For those of us who are parents raising children through puberty into adulthood one of our greatest challenges is the tremendous decisions to make about what is physically and psychologically the best approach in supporting explorations through their budding sexuality. If we have more than one child, we realize how different each one is and how what works for one, may not work for another. Pat answers given to us by our religious affiliations and civic institutions don’t always work. In the face of a reality, a child can be confused about what’s right and wrong when they are alone while making decisions. The bottom line is biologically speaking, there is no equality in gender. The young girl is always going to have the heavier consequence in whatever decision she makes. This maybe why her virginity has always been such an important commodity…So then, as parents what can we do to support them, whether our child is the girl who posses that virginity or the boy who decides to take it from her. In other words, where this paper is concerned, adolescent sexuality is a union between the new desires springing from a budding adult’s sexuality and its environment’s need to lessen the consequence of this happening.
Within the last 50 years there have been significant changes in the way society has had to look at human sexuality, especially concerning our views on abstinence and the adolescent woman. This paper is not focusing on the obvious dangers of sex without judgment. Unwanted pregnancy, health issues surrounding girls becoming sexually active before they are physically and emotionally ready, as well as sexually transmitted diseases are all paramount within the heart of every family. Government and religious institutions have invested significant money and resources to circumvent these problems since such issues add a great deal of stress to the common welfare. What is of interest is that what remains consistently true in spite of a tremendous amount of religious and civic pressure for girls to stay “virtuous” and abstain from sex until they are married, by the time the adolescent female is 17, about half of them have become sexually awakened, and half haven’t.[1] Presumably then, some are ready to have sex, some aren’t. Those that are ready, do…Those that aren’t ready, don’t.
In 2005, Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D. wrote[2]:
Whatever we think about the morality of sexual behavior, can’t we agree that teens should be given a clear and consistent message that it best to wait to engage in sex until they are ready to accept the financial, relationship and emotional consequences of making that choice? For nearly all teens, this would be adulthood…Although the depression followed by sex and drugs link seems to make sense, a new study, which followed over 13,000 middle and high school students for two years in a row, found that depression did not predict risky sexual or drug using behavior.
Instead, the study found that depression often follows risky behavior. Lead author of the study, Dr. Denise Hallfors told me in an interview that her research team found evidence that heavy drug and alcohol use significantly increased the likelihood of depression among boys. For girls, the findings are stunning: Even low levels of alcohol, drug or sexual experimentation increased the probability of depression for girls.
Two years before The Heritage Foundation published an article, “Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide” where they conducted a study on the emotional well-being of the American adolescent also publicized. The findings were:
When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly less likely to be happy and more likely to feel depressed. When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly more likely to attempt suicide.
Thus, in addition to its role in promoting teen pregnancy and the current epidemic of STDs, early sexual activity is a substantial factor in undermining the emotional well-being of American teenagers.
In this article doctor of adolescent medicine Meg Meeker writes,
Teenage sexual activity routinely leads to emotional turmoil and psychological distress…. [Sexual permissiveness leads] to empty relationships, to feelings of self-contempt and worthlessness. All, of course, precursors to depression.
The study’s official conclusion was:
A full 14.3 percent of girls who are sexually active report having attempted suicide. By contrast, only 5.1 percent of sexually inactive girls have attempted suicide. Thus, sexually active girls are nearly three times more likely to attempt suicide than are girls who are not sexually active.
Among boys, 6.0 percent of those who are sexually active have attempted suicide. By contrast, only 0.7 percent of boys who are not sexually active have attempted suicide. Thus, sexually active teenage boys are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than are boys who are not sexually active.
Karen S. Peterson followed up Heritage Foundation’s article in USA TODAY saying:
Tamara Kreinin of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) says “we need to take depression among the young very seriously.” But it is a “disservice” to blame sexual activity and ignore “divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, substance abuse, lack of parental and community support and questions about sexual orientation,” she says. SIECUS supports school programs with information on birth control and abstinence.
One would have to reasonably ask if Meg Meeker is speaking professionally or through personal filters. “[Sexual permissiveness leads] to empty relationships, to feelings of self-contempt and worthlessness. All, of course, precursors to depression” could seem as an attempt to be pre-emptive. Young girls don’t usually want to have sex when they are depressed.[3] Sex is not usually the cause of inner happiness or depression. Associated Press reported a new study that says adolescent and young adults feel their happiness comes from their family ties. Sometimes, though, the adolescent might find their intimacies through a boyfriend, some want to be accepted by their peer group, some love adventure, some want to feel less depressed and some just plain wanna, which seems to be true whether or not there is concern for sexually transmitted diseases.
On May 7, 2002, Sharon Begley wrote a compelling article in Newsweek Magazine “Sorting Out Good Science from Bad:
When Doug Kirby sat down recently to update his 2001 analysis of sex-education programs, he had 111 studies that were scientifically sound, using rigorous methods to evaluate whether a program met its goals of reducing teen pregnancy, cutting teens’ rates of sexually transmitted diseases and persuading them to practice abstinence (or, if they didn’t, to use condoms). He also had a pile of studies that were too poorly designed to include. It measured three feet high.
For us civilians, it’s hard to grasp how much of science is subjective, and especially how much leeway there is in choosing how to conduct a study. No one is alleging that scientists stack the deck on purpose. Let’s just say that depending on how you design a study you can practically preordain the outcome. “There is an amazing array of things people do to botch a study,” says Rebecca Maynard of the University of Pennsylvania.
There are many congenital reasons for adolescent depression.
