Teenagers & Sex

Before I start writing this post, I'm going to put in two important disclaimers:

1) I am not currently the parent of a teenager considering or having sex.

2. I personally happily engaged in teenage sex.

So there is no doubt that both of those details are going to strongly inform what I'm about to say.

.   .   .

A few years back I took several really wonderful anthropology courses from an amazing teacher and one of the many interesting things I learned from her is that the idea of adolescence--a period between childhood and adulthood--is relatively new in the million or so years of human history. In fact, it's basically been just a blip; only in the last two hundred or so years has there been this idea of an in between time, a not-quite-a-kid, but not yet ready to engage in adult behavior period.

Of course, it's really only been in the last two hundred or so years that humans have lived long enough to be able to have the luxury of five or so years of young people with grown up bodies but undeveloped, immature minds and hearts. Prior to that, people (and when I say people I mean women) had to start having babies when they were teenagers so they could maximize their fertile time since only about a quarter (or much less) of their children were likely to survive to adulthood.

In other words, no one really had time to go around saying things like "dry humping only" and "save it for your wedding night!" because girls were being married off even before they menstruated and were unlikely to have spent much time thinking about sex prior to their weddings. (There was a whole other cultural dynamic going on for boys during human history prior to oh, the last thirty years or so, that I am not going to get into here).

Now, of course, it's very different. We do live 80 or more years, we do have time to wait five years or more to enjoy our youthful bodies without engaging in sexual behavior if we choose. But here's the thing; we have not yet evolved to the point where our bodies don't want to have sex when we're fifteen years old. Nor have young women begun to menstruate later and later to accommodate the cultural idea of adolescence (in fact, the opposite is true).

Additionally, up until the last two hundred or so years, young men and women were not at leisure as teenagers. They were working hard in fields and villages. They did not have a lot of extra energy to devote to pursuing each other to get all hot and heavy. I'm sure some kids managed--but were also probably married off in short order.

So what we have now is a bunch of young men and women with nearly grown-up bodies basically at leisure with plenty of time and desire for sex, sex, and more sex. We culturally impose this idea of "rebellion" on them and then tell them NOT TO HAVE SEX.

So we have horny, restless, bored, and rebellious young people. What the fuck else are they going to do?

Obviously, parents can impress upon young people cultural and religious beliefs and hope and pray that they honor the tenets of those beliefs, and wait until marriage. And many do. I'm not saying it's impossible; I merely think it's unlikely. Unrealistic.

I think the best plan is to arm kids with all the information about how their bodies work that they can handle (for instance, I wish I'd known about shit like cervical mucus prior to when I started trying to conceive), arm them with all the information that is available about birth control and diseases, teach them how to make safe, smart choices, how to trust their instincts, perhaps some self defense tricks for girls and some caution for boys (like how to tell if a girl doesn't really want to have sex, how to protect himself from being accused of assault, that sort of thing), and then sit back and hope for the best.

My mother did that with me (maybe not all of it, but a lot). I had sex very early; I was (OK, sit down, conservatives) 14. But! I was in love, I stayed with that boy for nearly five years, he was very, very kind to me and I'd carefully researched birth control and had already been on the pill for a month before we went ahead (believe it or not, this was all pre-HIV--that's how fucking old I am). I do not feel like I made a mistake, or feel traumatized. In fact, I view it fondly and am still in touch with the (no longer so) young man (I could link to his web page, but I'm not sure that would be nice--heh) and we are still friends. I had the best possible first experience that a young woman can have--I truly believe that.

So. Let the comments fly--but please, be respectful at least of each other, even if you aren't going to be respectful of me. OK?

Comments

[Jenn]

I completely agree - all we can do is educate our children so they can make an educated decision when they need to.

[dawn]

I think it's pretty crazy when it's obvious that nature has wired kids to have sex that we spend so much time trying (note the emphasis on TRYING) to stop them instead of teaching them to be responsible. I think FEWER kids would have problematic sex if they felt more empowered, more in touch with themselves, and we weren't such puritans.

