Sex Ed

Ellen Goodman: Sex drive has a timetable, but our society has a double agenda.
04:37 PM CST on Sunday, December 19, 2004

By ELLEN GOODMAN

Let me see if I have this right. At one end of the sexual life cycle, we have pubescent teenagers so driven by biology that they can barely concentrate on physics. And what are we offering them? Abstinence.


At the other end, we have parents and grandparents whose sex drives have gone into low gear. What are we offering them? Viagra and Intrinsa.

Is it just remotely possible that our society is suffering from a raging hormonal imbalance? We are trying to control the sex drive as if people were cars that needed to be equipped with the right set of brakes and an optional overdrive.

I have on my desk two new pieces of evidence about the disconnect between cultural and sexual function.

The first is an analysis of the content of those abstinence-only courses that the government supports to the tune of $170 million. A study released by the office of U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., shows that nearly all the most popular programs contain lessons that are to science what propaganda is to politics.

One text mistakenly says that men and women each contribute 24 chromosomes to their offspring, instead of 23. (Maybe our tax dollars have paid for the extra chromosome.) Another suggests that cervical cancer is a result of premarital sex. The overriding abstinence lesson is fear. One curriculum even teaches that isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, depression and suicide "can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage."

The second story is about Procter & Gamble's venture into the wonderful world of passion. The company manufactures a "female Viagra" called Intrinsa. In the world of pharmaceutical foreplay, it's the patch that keeps up with the pill.

Mother's little libido helper was tested on women who'd had their ovaries removed. But it's really geared to the market of menopausal women who are suffering from what is now defined as female sexual dysfunction.

My favorite testimony on testosterone therapy came from a happy consumer who reported that after six weeks she was "walking down the canned food aisle in the supermarket, and I started to think about sex." Keep that woman away from the vegetable bins.

The FDA advisory board was skeptical of the value and safety of a drug that offers one "satisfying" sexual experience a month more than the placebo. It won't get into the market without more testing. But Intrinsa is only the first of a series of testosterone products aimed at "fixing" the aging female libido.

Mind you, I am not in the business of encouraging sex as an extracurricular activity in high school or discouraging it as a retirement hobby. But we're in the middle of some massive attempt to manipulate the biological clock to fit the new social clock.

The average American reaches puberty at around 12 years old. In the 1950s, when people got married right after high school, that meant a gap of around six years. But last week the Census Bureau told us that one-third of men and one-quarter of women between 30 and 34 have never been married.

So the abstinence-until-marriage gap could now have to expand across the two highest-hormone decades. Meanwhile, the average life expectancy has increased eight years since 1950 and is now hovering around 74 for men and 80 for women.

There's simply a greater and greater disconnect between anatomy and destiny. It's not just in bed but also in birth.

Education and careers have postponed wedding dates. We discourage young and fertile women from having children until they're economically self-sufficient. And then we support an entire industry to treat older and economically self-sufficient women for infertility.

Indeed, last month a 56-year-old woman was designated the oldest American to give birth to twins. She did it with $25,000 worth of in vitro treatments and eggs from a younger woman.

Still, it's the double messages that market fear of sex to the young and joy of sex to the old that make me wonder if we're headed back to the 1950s, when sexuality was a switch to be turned on at the altar. Back then, any girl who said yes was loose, but any wife who said no was frigid. How do you spell dysfunction?

Today, the idea is for teachers to tamp down sex where it burns among the young and for pharmacists to rev up the embers in their elders. A teenager with a libido is one problem, and a senior without one is another problem. One is immoral, the other is unhealthy. One gets an abstinence curriculum, the other gets a prescription.

Maybe you can't fool Mother Nature, but you can give grandmother some testosterone.

Thought this was an interesting read. I posted this because I'm curious to see what different perspectives college students and parents offer on this.

Also, I could also use it for a paper or something later... Just kidding.

[hoosier]

As a college educated parent, and one who has daily contact with youth, and one who reads a lot of conservative and liberal stuff:

I think that sex among our teenagers is out of control.

Teenagers are not able to handle a marriage, a baby, a job, and school - and teenage sex should be discouraged. Early marriage and parenthood leads to broken familes and poverty.

I feel that lots of education about sex for teens is good - perhaps informed kids will use birth control and condoms.

Regarding the study quoted in the article, I am leary of such studies - usually the author's or the sponsor's viewpoint determines the outcome. Sure, they can find errors and falsehoods among the abstinence literature, but they can find errors on the other side too.

In Georgia, about one-third of the births are to unmarried mothers, and among minorities about 2/3s of the births are to single mothers. God knows how many more are aborted.

I don't know what point Ellen Goodman is trying to make - connecting teen sex with old-age lust. I do know that teenage unprotected sex produces fatherless kids, condemned to poverty.

[AKA_Monet]

Don't "they" call the old folk funky chicken, the "7 year itch"? Just asking...

I am highly college educated, having 3 degrees. I do not have any children, therefore I am not a parent. But many in my family and friends have had children out of wedlock at teens.

Abstinence would be great if teenagers did not have any xboxes, nintendoes and other items that promote sex and violence... I sat and watched my husband play Halo and saw how the women were drawn in this "video game"... It would put Barbie to shame... And when the favorite Halloween costume is "pimps" and "ho's" and there is a "player's ball" at the local high school where the favorite dance is the "bump and grind", abstinence doesn't have a chance...

I think the professional thing to do is get kids to protect themselves as aggressively as possible like it was in the early to mid-1990s with HIV education... Yes, that means condoms in schools. Because, if I was a parent of a teenager, I would not be angry if they are gettin' it on, but to come home with HIV would break my heart... And then be a teen girl pregnant with HIV... Not good for society...

However, teens pregnancy rates are falling, whereas, young professional unmarried women pregnancy rates are beginning to fall...

Somewhere on GC, I posted a topic asking what is that difference between a teen becoming pregnant and a young professional unmarried woman becoming pregnant? The ability to get the impregnating father to pay child support? Still haven't gotten a clear answer...