As a father of four (and one on the way) this story scares the hell out of me.
According to the Center for Disease Control 96% of Americans have had sex by the time they’re 20 years old. I know today’s culture is a little (or a lot) crazy when it comes to sex but… 96 percent? That’s really high. Are we on some societal spring break here?
The median number of lifetime female sexual partners for men was seven; the median number of male partners for women was four.
Forget even looking at it from some puritanical lense where sex is just forbidden outside of marriage -although it is. The thing is, how many of us know someone who entered into a bad marriage because of sex? I’ve seen it countless times where someone is dating someone and they’re not crazy about the person and then all of a sudden the next time you talk to them they’re head over heels in love. It’s likely that the change of opinion is not based on rational factors of compatibility. It’s because they had sex.
I know two people who will freely admit that looking back they would have married different people but sex gave them the illusion of intimacy and compatibility. Somehow when our culture took away the meaning of sex it became an obsession -the only thing everyone wants to do and talk about and do a little more.
Sex is dangerous. I’m not just talking AIDS, STD’s and pregnancies. I’m talking emotionally. Broken hearts, abortion, and people using each other as means to their own ends are our cultural finish line. That is why we are told not to have sex outside of marriage. It is not to limit us. The rule is there to open our lives to possibilities and happiness. As a father I make rules all the time because I love my children and I don’t want them to get hurt. (Although I’m pretty sure the rule about not swimming an hour after eating is just because we’re lazy)
Sex is for marriage because it is the only time where you are telling the person you’re with that they’re not interchangeable with anyone else. That to me is the key. Marriage is more than intimacy. Marriage is a 50 year experiment in forgiveness -if you’re lucky.
That is what I’m going to try to teach my children. But 96 percent? My goodness. I hope that number is elevated severely. I just want to protect my children. Our country does not seem to be run by adults anymore. It is run by kids and adults still pretending to be kids. That has to change.
June 28, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I am not sure I believe the data. I am not that old (not quite 40 yet). This was not true when I was 20. Lots of people talked, but fewer were doing (I would have estimated half).
My sister (19) went to the doctor for some headaches, and the doctor said she thought she was pregnant. She told the doctor that would be miraculous as she hadn’t had sex – the doctor flat out told her she didn’t believe her.
June 28, 2007 at 5:12 pm
i would question the data myself. with questions about sex there seems to linger a high school mentality among boys. Every guy I knew had a girl-a really beautiful one with an easy going morality-stashed away in Canada without access to a phone. But even if the numbers are exaggerated I believe it’s still pretty bad. Also the report does not say what it considers sex. is it any sexual interaction or only consumation? I’m still looking into it.
June 28, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Better than in te past when it was 100 percent as girls were usually married off straight out of puberty.
June 29, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I also wonder how many people lied on this survey…
After all, when I was in college (almost 10 years ago… gasp!) I remember getting a lot of grief from non-catholics about not being sexually active….
They frequently decided that since I was a virgin I must not like men…..
Tell THAT to my husband. 😉
The most embarrassing was when I went to a drs. appointment at the university hospital. A resident asked me if I was sexually active.
I said “no, I’m a virgin.”
His eyes bugged out, his jaw dropped, and he practically screamed , “By Choice?!?!?!?!?!”
That was in my sarcastic stage. So I replied calmly…
“no, not by choice. I’ve thrown myself at evry drunken frat boy on campus, and they all said “no!”….
“Yes of COURSE by choice! I’m Catholic!!!!”
He looked a bit scared, but he added “Catholic” to my chart. Saved a whole lot of trouble from then on…….
June 29, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I bet the look you get is kind of like when my wife and I say no to amniocentisis. Or when we decline birth control. You had to see the nurse’s face when we told her we weren’t interested. And that was only after our third child.
June 29, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Well, my husband and I have found if, at the very first appointment, we stress that we’re Catholic and don’t believe in birth control, they pretty much leave us alone.
And noone blinks when we refuse genetic testing, but we tend to go to pro-life practices…..
(After all, since the tests don’t detect anything that pre-natal surgery can deal with, why bother? Of course, if medical technology advanced to the point where pre-natal surgery was a safe option for certain heart defects, etc, we might actually test— just because babies heal better in utero….)
June 11, 2010 at 7:16 pm
You're kidding yourself if you find this data hard to believe. I didn't have sex until I was 21, and that was three years after virtually every single one of my friends. It will be further shocking to you that I belonged to the "nerdy clique," a group that stereotypically doesn't get any.
While you address the effect of sex on emotional health, what you fail to recognize is that sexual compatibility is extremely important in having a successful marriage. In fact, in conservative states where abstinence only sex education is widely taught, and premarital sex is frowned upon, the divorce rates are double those of liberal states with a more permissive sexual culture. In fact, in the Netherlands, where the age of consent is 16, and sex even younger is tolerated by the courts so long as the age difference isn't more than two or three years, the divorce rate is almost 10% lower than that of the United States.
Abstinence only sex ed is like giving a convict a gun, and instead of using trigger and magazine locks (birth control), just telling them not to shoot it.