This diary has two related purposes, and I cannot tell even myself which one is more significant. One purpose is to make sure this community is aware of a new study recently released that shows how ridiculous Abstinence Only Education programs are in light of the following results from the study:
Results. Data from the 2002 survey indicate that by age 20, 77% of respondents
had had sex, 75% had had premarital sex, and 12% had married; by age
44, 95% of respondents (94% of women, 96% of men, and 97% of those who
had ever had sex) had had premarital sex. Even among those who abstained
until at least age 20, 81% had had premarital sex by age 44. Among cohorts
of women turning 15 between 1964 and 1993, at least 91% had had premarital
sex by age 30. Among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had
premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.
The second purpose of this diary is to tell those of you that missed it, that the Today Show did an extended piece on this report today, and they seemed to me to be in favor of the reports conclusions. Does this mean the conservatives are finally losing their grip on preventing the MSM from acting rationally toward human sexuality issues for a change?
The entire report by Lawrence Finer appears in Public Health Reports / January-February 2007. Here are the summary conclusions from this report:
Conclusions. Almost all Americans have sex before marrying. These findings
argue for education and interventions that provide the skills and information
people need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases once they become sexually active, regardless of marital
status.
Kaiser Network’s Daily Women’s Health Policy also had a summary about the report. Here is the important part from this summary for health policy folks:
According to Finer, at least 91% of women born between 1950 and 1978 said they had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% of women born in the 1940s said they had premarital sex prior to age 44 (AP/Chicago Tribune, 12/19). Finer said the margin of error in the report is less than one percentage point (USA Today, 12/20). “The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds,” Finer said, adding, “It would be more effective to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active — which nearly everyone eventually will.”
Now as to The Today Shows piece on this, here is a link to this interesting video from this day.
I worked in a State Health Department in the late 1990s when the conservatives for the millionth time began trying to hold back the tide of human sexuality again. I mean it brought the screwballs out of the woodwork. All the middle age mother types that normally would be rational folks, just would lose their rationality in favor of this approach. They would forget their own pasts in what seemed to be almost a form of censorship, and of course would seem to forget the extreme dangers posed by NOT really equipping young people properly to protect their very lives through proper sexual education for all. It seems we need to keep ignoring the obvious human nature finding from this study about every 25 years of so. The problem this time around was the conservatives got control of the federal government and the MSM (for a time anyway) and made this whitewashing of human instincts a sort of national policy.
Well hopefully studies like this along with the seemingly renewed rationality of the MSM will get national education policy on this sexual education issue back on a track that can logically and scientifically do some good for a change and stop diverting funds into pockets of misguided souls!
