No sex please we're British!

[febel]

A little tongue in cheek my thread title...BUT....talking to my daughter about sex education and sneaking a look at what she does in school the tables seem weighted in FAVOUR of them having sex before 16. She is nearly 15 now and talking to her the other day and she told about a classmate who is two and a half months pregnnant. ("..she's a lovely gilr though mum, and she'll have an abortion.")anyway my daughter was adamant that it's legal to have sex at any age..the school she says have never mentioned that it's illegal under 16 (and I know plenty of kids do have sex under 16, I work in a college and we have quite a few young girls and babies attending, but it's just another thing to consider) I had to look it up on the internet and show her before she'd believe me.
School have taught them how to put on condoms, where to get them for free, how to get the morning after pill, explained how to go to the doctor to go on the pill, discussed various birth control methods etc etc but never gone into the emotional side of girls (and boys) having sex etc nor the fact that technically it is illiegal (though I suppose this could make it more attractive to some) To me we seem to be plastering over the cut rather than treating the cause....or am I old fashioned? I would like my daughter to get to 16 first really, I think she would be emotionally ready then..and my eldest said she wishes she HAD'NT had sex at around 16..says personally in retrospect she wasn't ready. Beleive me, I am not a prude, far from it but this does concern me.
Is it just the school she is at or her? What do other mums, dads and carers, and teenager think?

[Sarcalogos]

You are not wrong. But not every school makes this glaring admission. I spent 50 minutes talking to year 10 yesterday about legal implications and consent.

[cazboldy]

well i think it's much too little too late.

I had my ds1 in the first term of Y11, just after I had turned 15, and when I went back after the christmas holidays we had sex ed. one other girl in my year had a baby, and at least 5 (that I know of) had abortions

Thing have turned out well for me and I have married my then bf and we now have 5 gorgeous dc, but I know that it is not that way for everyone.

tbh it probably wouldn't have made a huge difference to me personally, but it is something I couldn't talk to my parents about at all.

I think you are right when you talk about the emotional side of things not being discussed enough. While there is no doubt that practical help and knowledge is invaluable, it is imo only part of what should be discussed.

The trouble is with society though - it's not unusual to just jump into bed with people - they see it on tv, fgs some of their parents do it, with no thought about committment, or it being a big deal, so why should they think any different?

Teachers only have limited resources, and I think they should be given proper help with this - it's no good just having it as part of a science lesson.

[Annunziata]

I'd never thought of that before. I'm sure that mine all knew/ know it is illegal, but when was the last time two 15 year olds were arrested for having sex? It may as well be legal. As for the school, I'd much rather they taught the practicalities, but a brief mention of the legal side should included.

My DC go to Catholic school so there is a lot of emphasis on the emotional aspects. But that doesn't stop 14 and 15 year olds getting pregnant. Society has got a lot to answer for.

[flow4]

I think I start to sound like a loony as soon as I open my mouth on this subject . We have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Europe and the unhappiest teenagers. We vilify teens and exclude them from everything and everywhere except school, where many of them don't want to be. They have sex because it's pleasant and free, and for many of them, f-all else they do is. Kids with plenty of other good things in their lives are much less likely to start doing it too young...

[mumeeee]

Yes society does have a lot to answer for but what about the parents. I don't think sex education should just be left to schools. We are Christians and don't believe in sex before marriage. Our children have been bought up this way. We have also told them it's important to be ready and in a loving relationship and if one of them had told us they were having sex we wouldn't have got angry with them.

[cazboldy]

flow4 I don't think you sound like a loony at all - makes perfect sense to me and I think you are right

[cazboldy]

........ unless I am a loony too???

[girlgonemild]

I agree there is too much on having 'safe' sex and not enough on whether children and teens should be having sex at all.
I don't think it's just schools to be fair. A lot of posts on MN seem to think teenagers will do whatever they want anyway and the best parents can do is help deal with/limit the consequences.
I know teens can in theory do whatever they want but I do think we could hope for a bit better and ask them to make better choices re. not having sex, not getting drunk, not taking drugs etc. I know a lot of teens who do manage to contain themselves - your right they are probably the ones with other things to do!

[MoreBeta]

Our DSs school is very vague on the legal issues indeed and not surprised children/teens are further confused given the messages they see in the media/internet.

The school's policy document it states that where both teeneagers are under 16 and having sex they are in an invidious legal position but makes no statement or recommendation. It basically leaves the matter unclear - which is not what I expect a school to do. They basically duck the entire issue except to say that pupils of any age are not allowed to be involved in any kind of physically intimate behaviour in school.

