IS SEX SURVEY SHOCKING?(U.K. teen mag finds 1/4 of 14 y.o. girls have had 1 or more sex partners)

Sky News ^ | March 26, 2005

[Stoat]

IS SEX SURVEY SHOCKING?

Almost a quarter of 14-year-old girls have already had sex with at least one partner, according to a survey by a teen magazine.

The Bliss magazine study found that most of them did not use protection and that 60% of them had sex after drinking alcohol.

The survey of 2,000 teenage girls across Britain with an average age of 14.5 years is the most comprehensive of its kind.

Are you shocked by the findings? Are teenagers having sex younger these days or has it always happened?

Do magazines such as Bliss have to take some responsibility for making young girls more aware of sex?

Does the media put pressure on children to have sex?

What can be done to persuade them to wait, and to use protection when if they do have sex?

We asked for you views. Here are some of your emails:

Maybe we should stop handing out council accommodation and tax-payers' money to these teens. I am a nurse and know of several teen girls who have merely got pregnant just as a means of leaving home and having all provided for them. They all shout about their 'rights' but with rights comes responsibility. Moreover, it should be mandatory for the father's name to be on the birth certificate, even if genetic testing is needed to ascertain it.
Kay Van-Winkel, Darlington

I agree with Kay from Darlington. It's about time we stopped giving people such an easy time. I'm not suggesting that we remove help for those who need it, but there's a great difference between a teenager who's pregnant, scared and doesn't know where to turn and one who is happy as Larry to think she'll be given a house and won't have to get a job for the next few years. I'm sure my comments will upset some people but I've actually heard one teenage mum say to a friend when asked 'What will you do when she's (the baby) old enough to go to school - get a job? The reply - 'No, I'll just have another one'. Disgusting.
Donna, Leeds

I feel the media is responsible for these outrageous findings. Sex is portrayed as a necessity and has become part of some kind of a race for young people. It is also seen as an act of pleasure for a moment, not an act of love between a couple. This is bad news because it eliminates one of the major aspects of love, between a couple. Sex should be good, but with the right person.
Niaz Hussain

I am now 26 but was 14 when I had sex for the first time. I didn't do it because I was in love because despite what I thought at the time I didn't know what it meant to love someone, even if I thought I did then... kids today don't know either. They think they are in love, relating how they feel to all these stories in teenage magazines about young mums and how they survived. I simply did it because I wanted to and because it felt right... and that is the difference between then and now - even though it's only 10 years ago.
Twenty-six-year-old female, Cheshire

Whilst I am sure the editors of such magazines would disagree, but these "Teen" magazines are little more than "Porn Mags" for the young. Whilst it is necessary for the young to be educated in sex it is totally unnecessary for them to be educated in sexual acts. It disturbs me that producers of such magazines print such articles with impunity and it disturbs me more that they may obtain some personal gratification from doing so. This is nothing short of paedophilia by proxy.
Andy Myers

I was brought up in the Netherlands and live now in Britain with my husband and 3 children. My eldest is nearly 19 and has only in the last year become sexually active with her boyfriend of 2 years. She is by no means the exception but I believe that some kids do not feel that they can talk to their parents about sex. We have always brought up our kids that no question is silly and that they will always get an honest answer. Believe me it will make you squirm now and again. The moment my daughter started this relationship in which the boy was a few years older we send her to the doctor to be put on the pill AND made sure that there were condoms in the house. We did not tell her that she should not do it but they all grow up with the message that they should never feel pressurised but only start having sex when they feel ready for it and preferably while they are in a loving relationship.
Desiree

These girls are too young to understand emotions and to be in love at that age. They think by having sex with someone that they will love them. I never had sex until it was legal and can really only say that I never really found love until the age of 35. Sex education should be taught to girls and boys, but more in depth than they are doing in schools. As a parent I would be outraged if my daughter or son were having sex, they are just not mature enough on the inside to fully understand the implications. Even when I was old enough, it still felt wrong, going behind my parents back. Most of the girls I went to school with started having kids at about 17 or 18, meanwhile I was having a great time being single and travelling without the latest accessory (a baby). They need to be better educated at school or by their parents, they suddenly cannot make the transformation from being a child, to having a child and becoming a parent they have no idea.
DB, Surrey

