Irresponsible Attitudes Towards Contraceptions Of Teens Essay

, Research Paper

Irresponsible Attitudes Toward Intimacy and Contraception in Teens

When it became clear that HIV/AIDS was beginning to seriously affect the heterosexual community, greater numbers of individuals began practicing safe sex or abstinence. In addition to self-reports, one indicator that this was true of teens as well as adults was declining teen pregnancy rates. Those rates, however, began rising again in the late 1980s after years of decline. Teens are typically greater risk takers than their adult counterparts and it is clear that many teens are again practicing irresponsible sexual behavior, having numerous consequences including teen pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. The consequences of both this behavior and the failure of adults to adequately address the situation continues to negatively impact society.

Continuing Education Problem

Statistics clearly indicate that there continues to be a problem relative to educating teens and promoting responsible sexual behavior. In the U.S., one teen becomes infected with a sexually transmitted disease every ten seconds, two people under 20 become infected with HIV every hour and 3,000 teens become pregnant every day (Conniff, pg.12-14). One girl interviewed by Louise D. Palmer (par.5) indicated that she thought only sailors got syphilis and that if she and her boyfriend used a condom occasionally, she would be safe from disease and an unwanted pregnancy—before she became pregnant at 15. While today’s generation of teens has had abstinence and condom use drilled into their heads in schools, churches and through the media, the message has had no more success getting through than it did with past generations. “Sex. It can be confusing and complicated for a mature adult, but when you’re a teen living amid a world of mixed messages, it can be downright traumatic” (Carr, par.10,12-13).

Premarital Sex/Statistics and History

While many have attributed American promiscuity to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the incidence of premarital sexual intercourse was increasing for decades prior to the 1960s and has continued to rise since then (Smith, pg 30-35). At the same time that levels of premarital intercourse were rising, the age of first intercourse was falling. Half of all teens, age 15 to 19, have had sex according to a survey of the Department of Health and Human services compared with 29 percent in 1970 (Carr, par 1). As the age of first marriage was also rising, this indicates that men and women are spending longer and longer periods of their sexual lives outside marriage, increasing the likelihood that they may have numerous sexual partners (Smith, pg 1).

Some Teens are Practicing Safe Sex

One problem specific to teens is relative to their concept that they are invincible. Conversely, there is some evidence that the message of fear has been taken to heart. Jessica Bina, a 17-year-old senior at West Chicago High School, indicated that sex worried her. “’The only thing that’s kept me from having sex is the consequences and that the consequences are so great. Religion is not a factor. AIDS worries me.’” (Carr, par 9), Donald Suggs (1) wrote about a different category of teen—those who are thrown into sex work by circumstances—many of whom do not have the power to protect themselves. Youthful prostitutes indicated that whether or not they were protected was largely determined by the rules set by pimps. If a girl was lucky, her pimp would wish to protect his investment and require that condoms were used (Suggs, par. 13)

).

Changing Adult Attitudes

For most teens, the scenario described by Suggs does not apply and society must begin to address the problem of education and availability of protection. Piccione and Scholle (par. 35-36) indicated that members of Congress and state officials believed that problems of illegitimacy could be addressed through functional public policy (welfare reform) designed to combat illegitimate births and adolescent pregnancies. This meant abandoning the contraceptive approach to adolescent pregnancy in favor of the abstinence approach that “successfully incorporates the basic cultural and psychological realities of the transition to adulthood [b]y inculcating individual ‘resistance skills,’ abstinence becomes more firmly established the more widely it is applied” (Piccione and Scholle, 1995).

Changes in Behavior Essential

Common sense would seem to dictate that the proposal outlined by Piccione and Scholle (1995) would be as ineffective as Prohibition was in changing drinking habits. Piercy and Bailey (1996) outlined a program that was designed to develop a series of interactive HIV/AIDS prevention activities to teach HIV-related concepts and skills in the context of either the adolescent’s family or peer group. The first exercise was described under the heading “It’s Hard to Change Behavior,” and was designed to demonstrate that when people are accustomed to thinking and behaving in certain ways, it is sometimes difficult to change even simple behaviors;

That change takes practice, not just wanting to change (Piercy and Bailey, 1996).

Current Trends in Sex Education

According to the CQ Researcher, the current trend in sex education is to encourage abstinence while providing information relative to birth control.