Karl du Fresne has angrily attacked the Family Planning Association in today's DomPost. He claims they have been a colossol tax-payer funded failure citing the rising teenage abortion rate and increasing incidence of STDs. Sex education or 'family planning' has encouraged promiscuity, he says.
Teens are probably having sex younger but the teenage birth rate is a lot lower than in the past - 70 per 100 in the early seventies down to just under 30 now. So the higher abortion rate on it's own cannot be taken to indicate more 'promiscuity'.
He doesn't mention what the alternatives to sex education might be - whether he would prefer abstinence programmes (which don't work so may be why he hasn't put them forward.)
He does however 'out' the ex-Family Planning head, Gill Greer for being a 'leftist lesbian' in charge of family planning, questioning the sense of that. I wonder if her replacement is a leftist lesbian and does it really matter?
His main point is the government should stop putting taxpayer money into this outfit. I have some sympathy for that view but for as long as we have a a public health system foisted upon us, 'family planning' or contraception provision and advice comes under that umbrella.
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The teen birth rate was most likely higher in the past because teens got married and started families in those days. Now they don't.
I think sex education has to bear some of the blame as sex used to be something you did within marriage. Now it's taught as being recreational. If it's recreational, why shouldn't teens be more promiscuous?
Lucyna, Apologies for repeating myself but people have always had sex before marriage. Research from the beginning of last century supports this. Then and in the early seventies when a pregnancy happened couples went on to marry. The marriage didn't come first.
What has changed significantly is the expectation of commitment. But even that can come too early. I would rather my son or daughter went to bad with someone at 17 than married them. So contraception it is.
Ah..freudian slip there. I meant 'to bed'.
One thing that he is doing that i hate is trowing in random stats that are actually meaningless.
53% between 15-23, well that's to be expected but what would be interesting is if it has gone up or down. Without a reference point its 53% of nothing.
"Gonorrhea cases are up by 52 per cent and chlamydia by 28 per cent" from what! 20 years ago - 30 years ago - last week!
How would having a hetro in charge change anything!
Twat!
I want to hit something.....
Sb
Well SB here are some STATS for you, from the CDC no less. Looking at age of first intercourse in the USA amongst different demographics including current age
20-29 under 15 18.7%
30-39 under 15 12.5%
40-49 under 15 11.0%
50-59 under 15 6.4%
Alas it is not possible to post the entire table but clearly there has been a huge cultural shift in attitudes to teenage promiscuity which is reflected in more and more teenagers starting early
Lindsay, freudian slip aside and as Andrei's chart shows, people may have always had sex before marriage, but more and more people are now having sex before marriage than ever before. That has an impact.
Sorry andrei I don't agree. Having had kids and remembering back to what we were like at their age I don't agree there has been very much of a shift in first sex age. Approx 30 years ago it was 14 years now it seems still to be the same.
The world is not ending. I don't believe kids are any more promiscuous that they were 30 years ago.
What is different is that they are fantastically more open about it. At their age speak to an adult about sex - I would rather have been dragged to boiling tar!
I suspect that this willingness to talk effects stats collection massively in this area.
Sb
Lucyna and andrei
You might find this report interesting
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/
nr/2006/12/19/index.html
(sorry had to break the URL blogger was rejecting it for some reason)
An excerpt from it "contrary to the public perception that premarital sex is much more common now than in the past, the study shows that even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage."
Sb
Even the concept of one man,one Woman marriages is not that traditional.Through out most of history it's actually been one Man and many Women.Its only into the last 150 years that one Man,one Woman relationships have become normalised and even then arranged marriage's were all the go until recent times in the West.People married for security,status and family strengthening....marrying for love has only really been possible with the rise of Capitalism and the resulting abundant wealth and the liberation of Women.
SB you believe data from an activist "family planning organization" over the CDC? Really
I'm skeptical of the CDC's data but it's far more credible than yours.
Of course the rates of premarital sex have varied through time and place depending on culture.
