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How About the Facts of Life?
Digg This!Are we talking about ‘the facts of life’ anymore, or have we renounced the realities of biology and science in favor of protecting our beliefs?
May 7th is National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Day and a good time to study what’s working and what’s hindering out national progress. It would also be a good time for parents of teens to consider their own vital role in sex education.
A recent local radio call-in program appearance reminded me of how our beliefs and values about sex, sex education, and sexual health can twist policy discussion and interpersonal communications into a maze of confusion and conflict. It seems that one of the reasons the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of all the industrialized nations might be that our teens have to try to make sense out of nonsense.
Several callers to the radio program made these points:
· Teen pregnancies are increasing.
· Abortions are increasing.
· Sex education encourages risky sexual behavior.
· Access to birth control encourages risky sexual behavior.
· Requiring parental consent for birth control would reduce risky sexual behaviors.
· Gardasil (new cervical cancer-prevention vaccine) is dangerous, even killing girls and young women.
· Access to reproductive health care “gives teens permission” to become sexually active.
The reality is that, according to research and evidence, none of those points is true:
· Even though the national teen birth rate rose 3% between 2005 and 2006 after a 34% fourteen year drop, the pregnancy rate continued to decline.
· In 2005, the abortion rate was the lowest in 34 years at 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 compared to 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women in 1981.
· Comprehensive sex education does not increase sexual activity, lower the age of first sexual intercourse, or increase the frequency of sex or the number of sex partners among sexually active youth.
· Access to birth control and reproductive health care does not encourage risky behavior; in fact it reduces the risks of those behaviors among sexually active people.
· Requiring parental consent reduces the number of teens who seek health care, but does not reduce their sexual risk-taking behaviors.
· Gardasil is safe and effective, with the most common side-effect being pain at the injection site. The FDA is constantly monitoring vaccine recipients and safety. Girls and young women should be vaccinated.
· Access to cardiac care doesn’t give us permission to overeat and watch TV and seatbelts don’t encourage us to drive recklessly. Unfortunately, teens don’t ask health care providers for permission to have sex and if they did, we wouldn’t give it to them.
Before we teach teens about sex, we have to make sense out of the nonsense ourselves. We have to update our knowledge – especially in areas that are controversial or challenging to our cherished beliefs. Most important, we have to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion and between science and belief.
Through the past generation, our sex education and our sexual health care policies have been determined more by politics and ideology than by science or evidence. Add the rapidly expanding knowledge about reproductive health and the result is that most adults are poorly prepared to educate teens on sexual health and wellness or about risks and consequences.
Beyond the basic biology of reproduction, here is a contemporary study guide for parents of teens:
- One in four teens has a sexually transmitted infection: what are the most common diseases and how should you protect yourself?
- What is HPV and how does it relate to cervical cancer?
- What is Gardasil?
- What is emergency contraception (Plan B)? How does it work? When should a reproductive age female take it?
- What is the law on minors and sexual activity? When is it legal to have sexual intercourse? What are the penalties?
- What is the effectiveness of condoms?
- What are the most common and effective forms of birth control? How do they work?
- Can my teen get confidential reproductive health care? Where? Why? How?
Parents are the primary sex educators of their children. The more parents know, the more likely they are to do a good job — but it isn’t called “The FACTS of life” for nothing.