But then I slept around quite a bit in my teens. Heh.

[Heather]

love hearing your view point on this.
My husband and I waited. We were best friends in school, and we weren't really "official" until we decided to get married. We decdied not to have sex before we got married, right at about the time we had worked up to it. So, we held off, not easily, but we did . The idea had started when both of our families had had major religious periods when we were preteens, but they had since backed off, and so our reasons were only somewhat related to religion. Mostly, for us, I think it was the bad relationships in our family...( there had also been some sexual abuse issues),watching our parents, brother, sisters, friends, etc. who had relationships go down the drain, 2 kids in 2 year marriages, etc. Not having sex wasn't going to make those things not happen to us, but for me especially, I was very busy for school, it was about proving something to myself. I had thought that I had no choice but to be part of the statistics, teen moms have kids that become teen moms, etc. It also showed me that he loved me so much that for whatever reason this seemed like a good idea to me, he would go along with it.
It was a perfect experience, and I am glad that it all hapened the way that it did. Like I keep telling my younger sister about life in general, " I am not asking for wha tyou have to look like what I have, I just want you to feel like it like I do." That is waht I hope for my daughter, and son. Will I extole what I see as the religious and secular virtues of abstinence, absolutely. But do I realize that when the time comes, they are old enough to make the decision for themselves. Hopefully, I have given them a healthy enough idea of sexuality and good relationships to make a choice that they will feel good about later on.thanks for talking about this stuff, Cecily.

[Melissa]

I agree with you 100%. Wouldn't have added or taken anything away!

[Alison S]

My older daughter is 13, and has been menstruating for about 6 months now. I would love to have open conversations with her about safe sex and cervical mucus, but she is in that state of mind where she doesn't want to THINK about anything as gross as sex, and while she accepts that if she wants 5 kids (which she does, at the moment) she will have to have sex 5 times to get them, she doesn't really see why it should be necessary to have sex any more than that. This is a girl who has read lots of adult chick lit, certainly knows all the biological facts of life, and has a mother with a good grasp of biology, a good understanding of my own body, and no hesitation in answering any questions I'm asked. I kind of hope that there will be a small window between her becoming interested enough in sex to let me talk to her about it, and actually DOING it, but who knows?
One can make a lot of plans about parenting, but in the end you have to parent the child you have, not the one you thought you would be having; and sometimes the two are very different, I think.

[Chickenpig]

I totally agree with your views on adolescent sexuality, even though I didn't have sex as an adolescent. (it certainly wasn't the lack of wanting to, on my part, just the lack of a willing and desirable partner)

However, as an historian, I have to point out that adolescence in this country is not a new invention. If you read diaries from the 17th through the 19th centuries in America, there was certainly a middle ground between childhood (what there was of it) and the responsibilities of adulthood. Youths went on unchaperoned all night sledding parties, hung around in pubs with their friends, and were quite often sent to the homes of relatives when their parents were sick of looking at them. They also messed around, a LOT. In one diary of a midwife in the early 18th century, a third of all babies she recorded were marked as being illegitimate. As a midwife, she also had to be the witness at paternity suits. (it was believed that a woman 'in travail' couldn't lie about the father of her child, so if a girl screamed in childbirth that the local pastor did it, he had to pay up). Most teens were working, and statistically marriage before they were in their early twenties was rare, mostly because of the expense in setting up a household which was considerable. People also lived a LOT longer in the early days of this country than most ppl realize. It is not unusual to see women living into their 70's and men into their late 60's or later, many people lived into their 80's or 90's. What brings down the average life span before modern times is the death of children, death in childbirth, and work accidents. If you survived those three, you could live to a ripe old age. (the leading causes of death were illness for children, childbirth for women, and work accident for men).

