The majority of boys in the United States don’t get comprehensive sex education before they are sexually active, said Dr. Arik V. Marcell, an associate professor of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, who was one of the authors of the study. If that is true for boys who start sexual activity in high school, he said, the gap is even more significant for those who become sexually active at these young ages.
“I don’t want to perpetuate the double standard that it’s O.K. for boys to start having sex,” Dr. Marcell said. “How can we think about addressing potential vulnerabilities, especially if those experiences were not wanted?”
In fact, of those who were 18 to 24 at the time of the survey who reported having initiated sexual activity before the age of 13, 8.5 percent characterized it as unwanted, choosing the response: “I really didn’t want it to happen at the time,” and 54.6 percent as wanted, responding, “I really wanted it to happen at the time,” while 37 percent “had mixed feelings” about it. Interestingly, those percentages were similar for those who began having intercourse when they were 13 or older.
The study was accompanied by a commentary which pointed out that only 13.9 percent of the adolescents in the latest National Survey of Family Growth cohort reported having had any education about saying no to sex by sixth grade, and called for “medically accurate, developmentally appropriate sex education starting in elementary school,” as is also recommended by the Future of Sex Education Initiative.
Dr. David L. Bell, an associate professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and the first author on the commentary, said, “Parents and pediatricians need to help our young men navigate their sexual lives by communicating with them, having open dialogues with them about many different aspects of having sexual relationships.” That includes conversations about consent.
In talking about sexual activity with his patients, Dr. Sanders said, “I’ve gotten really careful about using exactly the same language with boys and girls.” He starts with the question, are you dating. And then, whether they say yes or no, “I will ask if they’ve had sex, and whether they were pressured to have sex, and if they’ve had sex I will ask, was it consensual.”
Boys as young as 12 may not have the opportunity to have confidential conversations without their parents in the room, or be asked routinely by their pediatricians about any of this. Dr. Bell’s editorial called on clinicians to start these conversations earlier, not just in asking about activity, but in opening up conversations about “relationships and sexual decision making.”
Source : Nytimes