In 2001, for example, one study found strong indications that adult depression and the teenage version ran in the same families.[4] According to the website About Teen Depression:
Studies indicate that one in five children have some sort of mental, behavioral, or emotional problem, and that one in ten may have a serious emotional problem. Among adolescents, one in eight may suffer from depression. Of all these children and teens struggling with emotional and behavioral problems, a mere 30% receive any sort of intervention or treatment. The other 70% simply struggle through the pain of mental illness or emotional turmoil, doing their best to make it to adulthood.
The consequences of untreated depression can be increased incidence of depression in adulthood, involvement in the criminal justice system, or in some cases, suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. Even more shocking, it is the sixth leading cause of death among children ages 5-14. The most troubling fact is that these struggling teens often receive no counseling, therapy, or medical intervention, even though the National Institute of Mental Health reports that studies show treatments of depression in children and adolescents can be effective.
1 child in 60 is born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia; there are interesting statistics on children born intersexed or with gender dysphoria. Artificial structures imposed on anyone is dangerous, especially adolescents as it was for Nicole, a transgendered girl who committed suicide to finally escape the torment of other High School students. There must be appropriate role models, schools and playmates to support everyone’s talents, however, millions of children are set up from the start to be tragically confused and depressed with who and what they are, even though a biological “norm” has yet to be adequately identified.
A quote from the website, About Gender:
There are some quite remarkable figures here. Although they are shown as distinct conditions, there is considerable blurring and variation between one individual and another. There is also, of course, considerable variation in different parts of the population.
Putting it another way two intersexed babies are born each week in the United Kingdom. This compares with other developmental problems such as cleft palate, or genetic problems such as Downs Syndrome. Yet health professionals and parents find it very difficult to find information about it, and those who specialise in this area are seen as a rather bizarre group of fringe psychiatrists.
Most of the genetic and metabolic errors will give rise to genital malformation, but it would seem that many cases of ambiguous genitalia occur in the absence of evidence of more fundamental problems. Where the operation is simply cosmetic and the child is happy to grow up in its birth role, will be able to marry and have a family, can it truly be regarded as an intersex condition? It is all a matter of definition.[5]
To which BBC News responds:
Moreover with the increase of the use of ultrasound scanning, amniocentesis and other procedures, in this age of what has been referred to as the “new eugenics” will many of these children be aborted?
Or will we see a society where all sexual and gender statuses are respected?
An adolescent is depressed or considering suicide long before they have their first sexual experience. Sex is an amazing marriage of Nature and Nurture and as inconvenient as the adolescent sexual rite of passage is for our families and society, as a social creature, we have to be realistic about what part of this marriage we have some control and what we don’t. If our one hope for reaching our children is through educating them, let us do it to enhance their self confidence and abilities to make their own judgments.
On Sex Education Sharon Begley states:
Earlier studies gave abstinence-only glowing evaluations, as social conservatives publicized. The Heritage Foundation, for one, claimed in 2002 that abstinence-only had been proven “effective in reducing early sexual activity.” But this is not a case of dueling studies, with no way to tell which to believe. If you dig into the earlier studies’ methodology, you can see how they reached their conclusions…
Many evaluated programs where kids take a virginity pledge. But kids who choose to pledge are arguably different from kids who spurn the very idea. “There’s potentially a huge selection issue,” says Christopher Trenholm of Mathematical Policy Research, which did the abstinence study for the government. “It could lead to an upward bias on effectiveness.”
Claims for abstinence-only also rest on measurements not of sexual activity, but attitudes. The Bush administration ditched the former in favor of assessing whether, after an abstinence-only program, kids knew that abstinence can bring “social, psychological, and health gains.” If enough answered yes, the program was deemed effective. Anyone who is or was a teen can decide if knowing the right answer is the same as saying no to sex.
Statistics show that “Just Say No to Sex” Doesn’t Work for Ms. Begley adds:
In April, scientists released the most thorough study of abstinence-only programs ever conducted. Ordered up by Congress, it followed 2,000 kids, starting in grades 3 through 8, in rural and urban communities who had been randomly assigned to an abstinence-only program or not. Result: kids in abstinence-only “were no more likely to abstain from sex than their control group counterparts … [both] had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex” at the same age…
Other studies relied on kids’ memory. But up to half of kids forget whether they took a virginity pledge, or pretend they never did. Those who fall off the abstinence wagon are likely to “forget” they pledged, while those who remain chaste might attribute it to a pledge they never made. Both factors inflate the measured efficacy of pledge programs.
While looking at teenage sexuality, we can’t fall into the temptation of believing that all that is inconvenient is the root of all evil. Sex is not the reason our children commit suicide. The question is how to stretch our society to accept that every human being has its own physical and emotional nature.
Perhaps we can look at teenage sexuality as the time a person becomes a part of a larger citizenship. In her essay, The Idea of World Citizenship in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Martha Nussbaum suggests becoming a “world citizen” would be a helpful skill as well as learning how to question the dictates of one’s own culture to see whether or not these dictates are truly a natural law. An example she used was the teachings of Diogenes as he searched for truth and virtue by provoking people through unruly actions. Nussbaum says, “It appears likely that the point of his unseemly behavior was itself Socratic– to get people to question their prejudices by making them consider how difficult it is to give good reasons for many of our deeply held feelings. Feelings about the respect due to status and rank and feelings of shame associated with sexual practices are assailed by his behavior.” The Greek philosophers, as ethicists, demanded from each citizen a defense of their perspectives. As teachers in a civilized world, they demanded their culture to stand on the foundations of Truth, not vanity or any other misuse of power.
Martha Nussbaum’s suggestion would seem ideal, however unrealistic. Because of our methods for teaching what is best for the whole, we are running into a constant issue with what “whole” we’re talking about. In our world of the internet interlinking our different communities, we find for every statement there will be an opposite statement that completely breaks down the most solid premise. We’ll never have enough people on any specific part of the spectrum to make one position viable for everybody.
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