[Lawmommy]

I agree with you. In fact, I actively disagree with the current popular advice to tell your kids to wait until marriage - which could be because my mother was very open and honest with me that she and her first husband waited - and then found themselves to be entirely sexually incompatible and got divorced out of mutual dissatisfaction with the relationship. The advice she gave me was to "be responsible, wait until you graduate from high school, and don't go all the way until you know your partner can 'blow your barn doors off'" - my mother's odd euphamism for orgasm...anyway, I took my mom's advice, had sex in college, and have never regretted the three partners I had prior to meeting my husband. I don't want my kids to feel like sex is taboo - I want them to be empowered and careful and responsible about it.

G

[Eva]

I agree with much of what you said. I actually have done some of my research (including my dissertation) on parent-child communication about sex. That means that when my kids are teenagers, I will be absolutely incompetent at talking to them about it.

I was struck, though, that you said "teach them... perhaps some self defense tricks for girls and some caution for boys." It may be that those are the true needs of what we need to teach our girls and boys about sex. But it is sad to think that society is structured such that girls need to learn how to protect themselves from boys, and boys need to learn how to protect themselves from themselves. I hope we can also teach both our sons and daughters about sexual desire and intimacy and all kinds of positive things surrounding sexuality. I'm not saying you were making claims against teaching these things. I just wanted to point out that in our society, even when we're talking about feeling it's okay for teenagers to have sex, we still tend to focus on protection from negative outcomes rather than considering the socialization of the development of a healthy sexual identity.

[Kate]

As a mother of a daughter, I could not agree more. My daughter's body is her own, to enjoy, and I am not the person to impose artificial and impossible restraints upon her. That said, education- about birth control and pregnancy and STDs- IS my job, and I plan to do it in every way possible. Knowledge is power, and although a cliche, that statement is absolutely the truth. If my daughter decides to have sex at 14, I can only hope that she does it as you did- with understanding, wisdom and protection. And my job is to try to arm her with all three, not to be in denial about her sexuality or the reality of the world we live in.

[Alex]

Assorted thoughts on this...

(Personal data -- I actually waited, not until marriage, but until I wasn't a teenager (I was 20, first college boyfriend). I guess I waited until I was approximately ready (though looking back now on who I was then...I was so young. But I did feel ready and it did feel like the right thing for me.).)

I think the thing for me that made the difference, and that seemed to make the difference (in a bad way) in reverse for some of my friends, was self respect. I had it. I am not entirely sure how or why (not that I shouldn't have, but I'm not sure why I should have relative to some friends who didn't, either), but I did. And ultimately I think that gave me the confidence to wait until I knew I was ready rather than making choices that wouldn't have been right for me.

I am not sure, though, how to bring children up "so that" they have self respect and value themselves (and others, of course). Still, it seems like a good goal (any pointers, anyone?).

Also, I thought about this a good bit after your post about (an older) Tori and alcohol. As a former :) college student and more recently college educator, I think that in the US, at least, a lot of alcohol abuse, at least in college, is closely tied to ambivalence and shame about sexuality, especially for women. As a student myself, it seemed many of my friends believed it wasn't OK to have sex, because that was, you know, slutty. But if you got drunk and had sex, well, that was better, because everyone understood that sometimes people make bad choices when they were drunk. It's weird thinking, but I do think it's prevalent, and not just in terms of how college women (men?) think about how others will perceive them but also about how they perceive themselves (i.e., if sober, they are uncomfortable about sex, because of those messages about sluttiness, and alcohol becomes a (necessary?) social/sexual lubricant. I, in contrast, was far too much of a control freak to combine this new, and exciting but in an awe-ful (not awful!) way, sex stuff with booze, which made me feel fuzzy headed and nervous. So I've got my own hangups ;) but they worked for me.).

So, I guess what I'm saying is that you have broken these two issues -- drugs and sex -- up, as things toward which you may take a similar approach and at a similar point in Tori's life course, but that are nonetheless distinct. But I think for many people they end up being related, as described above (I do, however, get that the question of addiction is a separate issue).

