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?
Like the “Just don’t do it!” attitude of the stupid, the problem is that the authorities and all the others that get involved in this simply don’t seem to understand the problem, or so it seems to me.
The simple fact is that young teenagers and even younger young people are going to experiment at times, particularly once they are sexually mature (have passed puberty). That age is shifting anyway and varies enormously from person to person. Up to a point I think that (with the religious shit left out of it since the US and the UK are SECULAR states) we should ask ourselves WHY the “age of consent” is set where it is.
The fact is, as far as I can see, that the so called age of consent is no more than an arbitrary figure mainly put where it is to suit the administrators of our societies and to make it easier to legislate. I’ve never particularly found young women attractive (even when I was young) but even I can see that there are many thirteen year old girls who look and behave like they are going on twenty something and are so ready for sex of some description with someone of about their own age and equally that some girls of seventeen, eighteen and more (even into their twenties) aren’t even close to being ready!
We have a duty to protect kids from the unscrupulous and the vile and perverted, so I don’t know how you do that and change things, but THAT’S the question I think they should be studying!
Secondly, education is absolutely VITAL and that too should not be based on religious prejudice, but on reality in today’s world. We HAVE to find a way of educating kids in ALL the mechanics of sex and, AS THEY MATURE, some at least of the “alternative and a little more experimental” elements of it too, so they at least know the score. In other cultures this is done by the parents, but in our two countries I think that so many parents are embarrassed and don’t even understand sex, or the beauty and indeed the complexity of it themselves, that it’s got to come from those who are trained to teach.
There’s a lot more I could go on about because it’s a huge subject that we as societies do SO BADLY in the West! But I think I should probably shut up at that point 😈
I smell coffee!……You are right, as usual, education is the key to many of today’s problems and situations…..unfortunately, where I live, the attitude is if they do not talk about it, it is not a problem…..sorry to say the Bible thumpers are the worst….it is like they do NOT want an educated people……my state has the highest percentage of teen pregnancies and has the “abstinence only” sex ed….that should tell the morons something…..and every year some try to make “real” sex ed a part of the school policy and every year it fails……but theyt fins enough time to cut business taxes and raise working people’s taxes one way or another…..The comdedian Ron White has the best saying, “you cannot fix stupid”…….