Sex Ed Must Teach How To Say ‘No’

As Joan Rivers often says, “Can we talk?”

My daughter has just turned fourteen and I am worried. Being an obstetrician/ gynecologist makes me acutely aware of the problems of teen-age sexual activities and so I worry how my daughter and I are going to survive these turbulent few years of teenagehood.

I know, for example, that by the end of the ninth grade 30 percent of teenagers in this country will have had sexual intercourse and that by graduation that figure hits 70 percent. I also know that there are now one million cases of HIV-infected individuals in this country with a 44 percent increase in spread among heterosexuals over the past five years ,making our young teenagers vulnerable to this deadly virus.

I know a lot more. Sexually transmitted diseases including gonorrhea infect three million teenagers each year. In addition, 500,000 new cases of herpes, four million new cases of chlamydia and 24 million cases of human papilloma virus occur every year with high prevalence rates among teenagers.

To make matters worse I know that, because they are used inconsistently (if at all) condoms, now readily available to teenagers, fail to protect our kids from these diseases as well as from unwanted pregnancies.

Each year approximately a million teenagers get pregnant with 400,000 choosing abortion, while the rest begin their lives with significant burdens of parenthood robbing them of much of the fun, education, adventure and personal growth of early adult life.

There is more. When questioned after the fact, the majority of teenage girls tell us that they wish they had waited to have sex, that it wasn’t satisfying at all and that they did it only because of intense peer and boyfriend pressure.

Barbara Whitehead, writing in the October issue of the Atlantic Monthly, stated that sex among young teenagers tends to be “nasty, brutish and short.”

What troubles me, however, is the fact that despite pervasive sexual education for teenagers in our school system, the data indicate that it just isn’t working very well.

Teenagers may know more about sex overall in a technical sense, but are still under considerable pressure to have unprotected and frequent sexual intercourse.

These courses focus on facts rather than on a value-based information system. Little effort is put into helping young girls learn to say “no” and mean it.

Most young girls tell pollsters that they would have liked more help in saying “no” without hurting a boy’s feelings. Little emphasis is placed on teaching both sexes that abstinence and virginity are positive virtues.

When sexual innuendo fills television, movies, books and magazines and when the school system approaches subjects such as safe sex in a nonjudgmental way, it is little wonder that our kids find themselves doing things that often result in severe, life-long, physical and emotional scars.

I am not advocating abolishment of sex education for teenagers. I just want these courses to place more emphasis on the virtue of virginity, at least until these young kids reach an age where they can handle the emotional and physical consequence in a responsible manner.

In particular, I want these courses to teach young girls the art of saying “no.” That doesn’t mean I am blind to the fact that teenagers will experiment with sex, but why does “going all the way” have to be an integral part of our teenagers’ relationships?

I want so much to tell my daughter all these things. I want to tell her to wait, and to be firm in withstanding peer pressure. I want to tell her that maintaining virginity through these tough teenage years is important and that she will someday be glad she followed this advice.

But, how do I do this and at the same time make sure she knows that if she finds herself in trouble she can still turn to me for help?

How do I do all this when I know that she would rather be grounded from going to the mall for a year, than talk about such things with her father?

Perhaps I will suggest she read this column.

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