Just over a month ago, the New York Times featured a column by Charles Blow lamenting the state of young people dating (in case it’s not obvious, his main points: dating = desired; hooking up = “sad”). The column was filled with over-generalizations, most notably about “what girls want.” To see a more even-handed, inquisitive, if still problematic, article about our fairer sex’s needs, you should probably take a look at the New York Times Mag’s “What Do Women Want,” which includes such felicitous quotes as, “Meana made clear…that, when it comes to desire, ‘the variability within genders may be greater than the differences between genders,’ that lust is infinitely complex and idiosyncratic.” As a keen follower of many a cultural-sexual zeitgeist article, it was a refreshing moment.
Far away from the Op-Ed page in the NY Times’ Health section yesterday, there appeared yet another article that made me sniff the air and wonder, “Has change really come to America?” The article, titled “The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity” documented how, despite making guest appearances on Oprah as an “oral-sex epidemic” and on Tyra, the idea of millions of not-yet-legal Americans getting it wildly on, is, well, not totally the case. (For the record, the Guttmacher Institute rebutted the notion of a teen oral sex epidemic last year: their research showed that most teens who have had oral sex have also had intercourse, and only 1 in 4 virgin teenagers have had oral sex.)
Tyra’s shows, on a teen pregnancy epidemic and teenage unprotected sex, were at least more on topic, though like most TV hosts her unscientifically-surveyed data was thrown to the public replete with exclamation points and sad-face emoticons.
So what’s the real dish on teenage sex? The National Center for Health Statistics troublesomely reported this month that “births to 15- to 19-year-olds had risen for the first time in more than a decade.”
But does this necessarily mean a rise in teenage promiscuity? Of course not, as one perspicacious NY Times reporter, Tara Parker-Pope, demonstrates. Having done her research, Parker-Pope also reports that “Today, fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1 percent in 1991” and goes on to write:
The latest rise in teenage pregnancy rates is cause for concern. But it very likely reflects changing patterns in contraceptive use rather than a major change in sexual behavior. The reality is that the rate of teenage childbearing has fallen steeply since the late 1950s. The declines aren’t explained by the increasing availability of abortions: teenage abortion rates have also dropped.
And indeed, as the Guttmacher Institute has reported, there has been a shift in sex education: in 2002 the proportion of teens likely to hear information about contraception had declined from 1995, while the proportion who were likely to have heard only abstinence information had increased.
Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University and the author of “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus†(N.Y.U. Press, 2008), who was also cited in the Charles Blow column, though in a very different context, closes off the article by telling everyone to basically just chill the hell out:
“I give presentations nationwide where I’m showing people that the virginity rate in college is higher than you think and the number of partners is lower than you think and hooking up more often than not does not mean intercourse,†Dr. Bogle said. “But so many people think we’re morally in trouble, in a downward spiral and teens are out of control. It’s very difficult to convince people otherwise.”
Of course, reporting that we actually shouldn’t be worried about teenage sexuality isn’t sexy –it takes away our society’s opportunity to fetishize the idea of forbidden, rampant teen sex, our society’s leeway to take a morally outraged and overwrought approach to young people’s sex lives. So why should I be surprised that the article hasn’t gotten anywhere near the “Most Emailed List,” even in the Health section, and even though the Blow column spent a number of days in front-page, Number One spot? I guess I’m not. I just wish I could be.
Comments 2
Virginia — January 28, 2009
Kristen! You connected the dots completely. The Blow column last month blew it and it was so puzzling the context in which Bogle and her views were presented. Awesome column.
anniegirl1138 — January 28, 2009
You know, I sometimes wonder if my peers, and Boomers especially, are projecting our own sexual pasts onto our children because we are parents now and don't know how to square our actions as teens and twenty-somethings with what we would prefer our children do differently.