May be it is high time we start considering the Gospel according to ABSTINENCE. The evidence is glaring at us in the face but we choose to ignore it. Look at Uganda that has less resources to fight AIDS but has accomplished great feat in curbing it. It is a known that that young people like to explore. It would have been better to promote abstinence rather than making sex safe that gave the recents results.
Tutu Olutayo, Gothenburg, Sweden

[Stoat]

Bliss Magazine

blissmag.co.uk. The place for gossip, style, lads and much more

A cursory 'stoat-examination' of Bliss Magazine suggests that the entire function of the mag (aside from advertising) is to push young girls into having sex by making them feel 'uncool' and left out of their 'hip' social group if they don't. So, I suppose that they are happy in knowing that their marketing is apparently working.  It's just terribly sad that entire generations will lose their innocence and have innumerable additional troubles as a result of such trends.

By posting this I don't mean to suggest that statistics in the USA would be any different....no intention is made here to slam our British Friends.  If an American teen mag (or, preferably, a more reliable source) were to publish results of an American survey I would want to post that also.

[alloysteel]

I thought it was against the law or something for 14-year-old girls to be getting regularly (or even occasionally) bonked, almost surely by older males who consider them to be mere conquests. At that age a LOT of things are wrong with intercourse, not the least of which it is outside marriage.

A century ago, girls that age were already married, setting up households and making babies. It was assumed they could handle the details of domesticity. Today, they can scarcely handle the details of a reading assignment.

[Stoat]

Agreed....it seems that statutory rape laws are rarely enforced, probably because the matter doesn't come up unless there are additional legal violations. With strict laws ensuring the privacy of the patient, perhaps even the parents are not even told what's going on.

[Publius6961]

Are you shocked by the findings? Are teenagers having sex younger these days or has it always happened?

No.
No.
Yes

Any further elaboration would raise the level of heat without any corresponding increase in light.

I often wonder why posts like this one ever show up at FR.

[HassanBenSobar]

This is so ignorant and idiotic I don't know where to start.

My wife's parents were married by arrangement (she grew up outside the states) and were formally married at ages 12 and 14 (dad and mom, respectively). Kids followed soon thereafter. This was par for the course in society. Their marriage lasted until my mother-in-law died recently in her late seventies--in spite of enormous upheavals in their lives. And no, they weren't religious. Note that--up until the mid-nineteen hundreds, this was THE NORM for billions of people.

So what the hell do people expect nowadays? Biology is what it is, and at least most societies recognized and accommodated that fact for centuries. Now, I am all in favor of delaying marriage for a host of reasons in modern societies like ours--but duh, what the heck do you expect young kids to do? I don't care how much society does or does not preach, or what parent's expectations are--and I'm the father of a 5 year old girl. I know that when the time comes it will be a struggle for her, no matter what my wife and I do to educate her.

Blaming it on 'the media' is retarded. Hormones will find a way in spite of whatever anyone does. That doesn't mean I don't intend to protect and educate my daughter to the utmost, but it's moronic to wring our hands like this pretending we don't know who to blame.

Ugh. Sure, I wish some fairy-tale past of sweet innocence were possible, but puh-lease. Get real.

[G Larry]

The pill taught them that there are no consequences.
Abortion ensured that.

Those 2 items also stressed marriage and made divorce the norm.
Now, Mom & Dad are out dating and boinking, so how do they tell the kids not to.
Additionally, nobody is home to parent the kids.

Add the cultural tsuami of sex and what do you expect?

[Stoat]

I often wonder why posts like this one ever show up at FR.
 

Probably because of statements such as this from the article:

The survey of 2,000 teenage girls across Britain with an average age of 14.5 years is the most comprehensive of its kind.

This makes it news, and this makes it relevant.  Suggesting that "Any further elaboration would raise the level of heat without any corresponding increase in light" doesn't exactly give your fellow Freepers much credit for their ability to assess and comment upon news items in a meaningful way, does it?

If you think that it's irrelevant then you are entirely welcome to spend your time at a different thread, but insulting others who care about societal trends doesn't exactly add 'light' to the matter.

[Stoat]

Get real.

"the most comprehensive of its kind." sounds pretty 'real' to me.

[Stoat]

Add the cultural tsuami of sex and what do you expect?

I expect pretty much what this survey shows, if not worse.