I have told my DSs not to have sex before 16 for legal and emotional reasons and make triple sure that any person they do have sex with is really and unquestionably also over 16.

[Brightspark1]

I think girls need assertiveness skills and help to value themselves so they don't end up feeling pressurised into having sex before they are emotionally ready. Sex ed at DC's Catholic primary was an embarrassing joke, and not much better at secondary. But then again mumee has a point, it's our responsibilty as well instead of leaving it to the schools

[Sarcalogos]

With respect I think it is difficult for parents to know exactly how these things are being covered in lessons. The published policy can only ever tell part of the story, particularly where discussion is involved. Your teen is unlikely to relay the whole story back to you accurately after the lesson.

I find it is different with every set of children I teach. For example this week I found myself explaining dogging for the first time (!) not ideal and certainly not on the curriculum. But it came up in discussion and 2 of the more 'overconfident' boys were trying to convince others it involved actual dogs. I weighed up the options and decided on the spot that I would rather they knew the truth than let that sort of myth go unchallenged. So briefly, and factually I told them. still got my fingers crossed that they didnt go home and tell mum so it comes back to bite me on the bum...

[flow4]

sarco, if there are any complaints, I hope you've got a Head with enough backbone to back you. We need more teachers who are willing, able and brave enough to give kids clear facts :)

brightspark, not just girls I think... My son was terrified by his first girlfriend's keenness to have sex (and kids! ) - he was 15, she was 14.

cazboldy we can be loonies together (Hey, why doesn't mumsnet have a smiley for sticking out your tongue, wiggling your ears and howling?!)

[febel]

Oh I agree with so many of you here! So glad to find I am not alone in my thoughts...yes girls SHOULD be taught to be more assertive, and to value themselves (and at this age hormones are strong persuaders) YES , I agree, teenagers are lost these days...but having said that a lot of them are "too cool" to do "stuff" (even discos...our last school disco was cancelled cos only TWO tickets were sold), YES, parents should have a hand in sex education too..and I have...but she probably takes more notice of school..and in particular mates....it's not over cool to listen to parents views sometimes (!) I realise I'm not in on the lessons and she might just not be taking in stuff that's said (she was hysterical the other day cos she was convinced she had clamydia the other day..because the teacher said you could pick it up not just through sex!) but there are some important points being missed, and I feel the teaching is angled more to the teacher saying "It's ok to have sex, hey, go ahead and do it, everyone does and this is where you get free condoms from and this is how you put them on..get your mum to buy a cucumber and try it yourself." (she's going to be a mite disapointed if she's practised on a cucumber is all I can say!)

To me many parents try to be mates, and mates only to their teenagers, and flunk the parenting bit. (many of my daughter's 14 year old classmates hold drinking (as in alcohol) parties in their parents houses...with their parents knowledge...most weekends)

Sorry if I sound like I'm on a soap box but I work wth post 16 youngsters and have teenagers of my own . I do think society has a lot to answer for, and I know I'm not the only one and I think the goverment should be looking at teenagers and society and education..you wouldn't beleive how many youngsters leaving school can't do BASIC maths and times tables..not neccessarily the schools fault before anyone labasts me..parents should take a hand in learning and practising Maths..and English) and to me they aren't.

[BackforGood]

I agree with you too. But I think it's a much wider issue than schools sex ed. You can't ever watch a film (pleasant rom coms / American High Schools - you don't need to go into anything raunchy) where it isn't considered "the norm" to be having sex with someone you've just met / barely started going out with.

[MoreBeta]

febel - totally agree with you.

There are parties with young teenagers and alcohol in the homes of parents at our school and the school has written letters asking parents not to allow it because the backwash happens on Monday at school.

What heck is going on when schools have to write to parents asking them not to allow 14 - 16 yr olds unlimited and unsupervised access to alcohol?

[thirdfromleft]

Dear Lord. Isn't it terrible, teenagers want to drink and have sex. That's never been true before. Simply unthinkable darhlings.

[Sarcalogos]

In my experience it's the darhlings that are worst of all

I can only speak for the schools I've taught in, but I can promise you I'm sending the message that it's ok to wait. Oh and I give out the statistics (from the sexual health clinic nearby) that 25% of teens have sex before the age of consent, (ramming home that that means 75% DO NOT), and that when surveyed nationally 60% of people said they felt they had lost their virginity too young. And then we speculate on how many that regret it might have been under 16 and not in loving relationships...

