A new survey shows that US teens aren't really clear on the facts of life. Namely, that having unprotected sex may cause pregnancy. Can we get some comprehensive sex ed in here please?
Sometimes, as adults, we look back at the teen problem page dilemmas we used to pore over and have a good laugh about it. "Can I get pregnant from giving him oral sex?" "My friend says that if you have sex standing up you can't get pregnant. Is she right?" You remember the cringeworthy stories. But unfortunately, a mixture of misinformation from friends and popular culture, lack of advice from parents or carers and hit-and-miss sex education means that teens continue to have these questions unanswered and as a result, make risky decisions with risky consequences.
A friend once told me how, at the age of 16, she and her schoolfriends were horrified when one of the girls in the group admitted she and her boyfriend never used contraception. It was all okay though, continued the girl, because "I always have a bath afterwards". Thankfully, she'd managed not to fall pregnant so far - and thanks to her friends, she realised she'd been believing one of the classic myths about preventing pregnancy. But anecdotes like this are prime examples of why a recent study has shown that a third of teen mums didn't use birth control because they didn't believe they could get pregnant.
The survey, carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, involved 5,000 teenage girls who had unplanned pregnancies between 2004 and 2008. Half of them were not using any contraception at the time - for varying reasons, including having trouble accessing it (13 per cent), their partner not wanting to use it (24 per cent) and not believing that they could get pregnant (31 per cent). Just 22 per cent didn't use contraception because they thought they "wouldn't mind getting pregnant".
The young women weren't asked why exactly they thought they wouldn't get pregnant, but it's concerning to say the least that so many thought that was the case. Although teen birth rates in the US have been falling, they're still the highest in the developed world. To me it's obvious the way to tackle this is not by refusing to give comprehensive sex education, not by simply telling teens not to do it and hoping they'll listen. And what about empowering them to put their foot down when their partner says he doesn't want to use birth control? It's not even just about pregnancy - you have to worry about what sort of STIs all those teens not using birth control properly were potentially exposing themselves to.
We've got exactly the same problem in the UK. Fair enough, we've never had to put up with years of abstinence-only education as the only thing on offer to many teens and we don't have terrifying things like "purity balls", but sex education is extremely patchy and unreliable. The newspapers go into a moral panic about the fact that children going through puberty get to learn what sex is and what naked adult bodies look like; right-wing columnists mop their brows over the thought of children learning the actual names of their body parts.
Very few people seem to want to admit that thorough education about it all, giving young people the knowledge to make informed and thoughtful choices about sex and relationships, might be the way forward. And yes, that includes empowering young people to say "no" to start with (if that's what they want), and helping them understand the warning signs of unhealthy relationships. Even if the pearl-clutchers get all upset about the thought of schools telling young people that violence within relationships is wrong (yes, this really happened).
The government, schools and sexual health educators can't afford to leave it to parents to impart all the right information, because that's obviously not happening. Society itself doesn't give out healthy enough messages about sex and relationships. Will we ever see an improvement in the way our young people learn about the facts of life?
Hannah Mudge writes about all things news and feminism-themed for BitchBuzz. You can also read her blog, We Mixed Our Drinks or follow her tweets as @boudledidge.
Image via KooshKing's Flickr.