Teenage Sex: Just Say 'Wait'
The search is on for new and more effective ways to teach teens about the facts of life
Nine in 10 Americans agree: Schools should teach kids about sex. That, however, is the end of the consensus. Most adults fall into opposing camps on exactly which of the facts of life to teach. The "throw in the towel" crowd concedes, with value-free resignation, that having sex is normative teen behavior and the most that adults can do is teach young people how sperm meets egg, toss out loads of condoms and hope for the best. Meanwhile, the "stop it" forces call for scaring teens into premarital chastity with horror stories of shame and disease. Neither solution, however, works very well with today's sophisticated teenagers. That is clear from teen birthrates: After falling for more than a decade, they began climbing rapidly in the late 1980s and are now at their highest levels since the early 1970s--before the widespread availability of birth control and abortion.
Now, a third way of thinking has begun to emerge among sex educators and public-health workers that combines the abstemious and lenient approaches and stresses reaching younger children. The history of teen pregnancy prevention is littered with failure, and even this mixture of pragmatism and values-based teaching promises only modest results. But the results are positive enough to have drawn support from the woman who could be the nation's new sex-ed teacher, the blunt-spoken Joycelyn Elders, a sharecropper's daughter who became a pediatrician and who is now Bill Clinton's nominee to be surgeon general (portrait, Page 60).
"Condom queen"? The debate over Elders makes clear that few subjects polarize the American public as easily as teen sex. As public-health chief of Arkansas, she started school-based health clinics, some of which distribute birth control devices, stirring opposition at home that is following her onto the national scene. "Condom queen" is what Phyllis Schlafly calls Elders, echoing the many conservative groups opposing her nomination, for her support of abortion as well as of giving students birth control. Yet Elders's views on teen sex are mainstream enough to have garnered her endorsements from all the major medical and child health groups--from the American Medical Association to the Child Welfare League of America. Last week, however, questions over her personal finances forced a delay until this week of her confirmation hearings.
There is no denying that if she is confirmed, Surgeon General Elders will want a major change in federal policy. Since 1981, the federal response to teen pregnancy has been to teach students to remain chaste until marriage. Washington has spent some $31.7 million developing "abstinence only" curricula (or, as some of these programs put it, "secondary virginity" for those who have already lost theirs). Some of the programs have run into unexpected troubles. Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services settled a suit that claimed these pro-chastity programs unconstitutionally promoted religion. In one classroom exercise, girls were told to imagine the ideal dating activities as things they would do if they were out with Jesus.
Beyond that, the main criticism is that such programs are unrealistic and ineffective because they never discuss birth control and simply expect teens to avoid sex, sometimes using almost comically out-of-touch techniques. "Pet your dog, not your date" is the slogan of the popular Sex Respect program, conducted in 1,100 school districts nationwide. While it is important to stress abstinence, notes Jerry Bennett, acting director of the HHS office that administers these programs, none of the "abstinence only" programs has a proven record of success.
advertisement
