Your first sentence sums it up. You last sentence is rather naive. The fact is that you are old enough to have sex (if you are a male) if you can get it up. It doesn't mean you should, but since when are kids so concerned about what they should or should not do?

As for the article, I doubt they've ever had any "reliable" statistics anyway. It's kind of hard to expect kids to behave in ways that we didn't when we were young. Some kids may listen to their parents more than others, but none obey their parents 100%. If they do, then I'd be very concerned that the kid wasn't developing properly. It is natural for kids to defy authority and conventions. Heck, some of us never grow up, whatever that means.

The fact is that kids are a lot like adults. They usually know what they should and shouldn't do, but that doesn't mean they are going to conform accordingly.

...your last sentence blew it! Kids don't ask about sex or have the where with all to ask for help with issues about safe sex because adults act like they should not have sex, and they feel they need to hide the fact that they want sex, they desire sex and likely they are having sex.

When our views are so strong against nature's will, young teens will find a way to have sex without having to bring attention to it or themselves, therefore they don't talk about it.

Your first sentences were head on, the last, not very insightful.

Kids need to be taught the need for safe sex properly. In fact, they should be told from the very beginning that sex is a good thing if done safely. Don't give them any hint of stigma against sex. That'll stop them from trying to hide everything.

I grew up in Europe, and I am surprised; so yes there was no sex education per say in school, however sex is a much more openly discussed topic as a whole within the populous. It is possible that my parents and family in particular insisted on my personal education given that I have been openly gay since becoming a teenager and been sexually active almost as long; however, even in school and amongst friends the topic is openly discussed. I have openly rebuked many friends for not playing safe, and have had people ask me about personal practices ever since I became active.

As for the United States, people are all hush-hush, and quiet about the topic. When I came here, when I was 15, teachers were all awkward about the topic even in health class. Seriously, in health ed!?! This should be the biggest topic in health class! Yes, I get it drugs are bad and we shouldn't smoke but I am relatively sure when had more people engaging in unsafe sex, then smoking, drinking, or taking drugs by the time you get to 10th and 11th grade. Ironically even in 10 grade health I recall people making pledges to stay abstenant till marriage, Ironically my teacher rebuked me when I stated I was gay and wouldn't bet allowed to get married any time soon. I was basically told that I shouldn't be having sex then ... Seriously!?

The topic of school nurses should also be discussed at this point. Every school I have come across in this country has had access to a school nurse, that lovely middle aged lady that everyone likes. She gives you ice packs when you hurt yourself in gym etc. If you so desired to get condoms in my school, yes it was possible, you had to sign them out with the nurse. The nurse would then proceed to inform your parents that you had in fact picked up some condoms. I think I got condoms for half my friends just b/c they were too afraid of how their parents would feel about them having sex. Is it just me, or is this the wrong approach!?

Why can't we get young teachers that are able to relate to kids to teach health classes. Isn't it possible to say that it is alright to have sex IF you play safe. Its part of growing up and I respect peoples choices. I would argue its okay to be having sex when you are as young as 14 or you may wait till you are 30 and married if you are more comfortable that way. Hey, if you don't feel comfortable you may stay a virgin for life, it is YOUR choice. However, any way you feel about it, kids should be talking about it and they should know the consequences! Clearly parents don't step up to the plate in this country, and while I would argue that this is their job, failure to do so should be overcome by schools.

As for all of you parents out there, the earlier you start talking to your youngsters the easier it is. It is also the parents job to bring up the topic and to do so before its too late. Sure the first time will be awkward, but it surely beats finding our your kid has an STI when they come back from college for thanksgiving break. Its really not that difficult tossing your son/daughter a condom before she/he leaves for a date isn't it? Tell them to never forget them when they feel ready, given their raging hormones they are ready, and they want to play!

It's not AIDES, it's AIDS genius.

Good Lord, what year is this again?

There is no excuse for this lapse in sanity....none!

All of the creatures on this planet crave gratification when they reach the perfect physical age for procreation....unfortunately our young ones do not reach a good mental and financial age for this until well beyond the time these desperate cravings begin.

Parents, if you don't want to raise your grandchildren, or care for a too young HIV child, you had better wise up your own kids pronto. Do not expect any help from your schools, or your doctors or your clergy or anyone else....and tell the entire truth, not a sanitized version of what you know is a messy business!

I'm on my way to France guys, I'll be back in a week.

This is what happens when you based education solely on abstinence. Kids need real information, and real contraception.

"We can't talk about it or we are giving them permission to have sex" = about the stupidest position on sex I've ever heard.

Guess what, they are having sex anyway. Give them protection.

This is what happens when religion rules the world.

My 13 year old daughter is having "sex education" in health class at public school now. I was shocked to hear it was abstinence only education (and from a christian right point of view). We talk about these things at home but I know some kids are not getting all of the information. We need to fully educate these kids, not teach abstinence only, when we know that does not work.

We certainly cannot "scare" them out of having sex. We need real sex education with talk of abstinence, birth control, and STD's.

It's not AIDES, it's AIDS genius.

------------------------------------------------------

Yikes, you're right. My spell checker didn't like it the other way and I forgot to change it...

