Teens, Tweens and Sex!

Hooking up? Friends with benefits? Just what is going on, and how can parents guide kids through today’s sexually charged world?

By Deirdre Wilson

The news reports and shared stories at the bus stop are enough to make any parent shudder.

• A 15-year-old girl gives oral sex to five hockey players at a private prep school.

• Middle-schoolers watch a classmate masturbate her boyfriend on a school bus.

• Peers cheer on two teens engaged in oral sex in the back of a bus.

Then there are the surveys – well-publicized studies declaring that:

• 27 percent of teens ages 13 to 16 “have been with someone in an intimate or sexual way” (from fondling genitals to oral sex and sexual intercourse);

• 47 percent of teens ages 15 to 19 have had sexual intercourse; and

• nearly 20 percent of ninth-graders have had oral sex.

That last one, published in the journal Pediatrics, also reported that teens generally believe oral sex is less risky, less threatening to their values, and more acceptable than intercourse.

Is this the “sexual revolution” of the new millennium? Teens and tweens, as young as 12, treating sex and intimacy as a feel-good form of social recreation, something to do on a Saturday night?

Parents are understandably alarmed, even panicked, about what their own kids may be up to. Yet experts on adolescent development say we underestimate how much influence we have on our teens’ sexual values – and just how much our teens want to hear from us.

Hyping the Numbers

The statistics on teens and sex are certainly disturbing, but researchers and observers are quick to say that the news media pay more attention to the hype than the full story. Except for occasional reports on small groups of teens taking chastity pledges, the news media’s focus has been more on teens who are having sex – particularly casual sex – than on those who aren’t.