I recently saw an article on a popular female blogger, mother of ten, alleged devout Christian who was having a meltdown over an article in Teen Vogue magazine about anal sex.
I can understand why people of a certain age or background might be uncomfortable talking about this subject, especially with teenagers. Sex, of any kind, was not something that I recall ever being discussed by either of my parents. Of course, when I was a kid, teen pregnancy was at an all time high, most boys figured it out from looking at porn and listening to mostly invented tales from their older brothers, and girls hadn’t a clue.
Today, it’s a bit different.
The CDC says that in 2015, just under 230,000 babies were born to teens between 15 and 19 years of age, a new record low for the age group, and 8% lower than the 2014 birthrate.
Being a government agency, the CDC hedges a bit about the cause of this drastic reduction from the 1960’s and 1970’s, but does concede that more teens are refraining from sexual activity, and more of those who do are using some sort of birth control.
Yet, another survey by a different commission, but still sponsored by the CDC suggests that lots of teens are still having sex, they just may not be having the kind of sex that ends up in an unwanted pregnancy.
This study summarizes that:
About half of teens ages 15 to 19 report having ever engaged in oral sex with an opposite-sex partner. Among teens who have never had sexual intercourse, about 15 percent of both boys and girls report having ever engaged in oral sex with an opposite-sex partner
As for boy-boy or girl-girl sexual experimentation among teens, there isn’t a lot of concrete data available, young teens are unlikely to speak out and identify as gay or lesbian, although that is becoming less true more recently.
However, in 2007 a Canadian study suggested that of about 300,000 boys surveyed, only about 1.5% identified as bisexual, homosexual or mostly homosexual, but 3.5% of them stated that they had had some kind of sex with another boy in the past year, even while not identifying as anything other than heterosexual.
My point is that even if you are a devout Christian who home schools your kids, kids are going to be kids and as teenagers, they will find a way to get off. One of my first oral sex experiences was in the church bathroom, and I can still remember a pleasant mutual jerk-off session with David M. during recess while we were half-way up the oak tree on the grounds of the Seventh Day Adventist church where we both attended the school sponsored by the church.
I think that one of the biggest reasons that teen pregnancy is down is that kids of today are far more educated about sex than previous generations. By the age of 12, today’s kids know more about sex than I knew when I was first married at 18.
Going on a rant and burning magazine pages may be a cute way to get more viewers to your video blog, but it does nothing to address the fact that the best way to keep our kids safe is to educate them. We educate them about lots of other dangers in the world, why would we not also teach them how to be responsible when it comes to sex?
Kids of the 21st Century have few of the issues with homosexuality that I grew up with, and more of today’s kids are identifying as sexually fluid than ever before. I know several young people that are now identifying themselves as “pansexual” and “polyamorous”. When I was a kid, I didn’t even know what those words meant.
Yet, for all the educating we are doing, we still need to do more.
Some frightening statistics among our young people is that young people 15-24 
account for 50% of all new STD infections, and 1 in 4 teens contract a sexually transmitted disease each year.
As many as half of all high school students in the country have had sex of one kind or another.
Since the teen pregnancy rate is the lowest it has ever been, one can only draw a reasonable conclusion that there is a lot of sex other than vaginal going on and it is irresponsible for parents to go on a magazine burning rant rather than sit down with their teens and lay out all the facts in a calm, non-judgmental way so that their teenagers can go out into the world with the necessary facts to stay healthy.
It doesn’t help that our current administration seems to be ill informed as to what actually works, and has now de-funded teen pregnancy prevention programs across some 81 institutions.
Check in over the next couple of years and see how the statistics change, it may be painfully interesting.