to think that it is not normal for 14 year olds to be sexually active?

[landrover]

Reading an earlier thread, one poster said that it is generally accepted that 14 to 15 year olds were sexually active!
Do you think that this is true? I am curious because I have a ten year old daughter, I need to know when I start worrying!

[dementedma]

I think its too young and is not the norm with my two dds friends. Dd1 was 17, don't know about dd2 but suspect late teens.
Wouldn't have been happy about them having sex at 14 at all.

[thebody]

Aunty, I think it's very important to discuss sex with your teens. (I have had 4 )and to listen to them.

it's very important to 'quietly' discuss keeping safe and contraception.

spouting crap about being virgins on their 16rh birthday sounds very distasteful to me.

[ShowMeYourTARDIS]

I was nearly 20 and the first of my close circle of friends to have sex. they are mostly a year or two older than me! Assuming there's a normal distribution, for every person who had sex at 20, one had sex at 14.

It is not unusual for people to wait until 20+ to have sex.

[neversleepagain]

I think it is a cultural thing. Very few girls (and even boys) were sexually active at 14 when I was a teenager. In fact, only one of my group of friends was sexually active and she was 17. All of us started becoming sexually active between 18-22. This would have been early 90's.

[Lvcat]

I was at 15. And I was considered a "late bloomer." In the same year like 3 girls dropped out to have babies, which was considered strange at the time (2004, yeah I know I'm a baby) but most of my female friends were going at it. However the general consensus between us as a friend group was that we were using contraception. Once me and the bf at the time broke up it put me off boys for a year or so...

The thought of 15 year olds having sex now makes me cringe tho

[wordfactory]

thebody why would it be distasteful to tell our DC the truth?

Having meaningful conversations about sex includes telling them the truth ie that most 15 years olds are not having regular sex.

[tracypenisbeaker]

My wee brother is 14 and I'm not worried about him in the slightest. He did have a girlfriend but it was very much playground stylee. They never met up at weekends I think he got dumped because he would rather have played the Xbox than meet up.

It's weird to think that I was a year older than him when I lost my virginity. I think he'll be about 25 to be honest. If he can be bothered with that sort of nonsense. He's like an old man.

[AuntyEntropy]

I agree that talking about "virginity" per se sounds a bit American and won't necessarily go down well, but the essential stats are important I think.

[landrover]

Well im off to fireworks now, thank you all for your input, I think I am reassured that not all 14 year old are "at it" so I will hold off the chastity belt for a bit!

[MrsMook]

I was 20. I went to university with plenty of other virgins in the first year.

While teaching PSE I've had plenty of 14/ 15 y olds talk about their experience of contraception. There's a lot of bravado at that age too. My friend at school was really 18, she'd lied for 3 or 4 years about what she got up to.

[tracypenisbeaker]

AuntEntropy what do you call it?

[chosenone]

I have to say I am surprised at the stats. When I was 14 in the early 90's all of my female peers apart from one had sex, most of us had regular bf by 15. I felt it was the norm but was largely relationship based. People ( including me) waiting 2 /3 months before having full sex. Small minority having ONS ....fast forward to my teaching career. In 2005 in my previous school Police were called in due to a mass 'Daisy Chain' situation involving a huge number ( 15 ish) year 9's at a party, all linked in a circle in a sexual way, some of them had filmed it I was quite shocked but nit everyone was. In my current school, think leafy suburbs but with a real mix of middle class and working class small town folk. The Police came in to talk to year 9, 10 & 11 re sexual behaviour in our local park. The nurse reported an un presedented amount of students asking for condoms or MAP. Many students who 'go out' or are in the popular gangs, or emo gangs find themselves in this situation. Sadly we recently had an incident that involved a drunken girl and boy at a party being filmed. I really think more PSHE should tackle teenagers attitudes to what is expected/normal. The media is so oversexed now the lines are blurred for some.

[mrsmellow]

I think that sexual activity and exploration is more common than 20 yrs ago but agree that penetrative sex isn't as common as teenagers claim . This is based on data from anonymous surveys, so theoretically removing the bragging. I suspect there is still some embellishment....
I think it is a shame. I was 16 and am mostly ok with it, but it wasn't memorable.

[fivefourthreetwoone]

In Ireland we have the "Romeo and Juliet" law, which states that if two underage kids have sex the boy can be (and they have been) prosecuted, convicted and placed on the sex offenders register.

So if two 14 year olds have sex, only the boy can get blamed and prosecuted for it and the girl gets off scott free? That sounds very sexist to me.

