Teenage Sex: Just Say 'Wait'
The search is on for new and more effective ways to teach teens about the facts of life
How to say no. The early signs are that PSI is filling an important need. National studies show that only 17 percent of girls say they planned their first sexual intercourse--meaning most apparently have sex because they don't know how to thwart advances, says Christopher Kraus, the coordinator of Cincinnati's PSI program. A 1991 survey of Atlanta students found that those who had gone through PSI training were five times less likely than other teens to have started having sex by the end of eighth grade.
Still, the political divisiveness surrounding teen-sex programs--even those as neutral as PSI--threatens their effectiveness. Howard's curriculum omits specifics about how to use contraception, a concession to local authorities who typically want to decide on such teaching themselves. The result is a confusing muddle of programs. In Cincinnati itself, for instance, school officials opted for no birth control instruction. Meanwhile, across the Ohio River in suburban Newport, Ky., schools teach PSI to seventh graders--then give ninth graders a similar abstinence curriculum that, unlike PSI, provides birth control instruction. "It's being realistic," explains Maxine Jones of the Northern Kentucky District Health Department. And still another neighboring Kentucky county last week restricted the use of county taxes for any program that counsels any unmarried people about contraceptives.
In the end, the causes of teen pregnancy are so complex that even the most well-considered programs are limited in what they can accomplish. That is clear among some young Cincinnati women who meet at the Lower Price Community School in a neighborhood of brick tenements along the Ohio River. They are part of yet another teen-pregnancy program called the Birth Partner Project, which since last year has been helping young mothers try to avoid having a second child too soon, a development that often dooms their last chance to finish school or find jobs.
The women are at once realistic and naive. For example, Tina Daniels, 20, has enrolled in a local college this summer in hopes of becoming a social worker. Like most of her friends, Daniels planned her pregnancy--she knew that caring for a baby would give her the impetus she needed to leave a boyfriend she says was physically abusive--and her daughter is now 1 1/2 years old. Although Daniels never took a PSI class, she still heard the abstinence message at the special school. She emerged as a leader among the mothers in the project and was the first to try Norplant, the surgically implanted birth control device that works up to five years.
Yet last month, Daniels had a doctor remove the Norplant. Her new boyfriend wanted a baby and then marriage next April. Now, the wedding is off but a second child is due in March. Daniels says the baby will not interfere with her dreams. Yet her pregnancy is a reminder that the causes of teen pregnancy are often ambiguous and trying to reduce teen birthrates is always formidable.
advertisement
