to never, ever want my children to grow up when reading this kind of thing?

[emkana]

promiscuous teenagers

I do think those kinds of stories are the exception rather than the rule tbh. You can't make generalisations about all eenagers from a few people's stories of promiscuity.

wow i wasnt doing anything like that when i was a teen!shock value artical perhaps?

yanbu!!!!!

I'm sure that's not "normal" for most teenagers, most of the ones I know (and I know them very well) aren't like that at all.

hmm. I think it should be taken with a large pinch of salt. There will always be promiscious teenagers and always have been- along with every other age group. There are also a lot that aren't doing anything nearly that interesting.

the media will always go for a salacious inflammatory angle.truth is most teens are much maligned really nice people

gross stereotype are unhelpful

my (extremely trusted) main babysitter was really embaraseed when she told me she'd had a cigarette at a party a few months ago - she thought it was a terrible thing to do and couldn't imagine doing anything worse.......and she only turned 20 last week LOL.

Gosh Think they've used the exception to create this article!

Message withdrawn

I read the article and it was depressing. However it is simply a small minority, there have always been children like that, the difference is that porn is so easy to access on the internet and they think that what they see is normal!
I have 2 teenage sons and one slightly older.The eldest started going out with a girl just before his 17th birthday and it lasted for several years, they were besotted with each other and have managed to stay friends.He now has a similar realtionship with a lovely girl. My 18 year old got his first girl friend about a year ago and they are similar-in love! I have no idea if it will last but it is a very deep meaningful relationship. The youngest is 16 and hasn't taken the plunge, at least one girl has been interested, but he is shy as yet - I fully expect him to follow the other two.
I think that they follow the examples set at home. Also you would have to be a very confident, full of yourself teenager to have sex in front of a room full of people unless you were drunk or on drugs!
Human nature doesn't change-it takes all sorts.
Megglevache is right, the only thing to change is technology and easy access to porn. I know lots of lovely teenagers!

I read this in the Times.

There have always been precocious teenagers. My mother's periods started age 10 in 1939. She sexually matured very young. My younger daughter was 14. There will always be teenagers more into sex than others and those who mature earlier than others.

My daughters did not to my knowledge have boyfriends until university but I wouldn't know 100% if that were so. They went to single sex schools and I think their horses and sports probably gave them a different focus from some teenage girls. They both have boyfriends now they're at university and my son (19) at university too does not yet but he is a bit more shy. The age of consent for full sexual intercourse is 16 so certainly however early a developer or interested in sex a child is they need to know the law.

Luckily there were a couple of teenagers who left comments there to say that they hadn't even had sex yet. That was heartening.

I really hope that it's just a small percentage of teenagers giving blowjobs to strangers.

The Y generation think they're like Phoenixes, rising from the Dullness, but even when I was in school there was a certain set hving sex quite young 15, 16 (seemed young then!) and the rest of us (90%)either hadn't got a boyfriend and wouldn't have done it with a stranger......

I wonder how much has really changed.

This article upset me, with two young DDs. It seems the girls have no respect for themselves, and the boys are raised on a diet of porn and have warped ideas about what constitutes a satisfying sex life for most people.

hmm when I was a teenager there were lots of stories circulating about posh girls schools and how promiscuous the girls were. It wasnt like that at my school, only a small number of people were known to be ahving sex.

the article is still worrying though. Will put chastity belts on my shopping list this week I think

I didn't find the article particularly depressing. The young adults were just experimenting with sex in a guilt-free environment. I think that as long as precautions are taken and you respect your friends, that's fine. And I'm heavily in favour of blow jobs for young people, at least they won't get knocked up...

The Guardian had an article last year about teenage girls who were having lots of sex but clueless about orgasming. The boys were orgasming but the girls were not. That was FAR more depressing and revealing IMO.

But wouldn't you prefer the girls to be in relationships rather than having sex with countless boys, sometimes in group situations and in front of other people? I imagine they're doing it more to be noticed and part of the cool set than because they get their sexual kicks from promiscuity. And it's giving the boys unrealistic expectations.

And that's part of the reason it's so depressing morning paper.

Why are the girls doing it? It's obviously not to enjoy themselves! WhatEVER way you dress it up, it's only peer pressure. They are buckling under the weight of peer pressure and giving blow jobs to strangers.

Words like "experimenting with sex in a guilt-free environment" are appropriate for people in their twenties. They are just words when it comes to describing teenagers.

They are not invincible. All the things that hurt us back when we were 15 must still hurt.

They have no respect for themselves. It's nothing to do with "experimenting with sex in a guilt-free environment". If a 15 yr old gives a boy a blow job and then he looks through her the next time he sees her, how's that going to make her feel? NOT GOOD.

But our teenagers are routinely mopping up this damage to their self-esteems, in the mistaken believe that they are liberated.

I think the age of consent should be 14 actually but I don't think there's much of a mood to reduce it in the UK.

It is 14 in Spain. I think that's too young. It makes 14 yr olds who don't really want to have sex feel that the cooler 14 yr olds would be ready for it.

Lowering the age of consent would just make it harder for those girls who don't want to have sex to say no. What's the point of doing that, after all, those who want to do it WILL.

Yawn. 'twas ever so.

Have you read John Mortimer's memoirs about what life was like in the 40's?

Are you saying none of your friends were at it in the 60's, '70s, '80s?

Or that they were all in stable loving relationships rather than just doing it to see if they could?

Did none of the boys in your class bring in porn magazines to read behind the bike shed?

We none of us grew up in a perfectly safe protected environment where bad things couldn't happen. Bad things could always happen. (and not all experience is bad ).

Those of us who made good choices did precisely that- made choices! And that is what our teenagers will have to do too.

Well I'm still shocked. I was 15 but had a steady boyfriend, nothing like what these girls are getting up to.

Why do you think the age of consent should be reduced, Xenia?

An awful lot of the young people's comments sound like boasting put on for effect, and probably in direct response to leading questions from the journalist.

It reminds me of the time when I was in secondary and the school did a survey on access to drugs. The question asked was 'would you know where to get hold of illegal drugs?' Now one girl, in one of the classes, was known to have this knowledge and to have had contact with a local drug dealer before she came clean. So of course all 120 of us put down 'yes'. We would have known. We could have asked her. As far as I am aware nobody ever did. But the results of the survey caused great consternation in the school.

Which goes to show that any research is only ever as good as the question asked.

One thing that has changed is the willingness of adults to wash their dirty linen in public: there is never a shortage of parents happy to display their lack of parenting skills in the media. Thirty years ago, those out-of-control parties might well have happened but you wouldn't have found a mother happy to talk to the press about them.