What Are Your Kids Learning About Sex?

Written By Patricia Rouzer

According to an Associated Press story dated April 5, 2007, in a school in rural Louisiana, a fifth grade class was left unattended for about 15 minutes while older students went to an assembly. Four of the fifth graders, ages 11 to 13, posted a lookout and had sex in the classroom. “After 44 years of doing this work,” said the parish sheriff, “Nothing shocks me any more. But this comes pretty close.” If anything demonstrates the need to teach sex education in the school district, the sheriff later told CNN, this incident certainly does.

Clearly the sheriff quoted in the news story subscribes to the philosophy that knowledge is power. But, say some experts, when knowledge of human biology mixes with raging adolescent hormones, maybe more than just power is needed.

Adolescent sexuality, say the experts, is influenced by a complex brew of factors: moral values, physical urges, lack of impulse control, movies, music and television, peer and parental pressures and, it seems-to an alarmingly decreasing extent-fear of pregnancy or contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

A local Health Department official who counsels teens and adults in the department’s Family Planning Clinic, said that anecdotal evidence indicates many teens become sexually active while they are very young, with full knowledge of and little regard for the potential consequences of their actions. Witness last fall’s reports of county middle schoolers holding “sex parties.”

“There really is no way to accurately quantify the numbers of county teens having sex of some kind and the average age at which they start. It is virtually impossible,” said Cindy Marucci-Bosley, Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner who manages and is the clinician at the Family Planning Clinic.

And although technically speaking, sex is defined as any part of a person’s body coming into contact with another person’s genitalia, Marucci-Bosley has found that teens devise their own definitions that defy conventional description or elementary logic. A la Bill and Monica for example, “most teens do not consider oral sex, sex,” she said, adding that oral sex has become increasingly popular among the teens she counsels, most of whom regard it as routine.

Sex as an academic subject has long been taught in county schools. Linda E. Kephart, Supervisor of Health and Elementary Physical Education, described Carroll’s sex education program as “conservative,” one that is in keeping with the perceived morals and attitudes of the majority of Carroll Countians. The written program outline makes no reference to homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender or alternative lifestyles.

Contrasting with the public schools are Carroll Christian Schools (CSS), operated by the Church of the Open Door in Westminster. An unabashedly conservative religious and educational institution, it offers no formal sex education, said the school’s administrator, Dr. David Risenberick. “We leave sex education to the parents,” he said, adding that CCS parents want it that way. There have been no requests from parents for the school to take up that educational banner for its 275 students, he said.

Begun in elementary school in the fourth grade, the public school sex education program–officially referred to as “Family Life and Human Development”–starts by introducing students to the concept of puberty, media and peer pressures, relationships, and HIV/AIDS as a communicable disease.

In middle school, the program delves into a variety of subject matter: male and female physiology, family planning, sexually transmitted diseases, how babies develop and how disease is sexually transmitted. In grades four though six, schools send out “reminders” to parents of the specific topics they will be discussing in family life classes, encouraging parents to discuss these topics at home with their children.

The program culminates in high school, usually in the freshman year, with a health course that deals with influences on relationships, sexual behavior, marriage and family, myths and misconceptions about sexual behavior, factors that influence attitudes and decisions about sexual behaviors, consequences of becoming sexually active, abstinence, methods of family planning, influences on family planning decisions and the risks, detection, intervention and treatment, as well as the physical, emotional, and social effects of sexually transmitted diseases.

The public school curriculum is abstinence-based. It encourages students to eschew sexual activity and seeks to help them establish a foundation on which to make “strong, healthy decisions” about sex, Kephart said.
In fact, the Board of Education has inserted an “Abstinence Policy Statement” in the program outline. It states, in part:

“By their very nature, the programs in Family Life and Human Development deal with a number of sensitive matters. Foremost among these is treatment of the issue of abstinence. While the instruction must be informative for youngsters who choose to be sexually active, it is the position of the Board of Education of Carroll County that abstinence from premarital sex be presented to students as the most appropriate choice. Abstinence offers the only means to absolutely avoid both sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.”

The abstinence concept stressed by Carroll County–and many school systems in the state and the nation–is a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social policy. Its efficacy has come under increasing fire of late with release of the results of an eagerly awaited Mathematics Policy Research, Inc. study authorized by Congress in 1997.

The study followed a total of 2,000 elementary and middle school students from four communities–two rural, two urban–through high school. All students had access to family life resources in their communities, with slightly more than half also receiving abstinence-only education.

The study showed that by the time the students were just shy of their 17th birthdays, half of both groups had had sex. Among the sexually active, most had their first sexual encounter at about 15 years of age and less than a quarter of those who were sexually active used condoms.

“There is absolutely no doubt that abstinence is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease,” said Marucci-Bosley. “The problem is that so many teens now are unwilling or unable to remain abstinent. We don’t encourage sexual activity, but as a public agency we provide them with choices.”

Carroll’s County’s sex education program does not operate in a vacuum and it does provide students with information on birth control and STDs. The school system has a Family Life Committee composed of the health teacher and a parent from every school and a student representative from each county high school. Although the committee cannot independently change the program, it can recommend changes to the county’s elected School Board.

But the recommendations are not automatically adopted. For instance, the County School Board declined to discuss or vote on a committee recommendation that birth control be taught in the 8th grade curriculum. Marucci-Bosley termed the Board’s lack of discussion and consideration of the recommendation “outrageous.” A strong advocate of sex education, Marucci-Bosley cited numerous studies that demonstrated that children who had early, consistent, accurate sex education did better than those who did not.

