At Last, Good News on Sex
That researchers have found a decline in the number of adolescents engaging in sex is by itself very heartening news. That this decline occurred against the relentless bump and grind of our sex-drenched popular culture is even more impressive.
A report released by the federal Centers for Disease Control finds that from 1991 to 1997 the share of the nation’s teenagers who engaged in sexual activity declined a striking 11%. Last year, 48.4% of students in grades nine through 12 were sexually active, the CDC said, compared with 54.1% in 1991.
This dip is the first departure from the ballooning rates of sexual intercourse among adolescents that started in the 1970s. “For the first time in a decade,” said one agency official, “less than half of the nation’s school students have engaged in sexual intercourse.” Because kids typically want to “fit in,” this finding is especially important; now those who abstain can say they represent the majority.
Decades of research, underscored by the hard-luck stories of teenagers who became sexually active, indicates that this fragile new majority can look forward to a brighter future. Girls who don’t get pregnant have far better odds of graduating from high school and going on to college. And youngsters who refrain from sex also avoid sexually transmitted AIDS and many other sexually communicated diseases.
Even among those teenagers who are sexually active there were encouraging findings. Condom use is up among those students who reported they had sex during the past three months, from 46.2% of students in 1991 to 56.8% in 1997, and pregnancy and gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, were declining.
The study was based on the responses of more than 50,000 students who completed written, anonymous questionnaires during the 1990s asking about a range of sexual activity. The one caution light regarding the study is the possibility that not all teenagers, particularly boys, responded truthfully to the questions--but even so, the trend remains positive.
As to what’s behind these welcome changes, researchers are understandably cautious about making connections. But it seems sensible to credit the effort in recent years by parents, schools and health officials to teach young people about the benefits of postponing sex, and about birth control and safe sex practices if they choose not to. Those efforts must continue, particularly since the parade of provocative images on television, music videos, billboards and the like shows no signs of letting up.
