11 ms·

"The first is the most important and may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessor

"The first is the most important and may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessors, and more of them are taking advantage of innovations like long-acting injectable and implantable methods that can last years over a daily birth control pill. But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex." That's interesting, but lets just take a long look at the FIRST cause, which has come at the cost of endless political fights and only exists through that constant fighting. There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem.

andreasklinger 11y ago
You could also argument that it has been fixed by "constant fighting" But society's pov, politicians or simply all teens haven't catched up yet
seizethecheese 11y ago
This runs counter to the belief that many have that when given higher access to contraceptives, teens will have more sex. Another knock against abstinence-only sex ed!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- eru 11y ago
  Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?
  - dangerlibrary 11y ago
    Mathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.
    - valvar 11y ago
      It's not clear to me how (and if) Occam's Razor should necessarily be applied in this context. We are not choosing between a very simple, and a vastly complex alternative. Rather we are choosing between an unintuitive and probably complex option (contraceptives are causing less copulation - this does not sound at all like a simple suggestion to me), and admitting that our models and data may not be complete. Either way we need more research to be able to more clearly identify the root causes.
      - kristianc 11y ago
        And Occam's razor is really more of a 'which one should we test first' kind of criterion, rather than 'this one is automatically true as it's the simplest.'
      - pdpi 11y ago
        Teens are known to be rebellious and to like toeing the line By making things more accessible and banal, you remove the urge to do it just to spite authority. That simple argument justifies that teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink, and that kids who have ample access to sex ed and contraception are less likely to go and have sex both logistically and emotionally unprepared
        valvar 11y ago
        >teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink That's patently false. Cf. http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.212 http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.212 So far I find the argument far from convincing.
    - mistermann 11y ago
      > You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do. Where did this idea come from?
    - andyjohnson0 11y ago
      Occam's razor is a heuristic, not a law.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - rmc 11y ago
    Or: Teens are having more sex, but contraceptives are stopping more pregnancies.
    - wernercd 11y ago
      Or... Contraceptives are stopping some pregnancies... And teens being too busy texting and not comfortable enough actually engaging with others are having less sex... Or religion... or being busy feeling #TheBern... or stopped having sex after feeling #TheBurn... Or are too fat... Or...
    - fizgig 11y ago
      (this is not meant to me inflammatory, but rather an honest rumination) Keeping the feminism/SJW/manosphere shenanigans in my peripheral vision, there's been a huge backlash rallying against single mothers in recent years. There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package. Shaming single mothers for being on state assistance or child support only seemed to increase feminist resolve, but a tangible impact in reduced desirability in the larger dating pool may be pushing women to be more responsible.
      - jandrese 11y ago
        I thought there were fewer single mothers because we have been decreasing the prison population. Lots of mothers were single because our Nixon era drug laws were aimed at locking up as many minority men as possible.
        fizgig 11y ago
        For all I know, that could be the primary factor. I'm not well versed enough to speak with any authority. I just tossed an idea out there based from my sphere of online observations over the past 5 or so years.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        > There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package. If you're going to seriously date a single mother, what other option do you have? I'm not suggesting that you meet the kids on the second date, but if you're seriously romantically involved with someone for six months, you're not going to be able to continue that relationship with the single parent without having some involvement with the kids, too. It seems crazier to me to have the option of opting out of the kids in this scenario. Do you just live separately until they turn 18?
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  What bugs me is that if abstinence only sex ed pushers are going to defy the obvious, they should at least make their claims more entertaining. Virginity will grant you the ability to fly and speak to birds. Contraception causes vampires. Having sex outside of marriage will make your skin split and a 20-foot tall bright red demon will emerge from your fleshy husk. Kissing gives you polka-dot leprosy. I mean, if you're going to be unbound by facts or reality, why be boring?
  - ajuc 11y ago