To other posters:

Maybe it's the way I was raised, but my Mother always said that if you're not comfortable discussing your own body and it's functions or to ask questions, you have no business sharing it in any type of physical act with another person. If you can't say the words penis or vagina out loud without giggling or embarrassment, or have a discussion of birth control with you physician, as well as buy a pack of condoms at the store, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS HAVING SEX. At any age.

I don't understand how people don't agree, looking back, it makes perfect sense to me. Oh well...to each their own.

And, in this day and age, MOST kids have SOMEONE (not a 'friend') to rationally discuss this topic with. I'm not going to entertain the 'some kids' discussion. With health classes at school, the film the kids see in elementary school, doctor visits, school nurses, free clinics, and so much more available, that make 'some kids' a moot point.

Let's stop 'discussing' the fringe element like they matter.

I agree with you there. The only talk I ever got from my mom was the period talk. When I tried bring up giving my sister the talk (she is 12), my mom got mad at me and threatened to kick me out of the home if I brought it up again. Now, I just tell my sister that there is a question she can't my parents (especially my mom), she can come to me and I won't judge her.

Pantsitis is a horrible affliction. I suffered many years through varying degrees of the disease. The first signs are inflammation, and severe swelling in the pants area. It can decrease one's ability to concentrate, and some may experience difficulty in walking and/or speaking. Those symptoms may also include a severe phobia of the chalk board. There is only one known cure! An emergency pantsectomy.

Nor is it desirable, in my opinion. Safe sex > abstinence.

It is far easier to prevent contraception than copulation. This is why abstinence training so often fails to produce desirable results.

Lets just consider the possible failings....

If you assume abstinence only you will likely be unable to recover once things get too close. If you want sex, you want sex; you are teenager after all and sex feels good! It feels right (its supposed too!).

If you rely on condoms: I would argue for condoms of birth controle alone any day, just b/c you really don't want any STDs/STIs, they can be just as consequential as having a kid! Chances are you will figure out a way to get one, or know where you have one. Sure its a bit wired going to the deli asking for a condom, but you'll get them, and no you DON'T have to be 18 to get them. [If your are in college chances are your RA will gladly supply them - I always did].

In my experience it's always better to get your own condoms--get a bottle of coke as well if you feel weird just buying the condoms. Your RA might run out, and they won't have anything beyond the basic variety anyways.

Hey Spartan, I had a good selection ... but only few RAs will go to pride parades to get that supply.

I thought they have specific funding for providing condoms... in any case I almost always bought mine.

Debbie,

I noted most of the places discussed were not places where the internet was widely available. We here in the US are so innundated with sexual ads, television shows, etc, that we forget about the almost complete lack of information in much of the rest of the world.

K

Debbie, all the warnings in the world will do a fool no good. Teenagers are fools.

Pretty harsh remark, pally. I take it you're speaking from personal knowledge, having been a teenagers once yourself?

They aren't going to sex educational sites-- they're going to pron!!

CommisarCain wrote:

Debbie, all the warnings in the world will do a fool no good. Teenagers are fools.

.
When I was a teen, and even today, I knew/know many teens who were/are responsible. But regardless of age, everyone has the capacity to be a fool, or at the very least, act foolishly from time to time. All one has to do is to look at the news or the state of the world to see that a good number of "adults" fall in the same boat.
.

Porn sex is usually very different from normal sex. Nobody realizes that porn stars have to prepare extensively for every scene they shoot. And it really doesn't help that condoms are almost never used in porn.

Who wants to watch porn with condoms?

CommisarCain parents are fools for not talking up, kids and teens are hormone driven confused and uneducated. Parents and teachers not seeing the problems with this scenario are the fools for not speaking up! Don't critique the fool when his parents are sitting by and watching him crash, all they have to do is open their mouth and toss him/her some protection. They know what to do and will understand.

Who wants to watch porn with condoms?

The management of Trojan Rubber Company.

Perhaps condom companies should start sponsoring the porn industries?

Don't critique the fool when his parents are sitting by and watching him crash, all they have to do is open their mouth and toss him/her some protection.

Teens already have access to contraception but many are too foolish to use it.

Porn? They are getting sex ed from The Jersey Shore.

Neither places are good for teens to go to looking for information, all they really get is the sex without the education.

"34 and still a virgin, never been kissed"

Lol wow. Buddy you are missing out on life.

I think his funeral is in three days, fact.

Bet he has a lot of nocturnal emissions.

I've been married. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Some people are smart enough to figure that out before the calamity hits. I, myself, thing propagation of the human race is a bad idea anyway, but to each his own. Sex is fun and all, but all the strings that come with it. As for nocturnal emissions, or even daily emissions, they don't talk back, nag, spend money you don't have, bring over the in-laws, cheat on you, insult you, cut into your "me" time, and the subject matter usually looks much better than what we end up with for real.

I think you guys are just jealous.

Cavalier, I have been married too and it was a blessing when she left. She was a b*tch royal. I like sex as well and there are plenty of women that do too, soooo. You are wrong about me being jealous of him, far from it.

Asexual people are a rare breed, for obvious reasons.

