You're Teaching My Child What? (28 page)

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Authors: Miriam Grossman

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21
“I want to buy a vibrator but ...” Go Ask Alice! September 8, 2000; available online at:
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1757.html
22
“Menage a Trois?” Go Ask Alice! July 5, 2002; available online at:
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/2184.html
.
23
“S/M Role-Playing,” Go Ask Alice! May 12, 1995; available online at:
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0646.html
.
24
One recent study of adult women found that the probabilities of contraceptive failure for withdrawal (18 percent) and condom (17 percent) are similar: Kathryn Kost, Susheela Singh, Barbara Vaughan, James Trussell, and Akinrinola Bankole, “Estimates of contraceptive failure from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth,”
Contraception
77, no.1 (January 2008): 10–21. Guttmacher Institute, “Get ‘In the Know': Questions about Pregnancy, Contraception and Abortion,” reports the percentage of women who will become pregnant in their first year of use of male condoms is 2 percent for “perfect use” and 15 percent for “typical use.” They also report that of women who had an abortion following proper condom use, 42 percent, had said it slipped out of place. Available online at:
http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/prevention.html
. Also see Rachel K. Jones, Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw, “Contraceptive Use Among U.S. Women Having Abortions in 2000-2001,”
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
34, no.6 (2002): 294–303; on inconsistent condom use in adults, see Bruce Jancin, “Despite Guidelines, U.S. Condom Use Still Low,”
Clinical Psychiatry News
(January 2004): 66; and in college students, see “American College Health Association—National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) Spring 2004 Reference Group Data Report,”
Journal of American College Health
54, no.4 (2004): 207. On limited efficiency of condoms in preventing HPV transmission: “Using condoms (‘rubbers') can lower the chance of HPV infection, but they cannot completely prevent infection,” in American Cancer Association, “Can Penile Cancer Be Prevented?” available online at:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_2X_Can_penile_cancer_be_prevented_35.asp?sitearea=
; Lisa A. Manhart and Laura A. Koutsky, “Do Condoms Prevent Genital HPV Infection, External Genital Warts, or Cervical Neoplasia?”
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
29, no.11 (2002): 725–35; Rachel L. Winer et al, “Genital Human Papillomavirus Infection: Incidence and Risk Factors in a Cohort of Female University Students,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
157, no.3 (2003): 218–26.
25
Joseph J. Sabia and Daniel I. Rees, “The effect of adolescent virginity status on psychological well-being,”
Journal of Health Economics
27, no.5 (2008): 1368–81.
26
Debra Haffner, “Telling Teens Not to French Kiss,” RH Reality Check, September 13, 2006; available online at:
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org//blog/2006/09/12/telling-teens-not-to-french-kiss
(Haffner, in her book for parents,
Beyond the Big Talk: Every Parent's Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Teens—from middle school to high school and beyond ( New Market Press 2001)
recommends these sites to teens:
goaskalice.com
,
positive.org
,
gURL.com
,
sexetc.org
,
teenwire.org
(now Teen Talk)).
27
This is not to say girls should not be vaccinated.
28
(Statistics based on 9 million new infections a year in persons between the ages of 15 and 24.) Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on Sexually Transmitted
Diseases in the United States,” August 2006; available online at:
www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_sti.html
.
29
“State of the Nation 2005: Challenges Facing STD Prevention in Youth,” American Social Health Association; available online at:
www.ashastd.org/pdfs/ASHA_05.final.pdf
.
30
Laura T. Coffey, “Survey: Unprotected sex common among teens,”
msnbc.com
Today, November 14, 2008; available online at: http://today.
msnbc.msn.com/id/27706917/from/ET/.pdf
.
31
“State of the Nation 2005: Challenges Facing STD Prevention in Youth,” American Social Health Association; available online at:
www.ashastd.org/pdfs/ASHA_05.final.pdf
.
Chapter 1
1
Clearly these sites fill a need, but I had a mixed reaction to the discovery of online “advice” for adolescents. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I've spent years helping kids like these. While there are benefits to quick and confidential access to an informed adult, there are also hazards.
2
This question appeared at
www.gURL.com
5
According to the homepage of
www.scarleteen.com
.
6
Heather also provides teens with objectionable material: “Want to learn how to flirt? Or talk dirty? Or go Tantric? The Society for Human Sexuality includes exercises to teach you how, as well as a concise guide to safer sex, a comprehensive and fully up-to-date annotated bibliography of books relevant to sexuality and/or sex-positive culture, and a guide to finding local sex-positive community resources.
www.sexuality.org
(the site warns that it is intended for adults).
7
www.sexuality.org
(the site warns that it is intended for adults).
8
See “DASH Funded Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Activities,”
http://www.cdc.gov/DASH/program_mgt/docs_pdfs/ngo_activity_matrix.doc
.
10
“Frequently Asked Questions,” available at:
