Assignment 2-1

Teen sex and popular culture

The topic of teen sex is a very scary topic for me since I have two daughters ages ten and fourteen, but I figure education both for myself and for my daughters is an important issue. Two years ago, a girl in my oldest daughter’s class became pregnant at age twelve and made me open my eyes and thoughts to the impending possibilities. I don’t think my daughters would ever do such a thing at such an early age, but neither did the parents currently facing teen pregnancy issues. I think the best way to get any important issue across to people in a way that they can understand and grasp the actual impact is with statistical facts.
Janice Crouse reports on this increasingly prevalent issue in her article on the Concerned Women for America website. She reports that roughly 20% of teens thirteen to sixteen are sexually active according to different polls. This does not include the large number of teens who don’t think oral sex is actually sex. Only 15% of parents polled think that their teen is engaged in activity beyond kissing while 30% of all teens polled admitted going further. Only 67% of teens say that they used a condom every time. When parents were asked if they had talked to their teens about sex, 85% of them claim they had while only 41% of the teens recalled such talks. About 40% of teens who are sexually active become pregnant out of wedlock and around 8000 teens per day contract some form of sexually transmitted disease! Sexually active teen girls are shown to be three times more likely to commit suicide from depression than those who are abstinent while boys are eight times more likely. More than two-thirds of teens admit they wish they could go back to innocence again and wish they had waited. Wake up parents and have talks with your children about this escalating problem! (Crouse, 2005)

Reference:
Crouse, J. (2005), Concerned Women for America, Young Teen Sex: Hottest New Pop Culture Concern. Retrieved January, 16 2007 from the website http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=7352&department=BLI&categoryid=femfacts