While each candidate in Wednesday night’s debate gave his stump speech on Roe v. Wade, only Obama mentioned the need for better sex education in the school system, and that was quickly skedaddled by a change in topic. Put another way, as politicians are such fans of doing, the two candidates spent more time discussing whether Obama did or did not launch his campaign in Bill Ayers’ living room than discussing how they plan to battle rising teen pregnancy and STD rates. As Amy Schalet pointed out in a Washington Post article last week, “High teen pregnancy rates result in part from our inability to talk honestly and wisely about teen sexuality.” So where are we left if our two presidential candidates are never asked to talk about it at all?

Of course, part of the problem is that very few people besides the Religious Right, NARAL Pro-Choicers, and well, those who read this blog, are asking these questions. Sure, there are other things on our mind: the economy, Iraq, etc. But our general populace’s inability to ask basic, rational questions about the way their children are taught about sex in schools, and therefore their ceding of these decisions to a minority base, speaks to larger problems in our culture: an inability to approach sex in an individualized and normalized way.

Dagmar Herzog talks in Sex in Crisis about the anxiety with which America adults in the twenty-first century approach sex. In the nineties, most Americans seemed relatively satisfied with their sex lives. Sure it wasn’t always the best sex ever; sometimes there was boredom, or lack or desire, or lack of orgasm, or any of the other minor dissatisfactions that are normal in a human sexuality that can only be as perfect as the person experiencing it. Sometimes there were fears about love and emotional connection. But of course, again, why wouldn’t there be? Now, with articles and drug campaigns asking you whether you are experiencing a tepid orgasm, erectile dysfunction, porn addiction, you name it, American adults are constantly told to compare their sexuality to others and ask themselves, “Is there something wrong with my sex life?” As Herzog writes:

What is going on is an ideological assault on something pretty fundamental: the most intimate and personal aspects of sex. It worms its way into the core of the psyche by playing on the imperfections and emotional confusion that so often accompany sex. Rather than helping people get comfortable with the unruliness of desire, the current trendy idea is to freak people out.

Now, if adults are experiencing this level of anxiety about their own sexual lives, imagine how such over-scrutiny and neuroticism is translated to a population who has long been subject to excessive sexual observation in America. If sex can is psychologically and emotionally damaging for adults, given the especial “unruliness” of the teenage sex drive and a whole life during which this psychological damage can manifest itself, it must be doubly so for teens.

But what if we began to treat not only adult sexuality, but teenage sexuality, as normal? In a qualitative study comparing conceptions of teenage sexuality in the Netherlands and the United States, Amy Schalet documents how American adults dramatize teenage sexuality as hormone-raging, out-of-control, and irrational. (Part of the study is published as “Must We Fear Adolescent Sexuality? at Medscape General Medicine.) Dutch parents, on the other hand, recognize teenage relationships as legitimate and work to normalize sexuality.

Guess which country has the lower teenager pregnancy and STD rates.

A key part of normalization as Schalet describes it is self-regulation—that is, trusting that teenagers have been given the right tools (Sex education! Respect for one’s self and body! Idealizing love over marriage!) to make their own decisions about how far to go and when. It’s something we don’t see enough in our culture. Schalet went around asking Dutch and American parents whether they would let their son or daughter have a girlfriend/boyfriend sleep over in their house. 9 our of 10 American adults said No; 9 out of 10 Dutch adults said Yes.

Now, I have to admit, even I initially balked when I first read the question—and said son/daughter is purely imaginary and in the very far future for me. I balked even though I am close enough to my teenage years to know that plenty of teenagers, instead of being taken over by “raging hormones,” are just pretty damned scared and will take their own sweet time about it. I mulled over this even though in college many guy and girl friends, given free rein to each other’s dorm rooms and beds, had hookups and sleepovers which never went near intercourse. I hesitated even though I know that teenagers will find a way to have sex no matter what if they really want to, and instead of making sex a sneaky, shady thing, it might be a good idea to normalize it as an inherent, but inherently individualistic, part of a person’s romantic relationships.

In the end, normalization of teenage sexuality makes a lot more sense than dramatization. After all, teenage sexuality is just a lead-in to adult sexuality, so why paint it as anything else besides a human being embarking on relationships that involve some form of sexual behavior? But here’s the question: would you let your son or daughter have their girlfriend or boyfriend sleep over? Take a moment to really think about it, and then ask yourself why not.