http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=529
11
“This Is Planned Parenthood,”
http://www.ppaction.org/ppvotes/08_issues.html
.
13
“Human Sexuality—What Children Need to Know and When,” Planned Parenthood, October 29, 2008; available online at:
http://www.planned-parenthood.org/parents/human-sexuality-what-children-need-know-when-they-need-know-it-4421.htm
.
15
“Sexual Development through the Life Cycle,” The Media Project (adapted from Advocates for Youth,
Life Planning Education
, 1995),
http://www.themediaproject.com/facts/development/lifecycle.htm
.
Every parent knows that babies and young children explore their bodies, and are capable of some response to genital stimulation. At the same time, they are cognitively, emotionally, and physically immature and therefore incapable of understanding, on any level whatsoever, what we adults call sexuality. Erections are a physiological response to various conditions, and children may touch their genitals for a number of reasons, not only to experience pleasurable sensations. In fact frequent touching of genitals in childhood is often a sign of anxiety.–MG
16
Planned Parenthood and Columbia University have placed their sites, Teen Talk and Go Ask Alice, on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, where even the youngest teens spend large chunks of their time.
17
James H. Jones,
Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 512 and 519.
18
“Kinsey Report, 50 Years Later,” NPR Politics and Society, November 9, 2004; available online at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story
. php?storyId=4161159
19
James H. Jones,
Alfred C. Kinsey
, 610.
20
Ibid., 610, reference: “Author's interview with Anon.A, Dec 15, 1987, 83; author's interview with Anon B, Feb 17, 1988, 95.”
21
James H. Jones,
Alfred C. Kinsey
, 739.
22
Ibid., 603.
23
Ibid., 609.
24
Why is there no consideration of his mental illness in recent books on the sex ed conflict, like Moran's and Irvine's?
25
Anything outside of sexual intercourse within marriage.
26
“5,940 Women,”
TIME
Magazine, August 24, 1953; available online at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,818752,00.html
.
27
Margaret Mead, “An Anthropologist Looks at the Report,” in
Problems of Sexual Behavior
(New York: American Social Hygiene Association, 1948), from James H. Jones,
Alfred C. Kinsey
, 579.
28
Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D., “Psychiatric Implications of the Kinsey Report,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
10, no.2 (1948): 97; available online at:
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/95
.
29
“Manners & Morals”,
TIME
, March 1, 1948. 16.
30
Pomeroy admitted under oath to seeking funds from the sex industry to produce his own child pornography (Campbell District Court,
Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Happy Day, Inc., et al
1980, 803).
31
SIECUS Report, May–July 1982, 6: the Kinsey Institute omitted one major field: sex ed. “[I]t seemed appropriate, not only to the Institute but to its major funding source, the NIMH, to leave this area for SIECUS to fulfill.”
32
Hefner continued to fund it and other programs that would develop curricula for changing the sexual attitudes of young men and women.
33
Christie Hefner, introduction to Earl E. Shelp, ed.,
Sex, Medicine, Ethics
, Vol. 2,
Ethical Viewpoints in Transition
, (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1987).
34
Janice M. Irvine,
Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States
(CA: University of California Press, 2002), 31.
35
Jeffrey P. Moran,
Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 2oth Century
(Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000), 161.
36
Richard Stiller,
The Love Bugs: A National History of the Venereal Diseases
(New York: Thomas Nelson, 1974).
37
Larry Brilliant, “The Age of Pandemics,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 2–3, 2009, W1; available online at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124121965740478983.html
.
38
Genital herpes and warts existed, but their incidence was low. Chlamydia was not reportable until 1984. HIV was not yet on the scene.
39
Roger W. Libby, introduction to a volume in which Kirkendall was interviewed:
Alternative Lifestyles
2, no.1 (February 1979): 5.
40
Lester Kirkendall,
A New Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1976).
41
Janice M. Irvine,
Talk About Sex
, 26.
44
In high school, the same rationale can be used to justify including explicit porn on the required reading list. See for example: Pete Winn, “High School Offers Homosexual Porn, Parents Complain,”
CNSNews.com
, March 10, 2008.
45
Evonne Hedgepeth and Joan Helmich,
Teaching About Sexuality and HIV: Principles and Methods for Effective Education
(New York: New York University Press, 1996), 31.
46
Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “The Failure of Sex Education,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, 274.n4 (Oct 1994)
47
SIECUS,
Families Are Talking
2, no.2 (2003).
48
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
52
Barbara Huberman, RN, Med, “Growth and Development, Ages Six to Eight—What You Need to Know,” Advocates for Youth, 2002; at The Media Project,
http://www.themediaproject.com/facts/development/6_8.htm
.
54
“Growth and Development, Ages Six to Eight—What Parents Need to Know,”
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=206
.
56
Selma H. Fraiberg,
The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959).

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