Even the CDC data shows this for the current day. Black kids are far more likely than white kids to start sexual activity early and Hispanic kids are the least likely of all to. That just in the USA in the current day. Backed up not only by the CDC data but teenage pregnancy rates etc
Do you really think Cyprus or Georgia 30 years ago matched NZ of 30 years ago in this regard or today for that matter?
How much teenage sexual activity is there in the ISLAMIC Republic of IRAN I wonder. There is some because we occaisionally hear of a flogging or hanging of some poor unfortunate child.
And I think you a fooling yourself if you think the highly sexualized culture as taught in schools as 'natural' and expected doesn't play a big part.
James
Even the concept of one man,one Woman marriages is not that traditional.
BS it has been traditional and expected in Christian culture for 2000 years. I have read that some protestants permitted polygamy for a brief period after the thirty years war because of the lack of males and the decimation of populations during that conflagration.
Andrei, the Hispanic teenage birthrate is much higher than the white teenage birth rate.
What is CDC?
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is one of the major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services, and a credible source of data.
http://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which does research on reproductive health issues in many countries, is also a credible source. In fact, you'll find many papers from the Guttmacher Institute on the CDC site.
As for du Fresne's gratuitous mention of Greer's alleged sexual orientation: not that it matters, and I don't know her, but I recall seeing an article about her and her new husband in a magazine a few years ago.
"SB you believe data from an activist "family planning organization" over the CDC? Really
"
No Andrei I did not say that - but thanks for misquoting me.
I used it to show that much of the data is contradictory and extremely sensitive to exactly how questions are asked and when and how data is collected.
Neo-Puritan's tend to believe that all the information indicates that the sky is falling - my point is that this is not the case.
"Do you really think Cyprus or Georgia 30 years ago matched NZ of 30 years ago in this regard or today for that matter?"
No - come on exactly where did I indicate that?
No I think Cyprus today is much like Cyprus 30 years ago, I think Georgia today is much like Georgia 30 years ago, I think NZ today is much like NZ 30 years ago with regards to teenage and/or extra marital sex.
"How much teenage sexual activity is there in the ISLAMIC Republic of IRAN I wonder. "
Oh yes lets have some Islamophobia in the discussion! Why when the Neo-Puritan's are loosing an argument do they bring in Islam? When the thread was about FPA exactly where does Islam fit in?
Anyway teen sex and Iran, there seems to be lots of it, its driving the authorities mad - now that is one place that seems to have much more sex than 30 years ago!
Then again they have a tremendous percentage of their population under 25. By their own numbers there are 300,000 prostitutes operating in the cities. They are so challenged by this that they are working towards legalizing prostitution, though in their case its called temporary marriage!
"BS it has been traditional and expected in Christian culture for 2000 years."
And in one sentence you prove you have absolutely no idea about the history of marriage!
Just to give you some ideas, within the western world the concept of marriage has been redefined approx every 150 years with some substantial changes over the last 2000 years.
Sb
BS it has been traditional and expected in Christian culture for 2000 years. I have read that some protestants permitted polygamy for a brief period after the thirty years war because of the lack of males and the decimation of populations during that conflagration."
Do try to keep up dear...there was history before Year 1 you know...
Lindsay, the CDC is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US.
Females are fertile younger (increasingly so) than the legal age for accessing contraception.
The Polynesian and Maori populations are increasing - these include more fertile at a younger age and Maori have always been leading our pregnant at a young age statistics.
One would need to identify whether the upward trends would have occured without these factors (and factoring in Asian student levels etc) or not.
PS Both parents are working - providing place and time oppportunity. Another sociological/
cultural factor (rather than demographic) is the text generation's social
"connectivity".
My favourite campaign is DOUBLE SAFE - use of the condom (regarding it as a secondary form of contraceptive and a primary form of health and safety) AND
a primary form of contraception when outside of relationships.
My favourite legal move would be to ban sex under the age of 14 (the current age of consent at 16 only applies when one party is over 18).
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