[silverreigns]

"I agree there is too much on having 'safe' sex and not enough on whether children and teens should be having sex at all.
I don't think it's just schools to be fair. A lot of posts on MN seem to think teenagers will do whatever they want anyway and the best parents can do is help deal with/limit the consequences.
I know teens can in theory do whatever they want but I do think we could hope for a bit better and ask them to make better choices re. not having sex, not getting drunk, not taking drugs etc. "

I think girlgonemild is absolutely right.

I think it's shocking that some schools fail children by implicitly condoning underage sex, which is illegal and usually exploitative of young girls.

[silverreigns]

School nurses are also culpable.

[uruculager]

thirdfromleft If it's just a teenage thing, why are there such drastically different rates of underage sex and drinking? Are you seriously implying that the sexual habits of teenagers today are as they have been for all time?

[cory]

I don't think that you should forget that in the long run what matters is the decision made by your dd. The school nurse won't be leading her to the bed and pulling her pants down: it is up to her to make a decision.

I grew up in Sweden at the height of the permissive society; many, many of my friends had sex early (though hardly any got pregnant), but it was still my decision whether to do so or not (I didn't).

I also think it is unfair to blame the teacher if your dd hasn't been listening properly in class (the legal age for sex story suggests she may not be). The fact that a teen says something has never been mentioned is not proof it hasn't: I remember teaching my dad's Sixth Form students as First Year Undergraduates and cruelly regaling him with tales of the things he had supposedly never taught them...

Ime the girls least likely to have early sex, and certainly the ones least likely to fall pregnant, are the ones who have very absorbing other interests and/or career dreams.

As for sex in historical times, I think most research agrees that early and unmarried sex was fairly normal (except in the upper classes) until the late 19th century and that the first half of the 20th century was a period of unusual abstinence- but of course when we say "olden days" what we really mean is the 1950s.

[Cuddleczar]

The book "Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles", which reports one of the first detailed sexual behaviour studies ever carried out, certainly in this country, and which came out in 1994 following concern about HIV, found that for women aged 55 to 59 (at that time), fewer than 1% had experienced sexual intercourse before the age of 16, compared to 18.7% of women (almost 1 in 5) aged 16 to 19. The median age for age at first intercourse for those aged 16 to 24 was 17 years (so half the population had sex earlier and half had it later). No doubt, 17 years on, there are now more than one in 5 girls who have sex before 16, perhaps it is even up to 2 in 5. If so, out of 100 girls aged 15 and 3/4, perhaps 40 of them will have had sex (though they may not be having sex regularly).

So we are faced with a problem that some girls (and probably a substantial number/proportion), for whatever reasons, are going to be having sex...and in my view, if they are going to have sex anyway, it is important that they have the information they need in order to do it as safely as possible. At the same time, you do want to discourage them from doing it--the survey detailed in the book quoted above found that almost 60% of women who had first sex before 16 thought that this had been too soon. (The equivalent figure for men who had first sex aged under 16 was almost 25%.)

It is a tricky one. My strategy has been to have regular discussions over the dinner table with our DDs (17, 15 and 13), often prompted by stories in the paper or TV progs we have watched together. All three go to a mixed comprehensive and see boys every day in all their glory. They have seen friends who go to girls' schools literally jump on some of the boys they know, because these girls are simply desperate for contact with the opposite sex. I actually think that going to a mixed comp has worked very well in holding my older two back from early relationships of this kind. (Not sure I can say the same for the youngest one, whosome on this thread will knowhas a boyfriend and I have had to stop her going round to his place with no adults present. That is working well at present.)

Actually, clearly it is also important to stop or delay early sexual experience (as opposed to early sexual intercourse), because the same book reports that "the interval between first experience and first intercourse seems to be diminishing over time, more markedly for women than men": for women aged 45 to 59, the average time lapse between the two was 4 years or more (2 years longer than for women aged 16 to 24).

It is true that if a girl has decided she is going to have sex, there is little that will stop her other than "locking up your daughters". I speak from personal experience--what was I thinking of, it was a miracle I didn't come to some harm. It is our knowledge as parents (my DP also had a similar young experience though no risk of pregnancy for him) of what can go wrong at that age (partly as a result of inadequate or absent parenting), that has made us take a firm line with our girls about the risks and responsibilities that come with having sex, and that they need to be sure they can cope with these before they start a relationship of that kind.

[PrematurelyAirconditioned]

Well done sarcalogos. I do think that not enough children are informed that pre-16 sex is not the norm, and that your average teen is stilla virgin on their 17th birthday.

I also have a bee in my bonnet about the promotion of condoms as a panacea when their failure rate is bloody awful (OTOH I know if you give teens really effective contraception that will probably put them off using barrier methods so will increase STDs - it's a tough call).