First of two parts
There are three major arguments used to sell sex education: – society is full of Victorian and religious hand-ups about sex. If kids can learn early to accept and enjoy sex, we’ll have a less violent society. – kids will have sex, no matter what we tell them. – now we have AIDS, the need for sex education is even more crucial.
Argument one has been proved to be a myth. We have been dealing with liberalised attitudes towards sex since the advent of the pill and the sexual revolution in the 60s. Today the adolescents of the 60s are dealing with their own adolescents. While many of todays’ parents do preach liberal attitudes towards sex, many do not. Of those who do preach liberalised sex, I wonder how many do so because they are unwilling to look back at their own sexual adventures and admit that the sexual revolution did not turn out to be as wonderful as it was supposed to be. Equally many of the parents now preaching a conservative attitude toward premarital sex are doing so precisely because their own experiences with varying levels of promiscuity did not turn out to be as wonderful as they thought they would be.
Levels of violence
Another factor which knocks out the ground from this “Victorian and religious hang ups” argument is that liberalised attitudes have done nothing to lower the levels of violence in society.
Quite the reverse.
The consequences of the sexual revolution are seen in rising divorce rates, increases in wife battering and child abuse, and rising rates of teen pregnancy and abortion. We also have an increased rate of sexually transmitted diseases with their devastating consequences for future fertility. STDs are largely responsible for the rising rates in ectopic pregnancy.
Surely, the experience of 25 years or so of liberalised attitudes towards sex is enough to make many of us believe that the so-called Victorian and religious hang-outs did indeed have some merit.
Churches
The Churches are, of course, always blamed for keeping people afraid and embarrassed to deal with sex. This is rather curious because, according to most surveys, the numbers of people attending Church are getting lower every year. So one would think that whatever the Churches had to say would have very little impact.
For those who do still go to Church, it is probably safe to say that only some of the fundamentalist Protestant denominations still preach strongly about morality. While Roman Catholicism is supposed to be the stronghold of traditional sexual morality, poll after poll shows that large numbers of Catholics ignore or disagree with the Church’s teaching on morals and yet still consider themselves good Catholics.
While strong teaching is constantly coming out from the Vatican and Pope John Paul II, it doesn’t always get the attention it needs from lower levels. If you are a Roman Catholic, ask yourself when was the last time your priest preached a sermon on the 5th, 6th and 9th commandments. On when did he last mention the words Humanae Vitae, let alone explain the encyclical?
It seems to me that traditional, religious morality is far from outmoded. Some of us are only just beginning to see just how sensible the prohibitions are and the consequences when they are ignored.
Sexually active
However, it is the argument that “kids will have sex anyway” and “now we have AIDS” that are the most often heard.
Where does the argument that kids have sex anyway come from? The most frequent assertion is that roughly 50% of adolescents are sexually active. But you must ask several questions about that extraordinary percentage.
Are we talking about 18 or 19 years olds, some of whom may be married or at the very least living in common-law relationships rather than what we used to term “sleeping around?” Are we starting with ages 12 or 13 and going up to 19? If the numbers are not carefully qualified, we get the impression that 50% of 12 years old are acting promiscuously.
We must also ask precisely what “sexually active” means. Some surveys do not report how often the adolescent has sexual intercourse and so the figures become inflated; they imply ongoing and constant sexual activity when intercourse may have occurred once and the teen has since lived chastely.
Badgley
As in many other areas of Canadian life, we rely heavily on American statistics and surveys when talking about adolescent sexual activity. However, in 1977 Badgley Report on Abortion gave some Canadian figures.
Badgley found that 91.7% of 15 year old girls had not had sexual intercourse. 70% of 15 year old boys had not had sexual intercourse. You will usually hear these figures in reverse – if they are big enough – to emphasize the number of adolescents who are sexually active. However, whichever way the figures are expressed, in 1976 there was hardly an explosion of promiscuity among 15 year old Canadians.
Well, that was 1976 you may say, and times have changed. In 1987, a study conducted by Queens University in Kingston, called the Canada Youth and AIDS study, surveyed 38,000 adolescents about their sexual attitudes, knowledge and experience.
Of 14 to 15 year old boys in grade 9, 31% reported having had sexual intercourse at least once – an increase in 1% over 11 years. Unfortunately, there was a greater rise among the girls.
The 1976 figures show 8.3% of 15 year old girls claiming sexual experience. This rises to 21% claiming to be sexually active in 1987.
This sounds depressing but we have to know even more to understand fully just how depressing the situation is.
The 1987 Queens study asked how often the adolescents had had intercourse. Accept for a moment a premise that one experience could be an unfortunate mistake and does not indicate an alarming rise in promiscuity. 5% of the 15-year-old girls answered once. So then the figure of 21% for girls is reduced to 16% with more than one sexual experience and therefore classified as sexually active. With boys, 11% said only once, so the 31% goes down to 20% considered as sexually active.
Sex education
According to statistics gathered in widespread surveys, then, in 11 years there was actually a substantial drop of 10% for 15 year old boys. For girls, it is an 11.3% rise.
If sex education classes are thought to have a significant impact on adolescent sexual behaviour, we should be asking why these classes might be considered as actually reducing the sexual activity among boy while increasing it among girls. When I was a teenager it was often said that boys could not possibly control themselves – boys will be boys, after all – and it was up to the girls to be more responsible.
Times certainly have changed. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the powers that be to figure out that this rise in sexual experience among girls could be due to sex education classes. And don’t expect them to consider for one minute that boys and girls think and develop differently so courses should be designed to take this factor into account.
As the ages rise, so also do the percentages involved in sexual activity, and this rise is noted in both the 1976 and 1987 studies. Badgley was concerned with sexual activity among females starting at 15 and going to 50 or older, whereas the Queens study was restricted to adolescents. So there are very few direct comparisons to be made with the two sets of statistics.
Safe sex
However, it is interesting to note that in 1976 so-called traditional morality still prevailed. 63.9% of single women in this vast age range stated that they were celibate. By contrast, in the 1987 Queens study, only 27% of college and university female students (presumably single) stated that they were celibate.
But to get back to the argument: “kids are going to do it anyway.” The objective in sex education has never been to promote chastity but merely to promote so-called safe sex.
