Day: October 4, 2009

Another Teen Sex Study

As usual I try to lighten up the tone on Sundays, a least a bit, we are bombarded daily with the politics of NOW…there are other things happening; just not as covered as the bitch slapping of politics……It’s Sexy Sunday and Franco is still dead!

Tina Jordahl, a former Iowa State HDFS and public policy graduate student who is now a market research specialist with Hospice of Central Iowa, collaborated with Lohman on the study. It analyzes data from the “Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study” — a six-year longitudinal investigation of low-income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. Their paper, titled “A biological analysis of risk and protective factors associated with early sexual intercourse of young adolescents,” was posted online in the Children and Youth Services Review and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal.

Interview data for the study was first collected in 1999 on youth between the ages of 10 and 14, and again in 2001. Lohman says she also has data collected in 2006 from the same subjects, who were between 16 and 20 by that time.

In the study, boys reported their first sexual intercourse at younger ages (averaging 12.48) than girls (13.16). Boys also had nearly 10 percent higher frequency of intercourse than girls and were also more likely to experience sexual debut (20 percent to 14 percent) between the two years when the first two waves of data were collected.

Recent national research has found that 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys have had sex by the time they’re 16. Lohman says that means the rate of sex among her low-income sample is only slightly higher among the girls, but almost double among the boys

African Americans also had 12 percent more early sexual intercourse than whites (29 to 17 percent respectively), although racial differences did not change the age of their first intercourse.

The authors report that periods of instability in family structure and welfare use serve as risk factors for early sexual activity. They found that additional maternal education — beyond a high school level — was found to inhibit some of that activity.

For that reason, the researchers propose allotting public funding to increase maternal education as a way to reduce early sexual promiscuity among their children.

The study also found the youths’ involvement in delinquent acts drastically increases the chances of early sexual activity.

Because of the gender differences in sexual debut, the authors also urge more gender-specific prevention programs that are implemented at earlier ages, especially among high risk populations.

Study after study on all sexual titles have been done, results tabulated, funds allocated and yet we as a nation cannot figure out how to education the kids on what is good and what is bad with sex.  Parents are shy about the talk, government is just plain stupid about the subject and worst of all funds a squandered on programs that are totally ineffective…..and the beat goes on…..what will be the next great program to teach the children?

Just Don’t Do It!

I live in the part of the country that thinks sex is evil and sex ed is the work of the Devil.  About the only sex ed is the lame abstinence only and that has work so well that my state leads the nation in teen pregnancies.

A November, 2004, Washington Times article noted that the Bush administration “included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in its $388 billion spending bill. This represents an increase of $30 million for programs that teach middle- and high-school youths that sexual abstinence until marriage is the best choice. The new funding is far less than the $100 million Mr. Bush requested, but it marks a “record level of funding,” said leaders of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D.”

Here are some of the fallacies children are being taught with abstinence-only education:

* A 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person.”

* HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.

* Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

* One curriculum, called “Me, My World, My Future,” teaches that women who have an abortion “are more prone to suicide” and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.

(Thanx to the blog “The Countess” for her reporting)

Now that we have a new president, there is a move away from the stupid that is abstinence only—we need to thank somebody for that–abstinence only is a FAILED program….scrap it and start teaching the children the truth.