[Lisa V]

As the mother of a sixteen year old and thirteen year old (as well as a 9 yo and 5 yo), I'm glad neither of my daughters is engaging in sex right now. I'm pretty liberal, we've had lots of very explicit talks, I have shown them the safest route to get to Planned Parenthood on their bike. Still, I think sex is something that they are not ready for the emotional fall-out.

Mallory had a boyfriend two years ago. They "liked" each other for a good six months. They weren't allowed to date and were always chaperoned. She was devastated when they broke up. Just devastated. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if they had engaged in sex.

If she met someone now, and felt ready to have sex, it would be her decision. She is smart enough to take precautions. I don't think she will. But then I haven't seen anyone lately that makes her motor run.

I hope she doesn't. I hope she waits until college. I hope she waits until she has enough sense of herself to weather the blows that can come with deeper relationships.

[revdrmom]

I totally agree with what you've said about giving kids all the education and information they need. I just worry, as a few others have mentioned, that teens are not always emotionally prepared for sex, even if they are more than ready physically.

I am old fashioned enough to believe that sex belongs in a committed relationship--I'm not saying marriage, or even engagement, but a relationship in which there is mutual caring, not just horniness.

[Spaceranger]

One of your posters wrote "in our society, even when we're talking about feeling it's okay for teenagers to have sex, we still tend to focus on protection from negative outcomes rather than considering the socialization of the development of a healthy sexual identity." When I read that I almost slapped my forehead; I couldn't quite believe that thought had never passed through my mind before.

Huh. It seems that a healthy sexual identity is as important as knowledge about safety, but it's much less common to hear people talk about issues related to ensuring kiddos develop a healthy sexual identity.

Thanks for streching my mind a bit! I'm going to go think abut how one might go about fostering a healthy sexual identity.

[Leah]

For me the issue is one of responsibility. I have sons, not daughters. I think of one of my sons being saddled with the responsibility of 18 years of child support when they aren't even 18 themselves. I think of my son's missing out on days and weeks of their son's life because they are only allowed visitation every other weekend. I don't want that for them.

Again, I'd like to think I would be calm and reasonable if I found out one of my sons was engaging in sex before he was ready for the responsibility of parenthood. I'm not sure I would go so far as to "forbid it" - but we haven't reached that phase yet so I can't say I won't either.

What I do know is that in the process of maintaining open dialogue and while educating them on the joys and consequences of sex, I'd like to discourage them from exploring their sexuality to the point of intercourse until they are ready to handle the responsibilities that can result from intercourse.

Condoms are no guarantee. Nor are your emotions. It is entirely possible to fall in love with and place your trust with the wrong girl. The girl who would swear she was on birth control, but really wasn't.

[Regina]

wow! what a great and thought-provoking post!

I agree- young people should be educated about the risks and pleasures of sexual behavior, and be taught to respect themselves and their potential partners. after that, when they feel that they are ready- why not?

I also think that a lot of pressure on young people interested in having sexual contact with others could be eased if our stupid society could expand the definition of sex beyond just genital penetration. (That's such a heteronormative definition, anyway!) I think that if we re-defined "sex" to mean "any erotically-, or romantically-charged physical contact between two persons, usually involving the pleasurable stimulation of at least one of the individuals erogenous zones" a lot of pain could be avoided. No more stigmas about "going all the way," no more denial that a blow job is sex...

also, some things i've learned about sex in the past: in 15th and 16th century Holland, marriage took place much later in life for males than for females, but still not until the 20s for most people, because it was expensive to get married. Birth records show that there weren't as many "illigitamate" births or "shotgun" weddings as is commonly thought today. scholars have theorized that a) poor nutrition caused women to start menstruating much after they had developed their outward sex characteristics; and that b) even before chemical/hormonal birth control, people had methods of avoiding pregnancy ranging from herbal treatments to pleasuring themselves in ways other than penile-vaginal penetration.