If they're both the same age, why wouldn't the girl at least hold some of the responsibility?

[landrover]

Sorry Choseone, they werent stats as such, a poster from another thread said that they believed this was the case xx

[misspontypine]

"I was in a loving relationship"

Did it just feel like that at the time, or do you still think that?

I can't help thinking that 14 is too young to really know that.

Yes it was a loving relationship. We are still friends, I have only had 3 relationships in my life and only 3 sexual partners.

I don't understand how I could as a parent expect my children to respect my advice on contraception if I said no sex untillyou are 16, the law says it is wrong! if someone told you that you that you couldn't have sex for 5 years and you had your sex drive x 25 because of teeneage hormones you would think they were reasonable? Your sex drive doesn't get switched on the day after your 16th birthday.

If you are already going against the parent telling you to wain untill you are over 16 you probably wouldn't bother following their contraception advice.

I never had sex without a condom untill I was ttc. I respected my mother's advice because she acepted it was normal to have sexual urges even when you are 14/15

[Writerwannabe83]

I became sexually active at 15 but didn't lose my virginity until I was 16.

However, when I was 14 years old (I hadn't even properly kissed a boy at this age) my best friend who was a year younger than me was having sex and had been for quite some time.

[merrymouse]

If I could give advice to my 14 year old self it would be "Do not worry about who is having sex at 14, 15, 16, or 17 or even who is going to the best parties. You are fishing in a small pond. There is much better availability and a comfy dorm room at university."

Don't think 1980's me would have listened though. (Not so much about the having sex because i wasn't, but wasting time on all the angst).

[thebody]

but I wouldn't dream of saying to my teens ' most 15 year olds are not having sex'

that's on a par with them saying 'most of my friends have iPads and go to bed at midnight'

my answer to that would be 'I don't care' so that might be your teens answer.

of course there's an age of consent. if we were talking about a 19 year old and a 14 year old that's different to 2 15 year olds and the law takes that into account.

the 'Virgin in your 16th birthday' just sounds far too wierd to me. like a dd is only prized because she is a good girl. a virgin. bloody wierd.

[peggyundercrackers]

i was 14, in my old school grounds where we used to play sometimes - it was amongst the trees/bushes it was. there was a bit of rubbing/flicking before we dtd - he was the same age. there was one girl in our group who was really young when she became active. she didn't have a good family life though - father was an alcoholic and her mother was on the game. I can thin of someone else I worked with she was having threesomes with 2 of her male friends/neighbours - they were all about the same age and got on really well - I knew this was true because I knew the 2 blokes before I met her and they told the same stories as she did.

it sometimes horrified me to think my dd would do the same things I did but then im sure it would horrify my parents if they knew what I did. the one thing where we do share the same values is it would never ever go on under my roof until she was old enough in a stable relationship - I would never make it easy for them by saying they are going to do it somewhere may as well be here where they are safe... to hell with that.

[BackforGood]

Of course YANBU. Even the statistics say the majority of people are over 16 when they first have sex, and there's a lot of 'bravado' in that. Plenty of people do not have sex until they are in their 20s.
Whereas, there are people who have had sex at 14, it is certainly not "the norm", and the vast majority manage not to - or have no desire to - when they are so young.

[MrsOakenshield]

if that is correct, that early sex can increase the likelihood of cervical cancer, then that is certainly something I would tell DD, when the time comes, and is one of the most powerful arguments against having sex too young that I have heard.

In my all-girls' boarding (with some day) school, it wasn't the norm at all at that age, people were still more interested in ponies and Duran Duran. I think we all thought about it, and read Lace, but most of us would have run for the hills at the reality! I guess we were very sheltered. Don't see it as a bad thing, though.

[VenusDeWillendorf]

54321 the reason given for the upholding of the Romeo and Juliet law in Ireland, as the girl will bear the results of the underage sex - she will risk pregnancy- he will not. Sexist maybe, but that's Biology.

"The 'Romeo and Juliet' law is constitutionally sound because it reflects a girl's risk of pregnancy after sex, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday" read all about it here

[thebody]

Maryz, I have the greatest respect for you as a poster on here as you are always so sensible.

that law typically though sounds like a very old fashioned idea that the lad is coercing the innocent girl even if he is younger than her. like a girl might not be the one wanting sex!

that's a bit 1950s to me and sounds very sexist to boys.

[thebody]

cross posted, thanks for the reference Venus it's very interesting.