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But your right, some parents leave the child, to figure out sex on their own. I would also like to see more sex education, but don't most schools already offer this.
When my son took the class, he was so grossed out, I don't think he learned much. He didn't even want to be in it. He had already been asking questions and as he did we answered to the best we could for his age.
The girls where embarrassed to ask questions in front of the boys. Wonder if this class would be better taught separately from opposite sex.
From what I hear they go into great detail and some kids are just not ready for that kind of discussion. I remember having the class and it wasn't much, my dad told me more than the school did. Things must have changed.
The whole "Wear a condom, and practice 'safe sex'", is such a bad policy slogan, because wearing a condom does not make having sex "safe".
My sister and her husband are doctors, and they go on these training seminars every year or so. One year they had a presentation on communicable diseases. The speaker started out stating the failure rate of condoms for preventing a pregnancy, then he asked for a show of hands, for those in the audience would have sex with a person who was known to have HIV/AIDS, as long as one of them wore a condom. When no one raised their hand, the speaker asked why then, are we telling the population that wearing a condom is practicing 'safe sex".
One of my friends kissed a girl on a dare, when I was eleven, but that was the extent of it.
Aw, I remember my first kiss. I was 8. Wow, can't believe I was so young.
i am not comfortable with children 11 and 12 having sex either. I think something else is going on in the lives of children this young who are having sex. my children are well out of school so I can't say for sure if I think the schools teach enough or not in this area. I do know just from reading the threads here that some are worried our schools are trying to turn our children gay. which I find hard to believe and think it is just sex ed in general that they are truly worried about
I that peer pressure at that age has a huge part with young children having sex. I remember in my child development class they found that peers had as much influence on development as did parents. I makes sense, tweens and teens spend 7 hrs at school with their friends, then most likely time after school. So you're talking about up to 10 hrs a day with their friends. So between sleeping and friends, it's about 18 hrs a day. While some of that time is in the classroom, there is significant interaction during instruction time (notes being passed, group projects).
Many kids who have sex at a young age may come from great families, but they themselves decided based on peer pressure which is a reaction of societal pressures. Women who are perceived as attractive are also more likely to be seen as intelligent, funny, and whole host of other characteristics. Men who are perceived as attractive get the same "halo effect" as it is called.
I tried this one. I walked into a burrito stand without a shirt (near a beach in a college town in California). I got smiles high fives, a girl even thought it was "funny"...I gave her my number. My friend walked in after I left. He told me a girl said "eww". One guy told him to join a gym.
So we put an emphasis on beauty. No surprise. However, a week later, recounting my little experiment, another friend of mine asked me how come I don't have much sex. Then it hit me, the reason for the halo effect is to find the most suitable mate. It works ways. Having more mates also produces that halo effect. Men with more mates are seen as more powerful, smarter, etc. Women have a double edged sword. Too few partners...socially non normative. Too many the same.
So the societal pressure to be attractive (physically and sexually) can manifest itself in schoolyard banter leading to younger children having sex.
Proper sexual education dispelling schoolyard myths (boys try to bolster and outright lie about their exploits to be the alphamale, girls as to be seen as more attractive and thus the alphafemale) could have an effect on reducing such young sex. However, one also needs to provide contraception as to protect the young from doing more harm.
I think that we, socially, have embraced sex. While this is healthy for adults, we have failed to truly explain sex and all the ramifications (both good and bad) to our young.
And no, not all parents are doing their job, but I don't want the school doing it for them.
It's not always fully the parents fault. Especially at that age.
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