one stable partner and multiple encounters is far preferable than one casual encounter, regardless of age.

My great grandma talked about hanging them on the line to dry *and reuse* in the Depression 😂

 

That was me. I don't see any evidence that today's media, and it is modern media people seem to be referring to, is responsible for rampant teen sex or even casual sex. The data just don't support that conclusion.

[SKL]

7 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

Except once someone married, they left the data set for that study. There's no teen premarital sex being recorded if the teen is already hitched. We know the average age of first marriage was 20. Average. So there were plenty below that line having sex. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf

This study covers the same years as what you does and looks at the age of sexual initiation regardless of whether it was marital sex or not. https://journals.lww.com/stdjournal/Fulltext/2015/01000/Trends_and_Patterns_of_Sexual_Behaviors_Among.6.aspx

It provides pretty convincing evidence that our grandparents and great grandparents were having lots of sex, even in their teen years. And while there are dips and ebbs and flows in the age at first initiation, it's been pretty consistently between 15 and 18 for the last 75 years.

Your link also clearly shows a decline in age at initiation over time, except in nonwhite male groups.  In other words, people used to wait longer before the Sexual Revolution.

[Momto6inIN]

37 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Can you cite this, or do you expect us to simply believe it based on your saying so?

 

I guess I assumed that was common knowledge that didn't require a citation 😉 But a quick Google search turned this up. I didn't read the whole article but it does clearly state that premarital sex went up every decade from 1950 to 1990. I do understand that it has gone down some from the 90's to now.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/#!po=1.25000

 

"Figure 2 and the Table show premarital sex proportions using data from all four surveys (for women only) by 10-year cohort. The figure and table show a trend from the 1950s through the 1990s toward a higher proportion experiencing premarital sex"

[Tanaqui]

And that I don't dispute. What I'm wondering about is your claim that premarital sex back then was almost always within steady, long-term relationships that likely would've led to marriage even without an oops pregnancy.

[Sneezyone]

44 minutes ago, SKL said:

Your link also clearly shows a decline in age at initiation over time, except in nonwhite male groups.  In other words, people used to wait longer before the Sexual Revolution.

 

Yes, the lid came down. Fewer men and women were waiting until their 20s. The low end of the range didn't significantly change. There were fewer celibate adults. In any case, the suggestion was that today's teens are having more sex based on the influence of media and that's just not so. It's demonstrably untrue. The sexual revolution was over 50 years ago. Of course, if your odds of pregnancy go down and the availability of reliable contraception goes up, those who are inclined to have sex can engage with fewer potential consequences. The decline in age at first initiation, however, occurred most between 1940 and 1960 cohorts...boomers and silents...not 'those kids today!' (yelling at clouds). It the silent war-bound generation and vietnam-era boomers who threw caution to the wind. Some of it was science and maybe a good chunk was a sense of imminent mortality. Still, their behavior doesn't match my generation, or my siblings' generation, and not my kids'. There's this sense, I think, that kids today are doing things that they simply aren't doing and it's, IMHO, mostly a matter of projection.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Momto6inIN]

38 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

And that I don't dispute. What I'm wondering about is your claim that premarital sex back then was almost always within steady, long-term relationships that likely would've led to marriage even without an oops pregnancy.

No, I didn't look up stats for that

[SKL]

34 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

Yes, the lid came down. Fewer men and women were waiting until their 20s. The low end of the range didn't significantly change. There were fewer celibate adults. In any case, the suggestion was that today's teens are having more sex based on the influence of media and that's just not so. It's demonstrably untrue. The sexual revolution was over 50 years ago. Of course, if your odds of pregnancy go down and the availability of reliable contraception goes up, those who are inclined to have sex can engage with fewer potential consequences. The decline in age at first initiation, however, occurred most between 1940 and 1960 cohorts...boomers and silents...not 'those kids today!' (yelling at clouds). It the silent war-bound generation and vietnam-era boomers who threw caution to the wind. Some of it was science and maybe a good chunk was a sense of imminent mortality. Still, their behavior doesn't match my generation, or my siblings' generation, and not my kids'. There's this sense, I think, that kids today are doing things that they simply aren't doing and it's, IMHO, mostly a matter of projection.

