What should public schools teach our children about sex? It can be a complex question, especially when dealing with morals, social norms, pop culture, hormones and health. When students sit down for their sex education, should teachers embrace an abstinence-only policy?
Regardless of when they choose to initiate sexual activity, all young people must be prepared to become sexually healthy adults and provided with the knowledge and skills necessary to avoid HIV, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy.
U.S. adolescents face considerable risks to their reproductive health. They have the highest age-specific risk for many STIs and the United States continues to lead the developed world in the rate of adolescent pregnancy. In fact, U.S. teen pregnancy and teen birth rates are the second highest among 46 countries in the developed world.
Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the 2000 U.S. Census indicate a considerable gap between the median age at first intercourse of 17 years, and the median age at first marriage of 25 in women and 27 in men. Such demographic realities raise serious questions about the feasibility of programs that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage as a universal sexuality education strategy.
Further demonstrating the need for comprehensive sex education is the fact that, according to the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, 46.9 percent of high school students had ever had sexual intercourse. Data also showed that every year there are approximately 831,000 pregnancies among women aged 15 to 19 years, about 9.1 million cases of STIs among persons aged 15 to 24 years, and an estimated 4,842 cases of HIV/AIDS among persons aged 15 to 24 years.
These numbers demonstrate that limiting students’ sexuality education to abstinence-only programs fails to arm adolescents with accurate and sufficient knowledge to make informed decisions and keep themselves safe.
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