Sex and the American Teenager

We live in an increasingly permissive society. The media exploits sexual images to sell products, all kinds of products. Television, the internet, movies, billboards, magazines...all exploit sex appeal for profit. That has an impact on America's children. Children have sex at a young age. Here are some statistics on sexually active American teenagers:

• About one quarter of the American teenage population has had sex by the time they are 15 years of age.
• In the United States, 7 in 10 girls who had sex before the age of 14, and 6 in 10 girls who had sex before the age of 15, had sex involuntarily. They were raped.
• About 2800 American teenagers get pregnant each day.
• About 40% of teenage girls in America get pregnant at least once before turning twenty. Between 30 and 40 percent of those pregnancies end in abortion. Those that end in birth cost the United States taxpayers nearly 7 billion dollars annually.
• Teens 16 to 19 years old are three times as likely than the average population to suffer rape or sexual assault. One in two rape victims are under the age of 18; one in six rape victims are under the age of 12.
• In the United States, one in four teens become infected with a sexually transmitted disease.

We live in a permissive society. Most of the time I think this is a good thing--there are a lot of positives to having the kind of personal freedom we enjoy here in the United States. Permissiveness can be carried too far--in a society, in a family, in an individual.

What do I mean by a permissive society? I mean a society, like ours, where the social norms become more and more liberal as time passes. There is an increase in sexual freedom, a lessening of the moral strictures religion places on society as whole, a rise in secularism. Attitidues towards arts, media, abortion, human sexuality have become more and more liberal as we move forward into the twenty-first century. Though I believe, on the positive side, the benefits are great: people are not repressed, we are free to speak our minds, we are free to think as we choose, we are free to exhibit our true lifestyles as a matter of personal choice, uninhibited by society's strictures as a whole (provided we do not harm others); still, there is a price to be paid, and we are paying it.

• A rise in crime
• A rise in teenage pregnancy
• A rise in the divorce rates and single-parent households
• A rise in sexually transmitted diseases
• Disaffected youth

How disaffected?

• 52% of American children between the ages of 5 and 17 have a television in their bedrooms
• On average, the television is on in American homes for 7 hours per day
• On average, the American parents spend about 12 hours per week in meaningful conversation with their children
• Result? 25% of American teenagers came name the US city where the American constitution was written (Philadelphia). 75% of American teenagers can name the zip code of Beverly Hills (90210).

I don't want to turn back the clock. I don't want to go back to the Pilgrim Fathers, with their grim and repressive attitudes towards sex, women, personal freedoms...

I don't want to re-institute the Victorian age, with all manner of hysterical ailments in women due to that stifling, repressed society.

I would hope for just a more moderate society, that can concentrate on other appealing and important things, other than sex, in the media. I would hope for a stronger moral structure without being dictated to. I would hope for a rise in voluntary returns to religion in the home and family. I would hope for value placed on learning, knowledge, books, music; rather than how skinny the girl is, how well she looks in jeans, and how sexually appealing she is at age 12 and 13, I would hope for less television time in the home and more family time: more people doing things together as a family, whether it's within the home, playing a board game or chatting or challenging the kids to earn bonus points and an increased allowance for doing chores...or outside the home, going on a field trip, going to church, going on vacation together...

It's about time for the pendulum to swing the other way. It's about time we got over letting it all hang out and discover some moderation of permissiveness in our society.