The County Health Department collects data on teen pregnancy as well as incidents of STDs. Although far from epidemic, STDs are a concern. In 2004, the last year for which numbers are available, there were 112 reported cases of chlamydia, 19 of which occurred in people under 19; 26 cases of gonorrhea, seven of which occurred in young people under 19 and four cases of syphilis, none of which occurred in young people under 19.

Marucci-Bosley regards the department’s teen pregnancy statistics as just “the tip of the iceberg.” The numbers only reflect teen pregnancies that are reported to a school nurse. They do not necessarily include pregnancies terminated through miscarriage or abortion or those of young women who move, transfer outside the system, drop out or are home schooled. In 2004, there were 104 pregnancies in the county among young women 15 to 19. In 2005, that number dropped slightly to 102.

The Health Department now makes available a Plan B pill–the so-called “morning after” pill–a progesterone-rich medication that women can take to prevent a fertilized egg from becoming embedded in the wall of the uterus. Plan B is available at no cost and no parental permission is required.

The department keeps statistics on the number of doses it dispenses, but does not record them by age of the recipient. In the 12 months that composed fiscal year 2005, the department dispensed 248 doses of emergency contraception. In 10 1/2 months of calendar 2006–from January 1 through November 15–the department dispensed 366 doses, Marucci-Bosley said. Full 2006 numbers are not yet available. The partial 2006 statistic includes the time during which the middle school “sex parties” occurred.

Another factor that makes the jump in Plan B emergency contraception particularly startling is that in 2006, the drug was approved for over the counter sales to women 18 years or older without parental permission. No doubt some county students obtained the drug through their pharmacies.

As a hands-on health services provider, Marucci-Bosley hears things from her clients that could make a parent’s heart stop. Typically, the girls who seek birth control at the clinic have been sexually active for months without using any form of birth control, she said.

“Generally, by the time I see them, they have had unprotected intercourse numerous times. It isn’t that they want to get pregnant–although there is the rare teen who does–it is just that they believe it won’t happen to them.”

The accounts that Marucci-Bosley gave make it clear that many of these young people regard sex as a casual physical activity, with few or no emotional strings attached. “You and I used to go roller skating, these kids go have sex,” she said.

Case in point is that of the 14-year-old girl who came to her clinic for birth control. Hers was a “better late than never” kind of story.

“She told me she had already had three sex partners–two boy friends and a guy who was Ôjust a friend,’” Marucci-Bosley said. She told the counselor that sometimes she felt like having sex, or her male friend felt like having sex, “’So we have sex.’”

It is the local equivalent of FWB–friends with benefits–that is, kids who know each other and, when the mood strikes, just have sex for the sake of sex, a growing phenomenon that has been widely described in the media. Clearly any parent who thinks FWB is an urban myth needs to think again.

Marucci-Bosley blames, among other factors, our sex-soaked society as a catalyst for youthful, hormone-drenched, meaningless, careless sex. Herself the parent of three teens, she sees sex as something kids cannot avoidÉit is a mainstay of modern culture.

“Sex is their world. It is on television–much of MTV is suggestive, if not downright soft porn,” she said. “The music kids listen to is all about sex and violence, and with iPods, sex is in their ears all the time. Girls dress provocatively from the time they are little. Listen to kids talk–it is all about sex.”

Couple the strong sexual images with an adolescents’ “no big deal” attitude, greater mobility and personal independence, strong biological and hormonal drive, poor impulse control and limited parental involvement, you have a potent combination that often leads to sexual encounters.

“Things that used to be considered extremely intimate and personal are now mainstream,” she said.
Marucci-Bosley believes the answer is knowledge and parental involvement. “Parents have to really talk to their kids, set boundaries and establish consequences,” she said. “If children know what their parents expect, know what the consequences of their behavior will be and that the parents will enforce the rules they establish, that is the best way–and maybe the only real way– to influence a teen’s social and sexual behavior.”

Parents Are the Key

If how to prevent teen sex is the question, strong parenting is the best answer, say those who study human behavior.

Parents who are actively involved with their children, who communicate with them and demonstrate their own rich, loving, deep relationships best aid and equip their children to develop meaningful, constructive relationships–the antithesis of casual, serial sex.

Stephanie Madsen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology at McDaniel College, recently completed research on how incoming college freshmen at McDaniel built strong social relationships. She presented it to a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Boston this March.

“Teens generally begin dating when they are still living at home and under their parent’s supervision,” she said. “Dating is a kind of social practice for establishing long-term, permanent relationships later.”

“The way they learn to develop relationships when they are at home tends to carry over into their college life. Kids who learn how to communicate, trust and build intimacy build strong relationships in life.”

Surveying both parents and students, she found that parents who put in place what she called “supervisory rules” for their teens had children who tended to develop healthy relationships.

Supervisory rules are those in which a parent insists on knowing fundamentals–like where their child is going, with whom, when the child plans to return and requires the child call if he or she is going to be late.
“Parents who set supervisory rules seemed to have more open communication with their teens and because of that, seemed to know when they needed to step in and get involved,” she said.

She pointed out that parents who laid down restrictive rules–dictating who their children could go out with, imposing inflexible curfews and where they could and couldn’t go on their dates–had less communication and, ultimately, less influence over the behavior of their children.

Another category of parent–the proscriptive parent–tended to be dogmatic, instructing their children to “respect their date,” or “return your date’s phone calls” projecting their idea of a perfect relationship rather than helping their child form his or her own strong social bonds.

Not surprisingly, Madsen found that parents who had strong relationships with each other–or single parents who dated and formed sound social relationships with members of the opposite sex–provided effective models for their children, demonstrating respect, affection and caring for others that carried into their children’s behavior.-P.A.R.