Submitted by admin on Wed, 2007-03-14 08:00. ::
We do our best to make them understand the real dangers of driving recklessly, of using tobacco products, of drinking alcohol both before their brains are fully developed and in excess. This mother has actually clipped newspaper stories chronicling teenaged tragedies involving speeding, drinking and driving, lung and mouth cancer-all in the hopes of scaring the young people I love away from such perils, and I know I am hardly alone in my parental concern.
For reasons that must be deeply embedded in the human psyche, most of us are not able to talk freely and openly about sex, and it somehow becomes even more difficult when we are talking to our own children. It is just too personal. In addition, even as much as our children need and may secretly want our input into this aspect of human life, they do not relish talking about it with us either.
North Carolina law mandates a health education curriculum focusing on the benefits of abstinence until marriage and the risks of pre-marital sex as the standard course of study. I have no problem with that in theory, but the reality is that young people do experiment with sex and always have. The results for too many are infections of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies. We can quantify such instances, but what we cannot count is the pain and heartache they cause for young people and their families. Cumberland County's rates of both diseases and pregnancies among teenagers and young people are generally higher than the state average.
A study by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction found that 74 percent of high school seniors reported having sexual intercourse in 2003. Moreover, the 2006 teenage pregnancy statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute rank North Carolina 9th in the nation. According to the NC State Center for Statistics, more than 18,000 girls between ages 10 and 19 became pregnant in 2004-51 teenaged pregnancies every day. Of 1,000 Cumberland County girls between 15 and 19, about 70 of them will become pregnant. Multiply those numbers by the fathers, generally young as well, and families on both sides, and you see the scope of the hardship and pain.
STDs are no small issue either. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that more than 416,000 new cases are diagnosed in North Carolina each year, with an annual increase of around 1,700 cases. These are just the ones we know about.
Saul Hoffman, in By the Numbers: The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing, puts North Carolina's annual costs at $312 million, including $54 million for public health care and $36 million for child welfare. The Kaiser Family Foundation's estimated costs for direct medical costs resulting form STD infections-a whopping $228 million.
I firmly believe that most young people are better off if they delay sexual activity until they are mature enough to handle it physically and emotionally and are prepared for its possible consequences.
I am also a realist who understands that many young people will forge ahead, ready or not, and some of them will contract an STD, and some of them will become pregnant.
Far preferable, not to mention less expensive, it seems to me, is to provide young people the information they need to help protect themselves if they do choose early sexual activity, just as we try to prepare them academically, socially and culturally and attempt to shield them from dangers, like using alcohol and tobacco.
A North Carolina Department of Public Instruction survey in 2003 found that more than 90 percent of parents think comprehensive health education, including sexuality, should be taught in our state's schools.
This is cache, read story here