I'm not sure why you are so dead set against people saying there are influences in the media that parents have to respond to in teaching their kids values.

Yes those media influences became the norm around the time of the sexual revolution.  I am that old.  There is a fairly clear line of demarcation.

If you prefer to convince yourself that kids are not influenced by casual sex in the media, that is your prerogative.

[Guest]

I don’t know what the point of hair-splitting over how many of our grandparents had sex as teens, whether it is rising and by how much, and how it accounts for who just plain got married young vs. who was abstinent by choice - geez, guys; it’s kind of beside the point. Should we start talking about whether women have become more attractive since the fifties, what with the advent of good bras and red lipstick and the permanent wave? So that really, more sex is about better-looking available partners? 

I’m being facetious, obviously. 

When I brought up this topic in the OP, the rationale, according to the news story I read, is that STDs among teens in the proposed county are on the rise. Therefore, either more teens are having sex than previously, more teens are having sex with multiple partners than previously and/or more teens are having sex without using condoms than previously. It is one or a combination of these factors that made STDs increase in teens in the county initiating this program. 

Also, I think it is important to note tha the county implementing this program is very affluent. If there are kids in Howard County, MD with NO ability to afford and transport themselves to a store to buy condoms, I have no idea which teens that might describe. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a poor kid with few resources here, but they are not a large population. I think that fact alone puts a pretty big fact check on the idea that teens need condoms because it’s such an obstacle to buy them. Maybe that’s true in some places, but not here in this bougie county. 

[Hilltopmom]

3 hours ago, Quill said:

Presumably they don’t have sex in the hallway outside the nurse’s office so I don’t know why these impulsive, irresponsible horny kids are supposedly well-equipped with the foresight necessary to pick up their raincoats from the nurse on Friday, yet couldn’t be relied upon to go buy their own. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I dunno. We live in a rural area. Teens without cars don’t have a way to get into town to buy condoms without asking a parent, but they do go to school 5 days a week. My own teen doesn’t have a job or allowance so does not have her own cash on a regular basis either (I give her cash if she’s going to an activity she needs it for ).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

I'm not sure why you are so dead set against people saying there are influences in the media that parents have to respond to in teaching their kids values.

Yes those media influences became the norm around the time of the sexual revolution.  I am that old.  There is a fairly clear line of demarcation.

If you prefer to convince yourself that kids are not influenced by casual sex in the media, that is your prerogative.

Yes. This is a sample size of one and purely anecdotal, but the TV show Friends was popular when I was early twenties. By that time, I had a stable relationship (whom I married eventually), but I (perhaps stupidly) thought those characters were an accurate reflection of what young, single people living in big cities are like. I thought people who were in their twenties regularly met new people, dated them, had sex, and moved on on a pretty routine basis. This belief was also at least a little bit reflected in (some of) the young women I worked with at the time. One young lady was always looking for someone special whom she might marry, but she had sex with numerous duds in the interim. One co-worker was pg with the baby of a married local politician. Another co-worker, pg with her second baby with her second baby-dady said ruefully, “I used to make fun of girls like me.” 

Anyway...just saying the messaging that “everyone” was having sex with people who were not serious, long-term partners was all around me and, though I wasn’t doing that myself, I did think it was normal. 

[Daria]

12 minutes ago, Quill said:

I don’t know what the point of hair-splitting over how many of our grandparents had sex as teens, whether it is rising and by how much, and how it accounts for who just plain got married young vs. who was abstinent by choice - geez, guys; it’s kind of beside the point. Should we start talking about whether women have become more attractive since the fifties, what with the advent of good bras and red lipstick and the permanent wave? So that really, more sex is about better-looking available partners? 

I’m being facetious, obviously. 

When I brought up this topic in the OP, the rationale, according to the news story I read, is that STDs among teens in the proposed county are on the rise. Therefore, either more teens are having sex than previously, more teens are having sex with multiple partners than previously and/or more teens are having sex without using condoms than previously. It is one or a combination of these factors that made STDs increase in teens in the county initiating this program. 

