Captain Obvious's Guide to Teen Sex

People who live with their parents and have little education, limited job skills, and low levels of maturity should not have sex. My children will be strongly discouraged from having sex until marriage or at least adulthood. I will not allow them to have sex in my home. If I ever catch them having sex, I will punish them and inform the other child's parents. Up until recently I did not think this was a controversial stance. Most states have laws against people under a certain age having sex. Most people are against teen pregnancy. Of course, most people should be uncomfortable with the thought of their minor children having sex. The average age that a person loses their virginity is 17: close to legal adulthood, as it should be.

Apparently, some people think that telling teenagers that they aren’t allowed to have sex automatically means that they can’t learn about prophylactics. Somewhere on this planet there is a thing called abstinence only education. Everything that abstinence only programs teach is sensible but for some reason they forget to teach teens about the additional information they will need about sex for when they grow up and get married. I would hate for my child to be the idiot newlywed that didn’t know how birth control pills work. I would also hate to be the parent of the grown married person who catches an STD from an unfaithful spouse and has no clue what’s going on. Imagine being 30 and having to have a doctor explain infidelity to you. There is no good reason why any parent would try to conceal the truth about sex from a child. Telling teens the full truth about sex is the best way to discourage them from doing it. When you teach children about birth control, you have to tell them the full truth. Not just how to use it, but how it can fail. When used properly, birth control pills can prevent 99.9 percent of pregnancies. That .1 percent chance of getting pregnant is not completely trivial. Those odds are a lot better than hitting the lottery and lotteries are won regularly. In practice, a lot more than .1 percent of all women on the pill end up getting pregnant.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong. She may not realize that the pill doesn't start working right away. It must be taken for a full month consistently before a woman is fully protected from pregnancy. Sometimes people just plain forget. Taking the pill at the wrong time of day, an illness that causes vomiting or diarrhea, and certain medications can interfere with the effectiveness of birth control pills. Of course, there are other methods that don't require remembering to take a pill every day but none of those are perfect, either. People still sometimes get pregnant using IUD's, shots, and birth control patches.

All of these hormonal methods are pretty good at preventing pregnancy which is, of course, one of the best consequences of having sex. The real problem with sex isn't the babies, it's the diseases. When used consistently and properly, condoms are 98 percent effective which sucks for 2 percent of the people relying on condoms to protect their genitals from harm. Some STD's can be cured with a simple dose of antibiotics but some are incurable.

There is, of course, another problem with teen sex and that is the emotional turmoil that comes with being physically bonded with someone before you are mature enough to make a commitment. This is a serious issue that shouldn’t be ignored. As adults, we owe it to our children to put aside our discomfort and tell them the truth about heartache and being taken advantage of. A sexual relationship is an implied commitment and things can get ugly if both participants aren’t on the same page. Your genitals aren’t pieces of candy to be shared with everyone you think you like.

Sources

http://www.arhp.org/Publications-and-Resources/Patient-Resources/fact-sheets/Successful-Contraception

https://www.healthywomen.org/content/ask-expert/1788/can-i-get-pregnant-while-birth-control-i-have-been-taking-pill-five-days