I agree with BetaRose and geekypenguin, Education of children can't not only come from the schools. It has been from the community and most of all the parents. I had very strict parents. I hated it then but when I graduated high school and went to college, I was very grateful for it because I had a solid ground to start from. I had a lot of fun in College and I did things that maybe I should not have but I was an adult and made those decisions. However, it did always way in my mind that my parents would be disappointed and that hurt more than anything I ever did.

I also think that a lot of kids in wealthy areas are more apt to do risky behaviors because of the lack of parental involvement. Most wealthy families (not to say all) the parents are really busy with work or the kids are raised by a Nanny. This is often more of a problem than low income. Parents are definitely the first step in educated their kids against sex, drugs, STD's etc. My parents talked to me at a young age because they knew I would be exposed to it early. I wasn't sure what we were talking about at first because I was too young but they kept talking to me. I know when I was in school learning about STD's was enough to scare me away from having sex. Our school did encourage the only abstinence can save you, but they also did a lot for birth control and STD's, with visuals. SCAREY Stuff!!

Its been going on since the beginning of time. It just gets more press now.

In some countries girls are getting married at 13 and 14. In fact, not to long ago that was something that happened here in the USA. Look at the legal marriage ages in some states.

We do need to keep these sexually active girls from catching diseases and getting pregnant. As long as we can do that, they can make as many mistakes as they want with little consequence.

I think Lindsey Lohan is sooooooooooo hot. Hillary Duff is in 2nd place.

-Rudey

I agree with adpialumcsuc about agreeing with BetaRose and geekypenguin.

Agreed.

Back in high school I volunteered (well, actually forced volunteerism..my sister was the head of the program) for Drug & Abstinence Education Program and I believe that helped out a lot of teens in the county area. My sister gave the kids (7th grade-12th) some very graphic pictures of diseases and etc along with bringing in teen moms to talk about their now present situation. I was told that the teen pregnancy rate dropped 30% that year. However, due to lack of funding, they had to drop the program. Guess what...the rate has risen back up. *sighs*

I now work with 5th-12th grade girls now over the summer for a local school. When I was working with them in small groups, my my lord, the questions came!! Their parents and teachers refused to talk to them about anything, they found out their info on the "bus". I was told by parents that if they asked that I should tell them. :rolleyes: But, I'm honest and tell them the truth about pregnancy and sex. My best advice that I told the girls was to wait til after you were 18 and your body was ready for it. Most of them thought that just because you have a few hairs down there you were all ready to go up, down, and all around!

Hey Rio, it's good that you were able to discuss these things but the problem is today (I think you live in Canada ?) but in the US you are so limited in what you can even teach and talk to kids about in schools if you are a teacher. As a Social Worker, I just actually decided not to go on an interview with a particular agency because it is Catholic and I didn't agree with the mission statement. You have kids coming to you as the Social Worker who are pregnant and you are not allowed to talk about options with them. Even before they get in this situation you can't discuss birth control. It's really annoying. People constantly complain about teens today (especially parents) but when you can actually put preventative services in place to address these issues before a problem comes about, no one wants to back you on it. I think too many parents out there have the attitude that "my child would never do that." Well you know what, I am sure my parents still feel the same way about me and I've made a lot of choices that I wish I did differently. Oh well, this is always going to be one of those subjects that is debateable.

No, actually I'm in the U.S :) (check my location :p) When I work with my girls it's at a marching band camp, so I have a bit more freedom, no lesson plans and school boards. My 2 older sisters are both social workers in different counties. Now, I know with their clients they are allowed to speak with them to a limit about birth control and etc.

Why was I thinking you were in Canada? Did you post something recently about being in Canada? I'm sorry, my bad.

It's really unfortunate that scare tactics seem to be the only thing that prevents teen pregnancy. There seems to be no moral (not necessarily religious) incentive to abstain, so the only route is to scare them so badly that they don't want to do it. The fear wears off, eventually, so then what can we do?

