SEX AND YOUNG PEOPLE

Restraint and reality

Wouldn't it be great if the battery of childhood immunizations included an inoculation against teenage sex? That's what the abstinence-only movement is looking for: an easy answer to a complex problem. Don't get us wrong. Sexual abstinence is what adolescents should maintain. Overwhelmingly, parents want their children to delay sex until after high school. The problem is, kids aren't waiting, and telling them, “Just hang on until you're married” isn't changing their minds.

While national statistics show some delay in the onset of sexual activity in recent years, by 12th grade, nearly 62 percent of students will have had sexual intercourse. Whenever it happens, they need to be prepared and protected. Too few are. As Pennsylvania just discovered, abstinence-only programs aren't giving young people the information they need. Since 1998, federal and state governments have poured nearly $900 million into abstinence-only-until- marriage programs, which are prohibited from discussing contraception. Instead, programs often exaggerate the failure rate of condoms, discouraging their use and leaving youths at risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. In a four-year evaluation released this month by the state Department of Health, Pennsylvania becomes the fourth state to question the effectiveness of abstinence-only education. Yet President Bush continues to channel all federal money in that direction — $273 million more this year, devoting nothing to alternative approaches.

He's endangering America's youth.

Teenagers need medically accurate, life-saving sexual health information — along with the communication and relationship skills that bolster abstinence. Instead, abstinence-only programs give everything from good intentions to misinformation driven by fear, shame and guilt — all parading as the moral high ground.

The Pennsylvania evaluation of 24 of 28 programs begun in 1998 for 22,000 children a year found that a few programs did reduce early sexual onset, but the effects were diminished by high school.
“Even if the most effective programs are replicated and the proportion of sexually abstinent youth increases, a substantial proportion of youth will continue to become sexual active before graduating from high school in every Pennsylvania community,” concludes the report, conducted by Edward A. Smith of Pennsylvania State University.

In an interview, Smith asked: “Should we be spending this much money on programs that just don't work?”

No. Especially when Smith and others offer a logical middle ground. Smith suggests age-appropriate programming, beginning with abstinence-only in the lower grades, followed by abstinence-first, comprehensive sex education. Timing would vary with geography and maturity. In urban areas, for example, abstinence-first education must begin no later than eighth grade. For girls, it would be advisable to begin earlier. Programs need at least 10 sessions per academic year and work best with a complementary component, such as a club or other after-school activity, to draw kids in. That has the added benefit of keeping them busy at the time they're most likely to engage in sexually risky behavior — 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Teens know when adults aren't playing straight with them — withholding information, talking down to them, looking for an easy way out. That's what abstinence-only education is. Teens aren't toddlers. They need more than just no.

3 June 2004

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/8789079.htm?1c

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