About 20 percent of adolescents in the US have had sexual intercourse before their 15th birthday -- and one in seven of the sexually experienced 14-year-old girls has been pregnant, according to a new report released on Monday by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
The report, an analysis of seven studies conducted in the late 1990s, offers a comprehensive look at the sexual activities of 12- to 14-year-olds, a group often overlooked in discussions of adolescent sexuality.
"These are not new data sets, but I think this is the first time we've put together all these numbers in a way that tells the story about young people this age," said Sarah Brown, director of the campaign, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington.
"Remember, a lot of researchers, as well as a lot of people who fund research, are reluctant to ask questions about sexual behavior to very young people, so there's not an enormous amount of information about this age group.
"This is a wake-up call that the efforts that we make toward young people have to start early, that teachers looking at a class of 13-year-olds can't assume they're in a state of latent innocence."
Brown and others said there was reason to believe that in the years since the data was collected, fewer young teenagers had been having sex.
For those 14 and younger, according to federal data, the birthrate declined 43 percent from 1991 to 2001, while the decline for older teenagers was 27 percent.
According to information released this month by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the pregnancy rate for 12- to 14-year-olds dropped 40 percent from 1990 to 1999.
The study found that only about a third of parents of sexually experienced 14-year-olds knew that their children were having sex.
While most parents said they had spoken to their young adolescent children about sex, far fewer teenagers reported having had such conversations with their parents.
In addition to the obvious concerns about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, the report found that young adolescents who were sexually experienced were far more likely than virgins to engage in other risky behaviors, like smoking, drinking and using drugs.
For example, 18 percent of the sexually experienced young people reported drinking regularly, compared with 3 percent of the virgins. Similarly 29 percent of the sexually experienced adolescents said they had smoked regularly and 43 percent had used marijuana, compared with 8 percent and 10 percent of the virgins.
The report found that young teenagers have ample opportunity to have sex. About half of 14-year-olds have attended a party with no adult supervision, and about a third said that within the last three months, they had lain on a bed or couch alone with someone they liked.
From half to three-quarters of the experienced 12- to 14-year-olds said they had used contraception the first time they had sex.
About a quarter of the 12- to 14-years-olds had dated or had a romantic relationship with someone at least two years older -- and the greater the age difference, the more likely the relationship was to have included sexual intercourse, the study found.
"When parents ask me what they can do, I tell them two things," Brown said.
"First, discourage early one-on-one dating, and second, be very, very leery of significant age differences," Brwon said.
According to the report, many of those who lose their virginity before age 15 have had sex sporadically.
One of the studies found that 4 in 10 of the sexually experienced young people had had sex in the 18 months preceding the survey, and another found that half of those who were no longer virgins had engaged in intercourse twice or less in the last year.
The data in the report comes from three federally financed surveys of young people and four smaller data sets.
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
RSS