Abstinence education is fine, but only if there's also information given about contraception. There are always some people that will do something regardless of the consequences. I know so many people that are so misinformed, as I'm sure we all do. Telling kids about sex is not going to make them do it, but not telling them about sex will make a baby.

I don't get it -- aren't there any young girls who don't want to get pregnant?! I've always been very careful about birth control because I DIDN'T WANT TO GET PREGNANT, EVER. I'm not sure if these kids are ignorant, don't care or actually want to get knocked up -- but they're certainly being stupid.

A lot of it has to do with self esteem with the younger kids. If lots of oral sex is happening, I'd be willing to bet money that it's almost always girls performing oral sex on boys. The only girls who go around doing that without getting anything in return, ever, are ones who are sorely lacking in the self esteem department. I think that's the root of the problem -- if we could get these kids to actually have a better opinion of themselves, they'd spend less time having oral sex parties and more time doing something constructive that will actually benefit them as they get older. It sounds like the kids who are very sexually active are concerned with fitting in -- which is really sad. Don't parents ever teach kids that there are more important things in life? At this point, I think that even sex education isn't the answer -- it goes much deeper than that.

am I the only one who was still kind of sketchy on the details of it all when I was 12?

I mean, I barely knew what was going on, forget even thinking about doing it! It's just all so unbelievable to me that these kids are...

I have heard of this pre-teen and young teen sex since I was a young teenager. Back then people were so concerned because AIDS was relatively new. Most of my peers and I were too scared to do anything because the consequence was death. For some reason, teens nowadays don't fear STDs or they think oral sex is a safe alternative.

I attended a chlamydia conference about six months ago. Based on their studies over 88% of people have had sex by the age of 18. That's seven out of eight. Over half of them will be exposed to an STD by 18. The information was staggering. This was based on 2001 and 2002 figures since 2003 figures weren't available at the time.

valkyrie, I agree that some of the teenage girls become pregnant because they want to. My friend worked in a DA's office and encountered girls like this all the time. She told me that they weren't not impressed with her college and law school education. They couldn't believe that she didn't have any children at the ripe old age of 25!!! They would ask her, "What are you waiting for?" She would tell them that having a career and financial stability was important for her before she had children. They told her that she didn't need to have money to be a mother. "The government will take care of you and your children." These were teenagers without high school diplomas who were very happy to have babies and live on welfare. It was so disheartening to her that she finally had to leave that job.

available at the time.

valkyrie, I'm agree that some of the teenage girls become pregnant because they want to. My friend worked in a DA's office and encountered girls like this all the time. She told me that they weren't not impressed with her college and law school education. They couldn't believe that she didn't have any children at the ripe old age of 25!!! They would ask her, "What are you waiting for?" She would tell them that having a career and financial stability was important for her before she had children. They told her that she didn't need to have money to be a mother. "The government will take care of you and your children." These were teenagers without high school diplomas who were very happy to have babies and live on welfare. It was so disheartening to her that she finally had to leave that job. [/B][/QUOTE]

One word : WHOA!

Yeah, we talk about this kind of stuff in my profession and a lot of it comes down to *again* the parents, their education, background, and experiences. Often these are sad cycles that repeat themselves and as most of us know, our awesome government spends more on costlier services AFTER the fact then putting money into preventative services.

NOREEN: If you are in mid-town tonight, Alline, Shara & I are planning to meet up around 8PM. Come join. No unplanned procreation I promise. I already have my little monster at home which is enough "baby' for me LOL.

It's sad that in this day and age you still have young women whose only ambition is to "make babies." Worse still are the ones who want to do this w/o a father figure, because, like you said, the government will support them. Education, career, and life experiences don't register with these people. It's so hard to convince them at such a young age, because of course you know *everything* when you're 16. Unfortunately for these girls, their youthful ignorance and naivety will have lifelong consequences.