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Teenagers special: Going all the way




Enviado por Felix Larocca



Partes: 1, 2

  1. Teenage
    mothers
  2. Different approaches to
    teenage sexuality
  3. Heads I win, tails you
    lose
  4. References

Teenage
mothers

LYNSEY TULLIN was 15 when she became
pregnant. The only contraception she and her boyfriend had used
was wishful thinking: "I didn't think it would happen to me," she
says. Tullin, who lives in Oldham in northern England, decided to
keep the baby, now aged 3, although as a consequence her father
has disowned her.

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Tullin is not alone. In the UK nearly 3 per
cent of females aged 15 to 19 became mothers in 2002, many of
them unintentionally. And unplanned pregnancies are not the only
consequence of teenage sex – rates of sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs) are also rocketing in British adolescents, both
male and female.

The numerous and complex societal trends
behind these statistics have been endlessly debated without any
easy solutions emerging. Policy makers tend to focus on the
direct approach, targeting young adolescents in the classroom. In
many western schools teenagers get sex education classes giving
explicit information about sex and contraception. But recently
there has been a resurgence of some old-fashioned advice: just
say "no". The so-called abstinence movement urges teens to take
virginity pledges and cites condoms only to stress their failure
rate. It is sweeping the US, and is now being exported to
countries such as the UK and Australia.

Confusingly, both sides claim their
strategy is the one that leads to fewest pregnancies and STD
cases. But a close look at the research evidence should give both
sides pause for thought. It is a morally charged debate in which
each camp holds entrenched views, and opinions seem to be based
less on facts than on ideology. "It's a field fraught with
subjective views," says Douglas Kirby, a sex education researcher
for the public-health consultancy ETR Associates in Scott"s
Valley, California.

For most of history, pregnancy in
adolescence has been regarded not as a problem but as something
that is normal, so long as it happens within marriage. Today some
may still feel there is nothing unnatural about older adolescents
in particular becoming parents. But in industrialized countries
where extended education and careers for women are becoming the
norm, parenthood can be a distinct disadvantage. Teenage mums are
more likely to drop out of education, to be unemployed and to
have depression. Their children run a bigger risk of being
neglected or abused, growing up without a father, failing at
school and abusing drugs.

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The US has by far the highest number of
teenage pregnancies and births in the west; 4.3 per cent of
females aged between 15 and 19 gave birth there in 2002. This is
significantly higher than the rate in the UK (2.8 per cent),
which itself has the highest rate in Western Europe.

Another alarming statistic is the number of
teenagers catching STDs. In the UK the incidences of chlamydia,
syphilis and gonorrhea in under-20s have all more than doubled
since 1995. The biggest rise has been in chlamydia infections in
females under 20; cases have more than tripled, up to 18,674 in
2003. Chlamydia often causes no symptoms for many years but it
can lead to infertility in women and painful inflammation of the
testicles in men.

No surprise, then, that teenage sex and
pregnancy has become a political issue. The UK government has set
a target to halve the country's teen pregnancy rate by 2010, and
the US government has set similar goals. But achieving these
targets will not be easy. In an age when adolescence has never
been so sexualized, in most western countries people often begin
to have sex in their mid to late teens; by the age of 17, between
50 and 60 per cent are no longer virgins.

Since the 1960s, UK schools have
increasingly accepted that many teenagers will end up having sex
and have focused efforts on trying to minimize any ensuing harm.
Sex education typically involves describing the mechanics of sex
and explaining how various contraceptives work, with particular
emphasis on condoms because of the protection they provide from
many STDs.

The sex education strategy gained further
support in the early 1990s when policy makers looked to the
Netherlands. There, teenage birth rates have plummeted since the
1970s and are now among the lowest in Europe, with about 0.8 per
cent of females aged between 15 and 19 giving birth in 2002. No
one knows why for sure, as Dutch culture differs from that of the
UK and America in several ways. But it is generally attributed to
frank sex education in schools and open attitudes to sex. Dutch
teenagers, says Roger Ingham, director of the Center for Sexual
Health Research at the University of Southampton,"have less
casual sex and are older when they first have sex compared with
the UK".

"Why do virginity pledgers catch STDs? It's
difficult to imagine intending not to have sex while also being
contraceptively prepared"

But a new sexual revolution is under way.
Spearheaded by the religious right, the so-called abstinence
movement is based on the premise that sex outside marriage is
morally wrong. "We're trying to say there's another approach to
your sexuality," says Jimmy Hester, co-founder of one of the
oldest pro-abstinence campaigns, True Love Waits, based in
Nashville, Tennessee.

Abstinence-based education got US
government backing in 1981, when Congress passed a law to fund
sex education that promoted self-restraint. More money was
allocated through welfare laws passed in 1996, which provided $50
million a year.

Partes: 1, 2

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