Sex education has always been a joke. It just isn’t realistic. It's pretty sad to me that the only education on the matter that I recall receiving is one semester of my entire high school career, which barely covered the topic. Sure, we all know how babies are made, but that's not saying much today. Teens talk. Teens talk about who's "hooking up" with who, what they did, when they did it; it's pretty much the biggest topic in adolescence history. And yet, do these teens really know what they're talking about? Teens don't know what the hell they're doing, and thus don't really know what the hell anyone else is doing. They talk about it, sure. But do they understand it? Likely, not.
For example, menstrual periods. Yes, they give us the rundown on the whole cycle thing, but not very in depth as far as how it relates to sex. The main priority seems to be to just use teen girls' fertility as a warning to abstain from sex entirely. But I feel it should be used to encourage girls to be smart about sex. The window a girl can actually get pregnant (ovulation) is very small per month. If teen girls knew this and knew how to figure out where in their cycle they are, they could plan out when to have sex on the safest days. That alone could help prevent unwanted pregnancy.
More so, why is that it schools only teach about one type of sex? No wonder some teens only feel you're no longer a virgin when you have traditional, penis-vagina sex. Combine that mentality with this hammering to abstain from sex, and you've got a whole lot of oral and touching going on. So if teens are having these different forms of sex, knowing basically only what they see in pornography or hear from other teens, there's probably not as much intimacy, nor precaution going on. What should be a consensual, pleasurable thing is instead often very awkward, painful, and misunderstood. This goes for any kind of sex. Why? Because the subject is so taboo it is much easier to go along doing it than to actually talk about it.
If schools were more open about teaching on a realistic level, opposed to the sugar-coated form, and emphasized the importance of communicating with your partner, teens would not only become more comfortable and more smart on the subject, but they would take it more seriously. Knowing the sensitive parts of the body, where they are located, and how to safely approach triggering these pleasure sensors would save teens a whole lot of guessing and by extension a whole lot of ouchees.
It may seem extreme to some to essentially tell teens how to go about dealing with sex. However, youth has not just been sexually active for generations, they’ve been having babies at puberty since forever. Have we forgotten that a century ago many parents were what we consider just kids nowadays? To the millennial generation, getting married in your twenties seems a stretch, let alone starting a family. I know a couple of girls who are married or engaged and having babies, and the news always comes as a shock. Being a mother as a teen is so scandalous, there’s a show about it. Perhaps the early twentieth century was more accepting of young families in their teens, but today’s “young” parents are in their twenties, if not thirties.
Technically speaking, our bodies are still engineered to want sex way before what society now considers to be the ideal time to get started building a family. Plus, the laundry list of prerequisites seems to only get longer every decade. Being financially stable means having at least a four-year degree, plus experience in the workforce. Knowing who to marry means knowing yourself, and by extension having life experience, which many desire to find in travel, trial and error, career experimentation, etc. Not to mention, women aren’t just here to rear little ones anymore. If both the man and woman in the relationship want a career, that brings the need to seek childcare and housekeeping for many, which means more money likely has to be stashed for the family to be. Throw in the overpopulated job market and the ever-fluctuating real estate market, and the time to start a family has never seemed so prolonged. No wonder many first-time parents are in their forties.
Teens are going to have physical urges, and relying on abstinence clearly does not work. This is more detrimental than ever when considering the fact young adults need time to responsibly family plan. Adolescents need a middle-man to address their wants and needs without judgment. If we assume teenagers are not mature enough to handle sex with consideration and responsibility, maybe that is why they tend to handle it so immaturely. Saying you’re too little to handle having sex, even though you think you want it, and even though everyone’s talking about it and presumably doing it, doesn’t sound like a logical approach. Saying you’re now at an age where sex happens, and therefore it is your responsibility to learn about it and decide what is right for you, puts the choice in the hands of the teenager, which it honestly already is. By acknowledging this reality, instead of running from it with tired scare tactics, schools would have more say in the sex lives of teens than they have ever had before.
A fabulous example of this is Planned Parenthood. Regardless of whatever controversy surrounds the place, what they have done is provide a safe haven for youth. When I was a teen, and especially as a young adult, Planned Parenthood was and has been the place we knew we could go if in a pickle. Instead of ignoring the delayed pregnancy, or potential STD symptoms, everyone just goes to the place they know will be able to help them. Imagine if schools had this kind of credibility in the eyes of teens. Perhaps that sex ed class would actually be interesting. Perhaps teens would feel liberated enough to ask questions, to be honest with others and with themselves, before they find everything out the hard way.
It seems pretty pathetic teens can talk about sex more freely than the parents and teachers who are supposed to be educating them. Maybe if districts placed just as much necessity on topics like sex, relationships, and lifestyle as they do on math, science, and English, students would view it as just a basic part of life, which it is!