Also, I think it is important to note tha the county implementing this program is very affluent. If there are kids in Howard County, MD with NO ability to afford and transport themselves to a store to buy condoms, I have no idea which teens that might describe. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a poor kid with few resources here, but they are not a large population. I think that fact alone puts a pretty big fact check on the idea that teens need condoms because it’s such an obstacle to buy them. Maybe that’s true in some places, but not here in this bougie county. 

I live in an equally bougie area of the county next to yours, and we have plenty of kids at our school who either live in areas that aren't served by public transportation, or who are too bougie to ride public transportation, and who therefore reach the age of 16 having never gone anywhere without mom or dad or a nanny acting as chauffeur. 

When we go on subway field trips, I am sometimes boggled by what 1/2 the kids don't know about how to figure out which way the train is going, etc . . . 

Edited January 22, 2019 by Daria
grammar

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Hilltopmom said:

I dunno. We live in a rural area. Teens without cars don’t have a way to get into town to buy condoms without asking a parent, but they do go to school 5 days a week. My own teen doesn’t have a job or allowance so does not have her own cash on a regular basis either (I give her cash if she’s going to an activity she needs it for ).

Ok, but see the point I just made re: the county implementing this program. A lot of the teens have their own cars, or their bf or bffs do. 

Besides that, here’s another thing that’s been on my mind throughout this thread - I keep typng this and then deleting it again. There’s a serious problem with illegal drugs where I live (and obviously, in other parts of the country.) Teens are dying from drug ods. It’s very tragic. Somehow, they obtain these drugs, even though they are expensive and presumably they can’t get them from a nurse or their parents. Somehow they make deals at the mall or at school or on certain streets without, presumably, parents driving them around intentionally to buy drugs. If so many teens can manage to get drugs (or pot or alcohol, or whatever) with hopefully no adults or schools giving them out on purpose, how can we seriously believe they are totally incapable of getting condoms? 

FWIW, I don’t think it would be the worst idea to have condom machines in high school bathrooms, but I don’t think they should be free. If they had just a bowl of free condoms in the bathrooms, I think it very likely the resources would be abused; I can see kids taking them and taping a bunch of them on kids lockers, for instance, or selling them at parties on weekends. 

[Sneezyone]

2 hours ago, SKL said:

I'm not sure why you are so dead set against people saying there are influences in the media that parents have to respond to in teaching their kids values.

Yes those media influences became the norm around the time of the sexual revolution.  I am that old.  There is a fairly clear line of demarcation.

If you prefer to convince yourself that kids are not influenced by casual sex in the media, that is your prerogative.

 

I never said that. You did. I have not commented, not one single time, on what any individual in this thread teaches their children WRT media. What I said was that there is no evidence that 'media' as a whole is responsible for (global) teen behavior. If you can tease out the impact of media vs. science and BCP availability using actual data/evidence, I'd be happy to revise my opinion.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Sneezyone]

49 minutes ago, Quill said:

Yes. This is a sample size of one and purely anecdotal, but the TV show Friends was popular when I was early twenties. By that time, I had a stable relationship (whom I married eventually), but I (perhaps stupidly) thought those characters were an accurate reflection of what young, single people living in big cities are like. I thought people who were in their twenties regularly met new people, dated them, had sex, and moved on on a pretty routine basis. This belief was also at least a little bit reflected in (some of) the young women I worked with at the time. One young lady was always looking for someone special whom she might marry, but she had sex with numerous duds in the interim. One co-worker was pg with the baby of a married local politician. Another co-worker, pg with her second baby with her second baby-dady said ruefully, “I used to make fun of girls like me.” 

Anyway...just saying the messaging that “everyone” was having sex with people who were not serious, long-term partners was all around me and, though I wasn’t doing that myself, I did think it was normal. 

 

You may have thought that was 'the norm' in the big city but the facts are that wasn't what most people were doing, then or now. That's kind of my point. Watching it on TV may create the impression that everyone is doing it but they're not and never have been and it certainly didn't make you rush right out and join in as has been implied.

ETA: I spend a good deal of my time communicating with both of our kids that what they see on TV is not, in fact, reality or real. IOW, don't try this at home, the results won't be the same. *THAT* has been a thing since the three stooges, I'm sure. Still, there was no more of an epidemic of kids launching each other into the rafters with levers than there is kids working to emulate TV shows today.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

You may have thought that was 'the norm' in the big city but the facts are that wasn't what most people were doing, then or now. That's kind of my point. Watching it on TV may create the impression that everyone is doing it but they're not and never have been and it certainly didn't make you rush right out and join in as has been implied.

