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

[emkana]

promiscuous teenagers

This is nothing new - it has always gone on amongst certain groups of teenagers. This 'generation y' thing is pure sensationalism and I also fail to see what the internet has to do with anything. I lost my virginity at 14 more than a decade ago, having had very little experience with boys beforehand. It was a regrettable experience, I was very ashamed and had succumbed to peer pressure. Now I wish that sex education at school had concentrated more on the emotional side rather than the physical aspect of not getting pregnant.

Teenagers will always be interested in sex, particularly when alcohol is involved. It is the responsibility of their parents to instil in them a sense of self worth so they have the confidence to resist peer pressure.

The worst people I know are adults. Teens aren't all like that and if they are, they can still grow out of it.

I just don't know if teens have the emotional maturity to have casual sex without feeling some sense of guilt afterwards. Some may be, but many teens are emotionally fragile and although it is a phase they may grow out of, the emotional repercussions could affect them for many years to come.

I suspect girls get to get more fun than middle class girls in England in the 1880s. The change in attitudes is not all for the bad.

So it's a sign of emotional maturity to be able to have casual sex without feeling guilt afterwards?

Interesting view of maturity.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a woman having casual sex if she chooses to do so. I do not think that having casual sex without feeling guilty is an indicator of maturity, a person may decide to settle in a long term relationship as they mature for example. However, I do not think that teens are usually able to have casual sex in this way without some damaging long term effects.

it's a really interesting one isn't it.

the 'emotional side for girls'. is that an intrisic fact about female existence. or are girls/women expected to need emotions around sex.

i tell you what....the moment that women learn how to really really enjoy sex, just for the physical pleasure of it, watch out world for how powerful those females are going to be!!!

sex without emotional involvement can be extremely pleasurable...it's like the biggest ever secret kept from women in general and hopefully the game's up!

sex with emotion is wonderful too obv. can be incandescent. as can pure physicality.

i love the thought of gender-bending teens experimenting with their bodies especially if things become less penetration-centric [vis my pointless jabbing of doom thesis of eons ago if anyone remembers that!]

I remember jabbing of doom very well and agree with your points sophable

i really wish that thread had been kept. it was a great thread.

Teenagers have always had sex. It's really important to take on board the fact that in the Victorian era (as a for instance), only middle/upper class people wrote.

So, all our perceived knowledge of eras gone by is by chroniclers who were conscious of their readership .. ergo other readers; literate people of a certain class or aspiration.

They did not want to read that twelve year kids were fucking in the hedgerows at harvest festival, so it was not reported.

But they were, because some chroniclers slipped through the net. People are people, kids are kids, sexuality is sexuality. Many things change, but people never do.

Kids are no more promiscuous now than they ever were.

i thank you desi.

our teenagers are luckier than ever before for having the ability to prevent STIs. that should be our focus as parents.

and instilling self respect and therefore respect for others. which doesn't mean silver ring thing in my book. it means not doing what you don't want to do and not expecting others to. it means knowing how to take pleasure and therefore being open to learning how to give it.

Yes but there were some restrictions in those days because of a/the influence of the church, the idea of "sin" and b/ the fear of unwanted pregnancy.

Both these now don't exist anymore which is a good thing but I wish it wasn't replaced with what this article seems to describe.

Des is right and in Victorian England there were brothels where men could have sex with children, never mind working class children at puberty having sex with other teenagers.

Supposedly girls started menstruating at 16 in those days but I really not so sure that was the case. Perhaps just richer girls who were written about. I know better food is supposed to have made girls mature at a younger age but I would have thought around the world the Bar Mitzvah/Bat mitzvah type of age, the age in the Catholic canon law (14) etc is really the typical age for puberty... the age some English girls are shipped back to Pakistan to marry from my borough anyway.

Well obviously everyone's different, SOME young girls may well be able to separate sex and emotion, but this will not be the case for all, and some girls who have casual sex early will be damaged by it.

I'm in my 30s and have never been fond of casual sex, so I know from personal experience that not ALL women like a series of random sexual encounters.

I haven't googled this as a refresher, but the Victorians (as I recall) had a term called 'green sickness' for adolescent, middle/upper class girls who displayed slightly kooky, hysterical behaviour. Your typical teen, in fact.

To be base, 'green sickness' was a euphemism for 'dying for a shag,' .. not a term that was ever applied to a working class girl of the era. A working class girl would have been shagged.

There is nothing new under the sun, and people don't change.

The toys we get to play with .. they change, but we don't.

And people were not so afraid of the church as we sometimes believe.

Proportionately speaking, no more people went to church in the Victorian era than they do now.

We have never been a God fearing nation.

listen to folk tales, and folk songs.
young girls/teenagers have always been sexually interested.
why the heck wouldn't they?
sex is very pleasurable after all.
I think the attitude that young girls who want to have sex somehow have low esteem or can't like themselves betrays a distrust of or a distaste for female sexuality, tbh

Very true, cc. People seem to want to control girls in a way they don't boys. It's all very sexist when in fact girls sexually mature at a younger age anyway hence the 14/16 different for women/men in the Catholic code.

This all sounds pretty normal to me, to be honest. The parties I used to go to as a teenager were thinly disguised orgies. Most of us weren't actually having penetrative sex but doing everything else. And you know what? It was a lot of fun.

Agree Bluestocking - the only difference I can see between the behaviour in the article and what we got up to in the early 1980s is the emphasis on doing it all in 'public'. I was also pleasantly surprised by the stats - only 25% of girls had lost their virginity by the age of 16 (I read article this morning so may have the figure wrong) but if I have remembered it right, I think that stat speaks more loudly than the more salacious statements in the article.

Message withdrawn

My niece turned 16 last week. She commented that she's now old enough to have sex (but she doesn't want to yet) but not old enough to have a fag afterwards! Both my nieces are pretty/popular/intelligent/funny and VIRGINS! You don't have to sleep with everyone in the world to be accepted!