Sounds like a tragic waste of life, heart and spirit. If this is where abstinence training leads, the teenagers are wiser than we are.

I don't know, most men I've ever known would hit it no matter what was going on. Sort of like dogs in the street, you know? I never understood the sex without a relationship, and the relationship part doesn't come easy to me anyway. It's a lot easier at my age to just say I had my time, and it's time to move on to different, less stressful pursuits. That could just be the Asperger's talking though.

For starters, the bedsheets would have to be bleached.

Who cares, that's what a towel is for, or you can get it on in the shower.

Your shower or mine?

There has been many bloody battles fought and won, I just have her to call me Custer that time of the month.

You can swim in the red river, just don't drink from it.

In a place like that, do you really want to start a family? Things are bad enough already, you don't need another mouth to feed.

If you don't push condoms on everyone, there will be lots of suffering.

Gas stations have condoms, grocery stores have them, pharmacies...they're not that hard to find. You can even buy them online and have them shipped to your home if you truly live in the middle of nowhere. There's no excuse!

I think it's the social stigma--they aren't told that sex is a good thing, so they try to hide it. Sometimes hiding things prevents them from taking the necessary precautions. Have unprotected sex, risk getting caught, or don't have sex at all? The choice is obvious to a teen.

No kids these day don't know it all, they may see it all with all the sexual images out there but they don't know it all. Ask yourself the next time watching a movie, tv show, etc. and something sexual happens, was a condom even mentioned?

I think they're talking about sex without any kind of birth control. No condoms, no pills, all trouble.

I'm glad you are married and I suppose that changes your equation. As for myself a 27 year old gay college grad, there has been lots of sex, all of it was safe... but I was never married; and I won't move just so I can get married. As for kids and teens, SAFE is important. if you don't play SAFE don't play.

Where is the rational part of your comment?

And yet it's usually the girls that decide whether guys get laid or not. I'm not saying consent isn't important--it's just that when only one side wants it, it's almost always the guy that gets the short end of the straw.

High heels, fishnet stockings, short shorts and spandex tops say NOTHING about the self image of the ladies wearing them. That you think it does says VOLUMES about you. Further, that particular clothing styles are alluring is the result of your thinking, not that of the wearer.

I work at a college and am no a prude, but will say that some of our young female students seem intent on knocking the women's movement back into the stone age.

For the past 40 odd years young girls have been told that it is better to be a concubine than a wife, that a family consists of any pair of co-habituating persons, and that they are free to seek sexual conquest without reservations.

The women's movement is a product of their parent's and grand parents desire to defy convention and assert themselves. Mo that the younger women of the world have seen through it for the folly that it always was their grandmothers and mothers cannot understand why the kids won't follow. The reality is that the women's movement has caused more problems than it has solved and failed at it's every aim.

Since the days of women's lib" the numbers of unwed mothers have steadily climbed, the population has increased , while the numbers of women in the workforce have increased the number of women the number of women who are both employed and impoverished has risen, the numbers of children born to the women has increased, the numbers of children born to single parent homes without a father present has skyrocketed.

In short the women movement has basically been a disaster for women children and families, it seems that the younger women of today are poised to reclaim their former position and reject their grandmothers flawed movement and move themselves back to a more advantageous position for themselves and their potential offspring.

The stone age may be a good place for them to start, I would wish them good luck in their endeavors.

While we definitely need another sexual revolution, I don't think the feminist movements were failures--they were simply steps toward a single direction. Battles may have been won, but the war isn't over. For example, men and women aren't equal right now--things may be balanced out, but that isn't the same as equality.

For example, men and women aren't equal right now--things may be balanced out, but that isn't the same as equality.

Men have never been equal to women, nor have women been equal to men. The difference is what had gotten us as far as we have come. The women's movement has caused more problems for women than it has solved, the women of today have been taught to act like men, and to reject expectations of them base on their gender, and now that they are acting like men , grandma wants to place expectations on them.

"Rick-881466

High heels, fishnet stockings, short shorts and spandex tops say NOTHING about the self image of the ladies wearing them. That you think it does says VOLUMES about you. Further, that particular clothing styles are alluring is the result of your thinking, not that of the wearer."

Baloney. Clothing has everything to do with self image, and it's silly for you to say that those who dress like this, aping pop stars and the like, don't do so in part because they think that it makes them attractive to men. My point wasn't that this clothing is "bad", or that sexy and attractive is bad. It was that it's "bad" if it conveys the sense that the wearers are nothing more than sex objects, and for many men, this is exactly what it DOES convey. Teen girls are MORE than their breasts and their rear ends, which certain kinds of clothing emphasize. If you can't see how provocative dress and attitudes and the culture that go with it, plays into teens having careless sex, then you are blind. You are also blind when you say that my finding this kind of dress to be "alluring" is the result of my thinking. It is not. I don't find it "alluring". I am gay.

Hans, the clothing of an individual does not convey the sense of anything - you perceive it. I didn't say you found certain clothing alluring, you did. If you think something looks alluring, it is soley the result of your thoughts, your sexuality having nothing to do with it.

People don't have the urge to reproduce. They have the urge to fornicate. They want sexual pleasure.