But if that’s what a set of young people believe is normal, than there is no stigma against behaving similarly. The other women whom I worked with did behave more like the TV show characters and believed it was normal. *shrug* So - I don’t know, but on percentages, there were more young women in my office acting sort of like Friends characters than in long, consistent relationships with one person. 

I don’t want to spend the time combing all the various stats posted and I don’t really care a whole lot, but it seems manifestly obvious to me that if you compare sexual activity in unmarried under-20 yos in 2018 vs. in 1950, there is more going on, and at younger ages that before the sexual revolution. I can’t really believe that is being disputed. But maybe I’m being obstinate by not wanting to take the time to comb stats for something that seems very obvious to me. 

[Sneezyone]

17 minutes ago, Quill said:

But if that’s what a set of young people believe is normal, than there is no stigma against behaving similarly. The other women whom I worked with did behave more like the TV show characters and believed it was normal. *shrug* So - I don’t know, but on percentages, there were more young women in my office acting sort of like Friends characters than in long, consistent relationships with one person. 

I don’t want to spend the time combing all the various stats posted and I don’t really care a whole lot, but it seems manifestly obvious to me that if you compare sexual activity in unmarried under-20 yos in 2018 vs. in 1950, there is more going on, and at younger ages that before the sexual revolution. I can’t really believe that is being disputed. But maybe I’m being obstinate by not wanting to take the time to comb stats for something that seems very obvious to me. 

 

This. It's freakonomics.

From SKL's own link https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/:

Quote

Among cohorts of women turning 15 between 1964 and 1993, at least 91% had had premarital sex by age 30. Among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.

 

and from the discussion section...

 

Quote

 

The results of the analysis indicate that premarital sex is highly normative behavior. Almost all individuals of both sexes have intercourse before marrying, and the proportion has been roughly similar for the past 40 years. The slight decrease between the 1984–93 and 1994–2003 cohorts was not statistically significant. The increase seen beginning with the 1964–73 cohort may be partly due to increased availability of effective contraception (in particular, the pill), which made it less likely that sex would lead to pregnancy;²¹ but even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in ten had had premarital sex by age 44. Among those who did not have sex at all during their teen years, eight in ten eventually had premarital sex.

Premarital sex as normative behavior is not surprising in an era when men and women typically marry in their mid-to-late twenties. Indeed, not only is premarital sex nearly universal by age 30, but it is also very common at much younger ages. Evidence from the past 50 years suggests that establishing abstinence until marriage as normative behavior is a challenging policy goal. Instead, these findings argue for education and interventions that provide young people with the skills and information they need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases once they become sexually active.

 

 

Things really aren't that different despite the common wisdom. An extra 1 in 10 women were stirred to engage in premarital sex post-'sexual revolution.' So, for all the gnashing of teeth and medical progress, things really aren't that different.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Guest]

Quote

  Quote

Among cohorts of women turning 15 between 1964 and 1993, at least 91% had had premarital sex by age 30. Among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.

 

Things really aren't that different despite the common wisdom. An extra 1 in 10 women were stirred to engage in premarital sex post-'sexual revolution.' So, for all the gnashing of teeth and medical progress, things really aren't that different.

By age 30? By age 44?  What kind of stats are those? It doesn’t say, “...91% of those turning 15 between 1964 and 1993 had had premarital sex by age fifteen.” I find nothing whatsoever surprising about 30yo having premarital sex in any era. I suspect my MIL was among them, since she got married later than typical for her generation (age 30) and her first child was born eight months later. Maybe he was a premie. But I doubt it. 

[Tanaqui]

Quote

If they had just a bowl of free condoms in the bathrooms, I think it very likely the resources would be abused; I can see kids taking them and taping a bunch of them on kids lockers, for instance, or selling them at parties on weekends.  

 

Sure, they might make a few condom balloons. But the cost of this is trivial in the grand scheme of things. Why should they sell them on weekends? Do they sell pencils and tampons they got for free as well? Who would buy when they can all get the same things for the same price on Monday?