Teens and Sex
I think teens having sex is a matter that receives too much of the wrong kind of attention, but the results of an interesting study that says teens who have sex early are less likely to get involved in illegal activities later have been made public recently. That flatly contradicts an earlier study that claimed the exact opposite, but a third study, albeit on a slightly different topic, could piece all of that together.
When you take the same point of reference and yet get opposing results, shouldn’t it be obvious that you have the wrong point of reference and that others are the deciding factors? Especially when your chosen point of reference has been shown to have no effect in most circumstances on a related event… Are people so blinded by sex that they can’t see what lies behind the choice to have it?
We are talking about teens choosing to start their sex lives, so let’s see what reasons could be behind that decision. I’m sure I won’t list all of them here, but I think I have the major ones pretty well figured out: trying to appear more mature than they are, actually being mature, fear of losing a (potential) relationship that isn’t secure, being involved in a relationship that is secure, giving in to peer pressure, establishing their right to make decisions about their own bodies, not thinking about the potential consequences, knowing how to avoid the potential negative consequences and only be left with the positive ones, or perhaps just seeking thrills.
With the exception of the last one, you might have noticed that I paired up the potential reasons, one wrong and one right, at least according to how I see things. And when the same thing can be done for conflicting reasons you should look at the reasons behind the reasons. All those three studies agreed that relationships are more likely responsible for the variations shown and not the sexual part of them in itself, but it’s not hard to peel off one more layer and see that it basically boils down to maturity or lack of it, as the case may be.
Granted, most are not mature enough to make that decision when it’s made, but sometimes it works out even so, while at other times a decision made for all the right reasons might not work out right anyway. And that adds a new layer, namely the ability to learn from mistakes, or the ability to learn in general.
Now that we have stripped it all down to maturity, which can be generally summed up as figuring out the potential consequences of your actions and making decisions accordingly, and ability to learn, the path to take seems obvious enough to me…
As always, one should focus on the cause, not on the effect, and try to make improvements there. In this case, the improvements would be mainly to encourage teens to think for themselves, be responsible for their own actions and their own lives, while at the same time making complete and accurate information available to them. And that seems to be pretty much the opposite of what’s usually being done, which makes me wonder why…
Ok, I’m not wondering, I have my own answers for that “why”, but that’s another matter…