Do you think that kids would be less horned-up in general if masturbation wasn't such a taboo in our culture as well?

[Barbara]

I wish I had known about cervical mucus, not only because of fertility issues, but, also, to know my body better. I had no idea about the ebb and flow of vaginal things - and I was trained to teach sex ed! Why girls and women aren't told more, when it's basic body stuff, seems really odd to me.

I taught a sexuality/changing body course through my UU church to a group of 11 and 12 year old boys and girls. Basically, the only question I wouldn't answer was when *I* first had sex, because the whole point was to give them information to make their own decisions. And, oh! How I wanted to tell them all to just wait until they were much, much older. So I did.

And then I explained how birth control worked.

[Abigail]

Ha - you beat me, I was 15. It wasn't particularly enjoyable but it was safe. In fact, "it" wasn't particularly enjoyable for a long time. Pleasure for females somehow wasn't part of the equation. I hope that part has changed for young women today. I'm even older than you!

Really great historical perspective. Not only adolescence but even childhood are relatively recent concepts.

Damn I wish you'd link to your ex. Heh.

[cat, galloping]

i'm just curious what you would have done with the knowledge of cervical mucus prior to trying to conceive.

i'm kind of hoping my son holds out till college, like i did. 14 sounds impossibly young. i wonder how many 14-year-olds are in long-term, healthy relationships, you know?

[Pamala]

I waited until I was 20 and was engaged to get married to my husband. He was my first and is the only man I've ever slept with. My mom actually never had the sex talk with us, not sure why, but I just never felt it important to have sex, and I actually still think that way. I enjoy it sometimes, but it's not a priority in my life. It's weird, and I think there's something off with my hormones that's causing it.
I think all you can do with children is educate them about what sex means and what the consequences of sex might be. I can't tell you how many teenagers I encounter who think having a child at 15/16 is okay because their parents will help out. It shouldn't be that way. I do not for the life of me think that sex among teenagers should be accepted. You have to educate but I don't think you have to accept it. We have to let kids know that sex is a very serious thing, and often I think that's missed these days.

[Kris]

I'll go out on a limb here (I was completely and utterly bashed when I shared this once before but I trust your readers as they have displayed much tact and understanding in their comments)...

I didn't have sex until I got married. I was not religious. My husband waited too...he was religious and that influenced him. I did have many an opportunity before I got married. I did want to have sex...but not badly enough to do it...hehe. My parents NEVER talked to me about sex but I found out what I needed to know by other means and the idea of having sex was a pleasant one, not a scary one. I had a boyfriend before I got married for 3 years, we thought we would get married...and we never had sex (I didn't marry him). What is my point? I decided when I was young that I wanted to wait and I wasn't influenced to do so by sex ed, my parents, or my (boy)friends. For as long as I can remember I felt that way. It happens. Kids wait, and some do so because THEY decide to not because someone told them to. I hope my 3 sons are like me, but I will arm them with information. My sister started having sex at 14. She contracted HPV which lead to her diagnosis of cervical cancer early in her life. I am glad I waited and I hope I can instill some semblance of social and personal responsibility in my boys. K.

[Cristina]

I just wanted to say that I completely agree with you. While, I would like for my kids to wait for sex, I KNOW that is completely unrealistic in the world we live in. I just want them to wait until they can handle the responsibility that having sex brings. I also talk freely about sex with my children & will continue to do so, in the hopes that they will be comfortable when the time comes to continue talking to me. My oldest is 13 BTW, & it is working thus far.

