New Stats Reveal Dangerous Trend in Teen Promiscuity
By Jim Brown
September 23, 2005
(AgapePress) – New statistics on the promiscuity of American teenagers indicate there is a great deal of work to be done in teaching young people to remain sexually pure. The National Center for Health Statistics has released a report that says more than half of American youth ages 15 to 19 have engaged in oral sex, and 70 percent of the 18- and 19-year-olds surveyed admitted to engaging in such activity.
Bill Albert, communications director for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (NCPTC), says parents need to understand that they influence their teens’ decisions about sex more than any other source. “We ask parents that they don’t let peers and popular culture be the only shaping forces when it comes to their children’s decisions about sex,” he notes, “and we encourage them to be both direct and broad in what they discuss.”
Albert says even as the National Center for Health Statistics data suggests, it is important for parents to talk with their teens and, “even though it may not be comfortable for parents, we might have to broaden the scope of what we discuss and be very specific.” And that includes communicating the abstinence message with clarity, he points out.
“One of the things that this [report] underscores is that even those teenagers who say they have not had sexual intercourse are putting themselves at risk for contracting STDs by having oral sex,” the NCPTC spokesman points out. For many teens, he notes, oral sex is an activity that is happening in the “on-deck circle” as opposed to after reaching “third base.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey a few years ago revealed that many young people are unclear about whether oral sex puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. Research has shown that diseases such as Herpes I and II, syphilis, gonorrhea and, to a lesser degree, chlamydia and HIV/AIDS can be transferred through oral sex. Still, some 25 percent of teens in the Kaiser survey did not think an STD could be spread through oral sex.
Albert notes that while the rate of teenage promiscuity is extremely high, it has not increased dramatically since 1995. Nevertheless, he asserts, the new data from the National Center for Health Statistics should be a wakeup call to parents — a warning that they and other youth educators must do a better job of talking to kids about sex and encouraging them to abstain from sexual activity, including oral sex, until marriage.