I think it's hugely entertaining that so many pearl clutchers can't possibly conceive that it might be helpful to know a bit more about the sexual habits of the young but can and do believe that the information is being gathered by a bunch of nosey perverts with a sexual agenda.
Where is this nonsense idea that we're pearl clutchers coming from? The parent generation in uproar about this were teens in the 80s and 90s, not the 40s. If you don't know what we got up to, there's plenty of material out there about our teenage antics.
It's ludicrous to assume that no child under 16 is having sex, and we're certainly not doing that. It's equally ludicrous to assume that all or even most children under 16 are having sex. NATSAL 3, done in 2010 showed that only 1 in 3 UK youngsters had lost their virginity by the time they were 16 and the Face of Global Sex Report (2016) showed that UK respondents had - on average - lost their virginity at 18 years and 4 months.
There's also emerging data suggesting that that average age to lose one's virginity is going up as well as the percentage not having sex at all (according to the findings of a longitudinal study into the private lives of Millenials, they are losing their virginity later than their parents).
www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/millennials-lose-virginity-later-than-previous-generations-2018-5%3famp
Whether this will be true for later generations remains to be seen.
And there is a qualitative difference between asking
Have you ever had sexual intercourse?
and
How many sexual partners have you had in the last 12 months?
or
Which of these sexual practices have you engaged in?
Frankly, the notion that surveys have zero impact on respondents is absurd. There's decades of research into this phenomenon. There's a whole field dedicated to the techniques of writing surveys precisely because a badly designed and administered survey can and often does lead to incorrect results and can also lead to unwanted and lasting effects on respondents.
Kids don't float through life unaffected by what they encounter. They take it all in and come to their own, often flawed, conclusions about how the world works. A survey like this will have an impact on some children. Probably fewer than those who will have fun pretending to be drug-addled alcoholic sex addicts, but those kids who are affected still matter.
And we owe it to them to make sure that what we ask of the children is age appropriate. These sex questions are not.
The latter are of course what's getting all the attention right now, but there are also equally intrusive questions on family dynamics in the survey, such as how often their parents argue and so on.
And yes, I think we should ask what is the purpose of asking these questions, like the one about anal sex.
It's not to inform education planning. The Relationship Sexual Health and Parenting (RSHP) curriculum already includes a lesson on anal sex. It's not to inform efforts addressing concerns about girls being coerced into anal sex, because that's not being asked. It's not about finding out if young gay men are having anal sex, because quite frankly we know that already. And we also know about the disparity between the percentage of male respondents who answer that they are gay or bisexual and male respondents who answer that they are having or have had anal sex. That's also a well known data concern, therefore well researched too.
So why exactly is this question needed? And why do we need to ask it of underage children and particularly of underage children under the legal age of consent?
We're asking these children to incriminate themselves on a survey designed in a way that allows them to be identified. As a parent, I have a right and a duty to ask why.