[Tava]

Oh, I totally agree with you on all points. My mom's version of the "sex talk" was to take me to Taco Bell at age 15 and tell me nervously that "sex is the greatest gift you have to give a man." The implication being, I suppose, that I should save such a wondrous gift for after marriage. (I don't recall her spelling it out so completely.) Several problems with this approach, the first of which was that I had *already* given the gift away, in fact just weeks earlier.
I don't exactly look back with fondness on my "first time", but the guy was my boyfriend, and he treated me nicely. Neither of us knew what we were doing, but that is to be expected. I wish I had understood my body better AND understood more about boundaries, physical and emotional. Having sex made me feel guilty, exhilarated, rebellious, dirty, grown-up and confused, and a whirlwind of other conflicting emotions. I didn't know what the heck to do with all of those emotions and neither did the other kids my age. Was sex good, because pleasurable? Bad, because pleasurable? Bad, because not pleasurable? Evil, because pleasurable or not it was a sin? Etc.

And, despite having read "Forever" and taken sex ed, my grasp on human biology was woefully inadequate. My high school boyfriend and I always used protection and yet I worried every month that I was pregnant and waited for my period to come. I think sex ed (with its dire warnings that "all birth control can fail") had led me to believe that I could *expect* to get pregnant even if I used a condom correctly every time I had sex. I wish I had not had to worry so darn much about both my soul, and unplanned pregnancy that I was NOT at risk for!

[MsPrufrock]

I agree with you completely. I hope to ensure that my daughter is provided with all the information she would need to make responsible and well-advised decisions when it is time to do so.

As other posters have said, it is always about protection, protection, protection, and preventing against the bad - only highlighting the bad features of sex. Obviously protection is HIGHLY important, but the development of a sexual identity is an important facet that is overlooked. Like Spaceranger said, now it's just thinking about how that is done!

[ktpupp]

I'm not sure I could say anything on this subject better than you did, Cec.

As the mother of a 15 yr old girl, I know that I have no way to control whether or not she decides to have sex, or when. But I have made sure she is armed with as much knowledge and as many resources as possible to help her understand what that decision entails, both physically and emotionally.

I do all that I can to nurture our open and honest relationship so that she knows she can talk to me about it and will not be "in trouble" regardless of her decisions. I will be there to love her, help her and make sure she is treating her body and her heart properly.

(Oh, and if you want to tell that certain someone that I say "Hi!" after all these years, please do!)

[Lily]

Well- this post made me think a lot- thanks so much.
I was 15, and I did "it" out of pure curiousity. My mom informed me of the facts, not on a birds-and-bees-level, but still the mere facts of biology, and so school did. But I was so, so curious, and had read a lot of maybe not so appropriate books, and I pushed it. I'd like to tell that it was great, but it wasn't (in fact I had to wait for about 15 years for it to become great).
So when I was 17 I was suddenly - pregnant. I had been on the pill for two years, but I "made" it anyway- until now I have no idea how this worked. This was pre-HIV. Perhaps using a condom would have been much more effective.
I gave birth to my son with 18, and he grew up with me, taking his part in my bunch of messed-up relationships.
Today I prefer being single, and unfortunately so does he.
I think the most important thing about talking sex to a teenager is not only to refer to the biological facts. There's too much other stuff involved, self-esteem, peer-group pressure, questions of personal attractiveness, to just reduce it down to the "technical data". And lots and lots of those psychological and emotional layers are deeply influenced by the way parents lead their own life day by day.
My parents talked about sex, yes, but they did never talk about dating, about relationships, about emotions. Jealousy. Anger. Fear. Boredom. Love...
That would have been the more important part of the discussion. But it's also the part you can't reduce to facts, and therefore the harder part, I think.
I was born in Germany (I still live here), and there's no such thing as a "waiting" campaign or movement whatsoever. There's a lot of sexual information in biology classes, so no one needs to sneak into dad's hidden library to inform themselves anymore.

Most parents I know will let their teenage kids hang around with their significant other or sleep over at the other's house. Most of them think that you can't forbid it- and so the Kids might as well do "it" in the safety of a house, instead of doing it in a car, or in the back room at a party.
(Of course there is a restriction concerning the age of the kid and the kind of relationship they are in)
This may be considered inappropriate. But I would prefer to keep a close eye on the relationship- just to prevent devastation and despair.
Have a great day,

Lily