    > I mean, if you're going to be unbound by facts or reality, why be boring? To be more persuasive.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Well they do that with Global Warming as well, so But it is unfair to blame only that group for "magical thinking"
- criddell 11y ago
  My kids get abstinence-only sex ed and it makes me laugh. If abstinence-based education was effective, they could eliminate the problem with childhood obesity by just telling kids to ignore their urges to overeat. To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten.
  - newjersey 10y ago
    > To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten. Reminds me of this time at my Baptist (yes, the upper case C christian kind) university where someone did the same thing by biting a cookie. I ate the half-bitten cookie just out of spite. People are not cookies!
gozur88 11y ago
How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  Education probably plays a good part in it. When I was growing up, and I'm only 30, we didn't get much sexual education in school, were taught to simply not have sex and many of my friends thought many untruths like pulling out is fine, douching is a form of contraception and even one unfortunate friend who thought ziplock bags were just as effective as condoms.
  - Retric 11y ago
    I am 35 and in the US we had very detailed sex ed including how to use a condom, how wide the contraceptive window was ect starting around 12ish. IMO, this is really more an issue with many local schools being horrible than anything else.
    - salgernon 11y ago
      It is certainly local as there are some school boards and states that use religiously defined criteria to define their coursework. Hence creationism debates and elected officials that believe that women can "shut that whole thing down" to avoid being pregnant.
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      I am 34 in the US and didn't learn how to apply condoms until I was an adult, and I learned it from pornography.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - dpark 11y ago
      I'm 33 and grew up in the Bible belt. Looking back, I'm shocked at how good my Sex Ed was. We were taught that abstinence was the only 100% effective choice, but also about condoms and birth control pills, as well as things like the sponge (which was not recommended, but still covered) and long term hormonal implants. The biggest misinformation we were given was stuff that was genuinely believed then (and still believed by many) like there being a high likelihood of pregnancy from pre-ejaculate. But I am also confused how there are/were actually sexually active teenagers who think things like "Ziploc bags are as effective as condoms". Maybe the trickle down effect of decent Sex Ed was responsible for dispelling these kinds of beliefs before we were at the sexually active age. I certainly didn't know anyone who thought (or at least expressed) an opinion this ignorant in high school. If nothing else, having sex through a Ziploc bag sounds miserably uncomfortable. But then, I did know a guy in college who apparently thought the condom was supposed to be stretched over the scrotum, so this ignorance is out there (or at least was).
SmirkingRevenge 11y ago
If I were gonna bet on it.. the first explanation I would gravitate towards would be that these teens might have been the children of single teenage mothers/fathers themselves.. and lived through the hardship of that situation first hand.
- kbenson 11y ago
  On the one hand, I can definitely see that happening. On the other, is the observed phenomenon of children following in their parents' (parent's?) footsteps whether they mean to or not (perhaps because outcomes are commonly the emergent result of different behavioral and attitude markers that are harder to shake). I don't know which of those influences wins out more often, but unfortunately (for disadvantaged children) I suspect it's the latter.
- dionidium 11y ago
  If I were gonna bet on it, the first explanation I'd gravitate toward is universal, easily-accessed, high-quality pornography.
  - jbclements 11y ago
    Interesting. Love to see actual analysis of this.
  - visarga 11y ago
    > the first explanation I'd gravitate toward is universal, easily-accessed, high-quality pornography Also games and social networks - they drive teens crazy and tempt them to lock themselves in their homes for much of their free time. When you stay at home, you get less sex. On the whole, teens are replacing sex with more computer time.
mc32 11y ago
I would tend to agree. More information about sex (the reproductive "risks" as well as contraception availability, shift in acceptance of oral sex (as alternative when contraception is not available) as well as the acceptance of same-sex sex experimentation by these teenagers as well as young adults. It's astounding how before the wide availability of information, people believed in "folk" contraception.
- Aelinsaar 11y ago
  I'm 35, American, middle class, Northeast of the country. I remember people in my early TEENS who thought you could not become pregnant from your first sexual experience, among other "folk" tales. It is, as you say, astounding. What makes it so absurd though, is that for decades it's been a largely artificial state of ignorance enforced by people who forgot what it was like to be young.
  - huuu 11y ago
    I'm sorry but I want to point out you are not middle class. There is only one class: humans.
- Aelinsaar 11y ago
  I want to believe in that model for human nature, but I think you would only have a minority of people actively avoiding their parent's mistakes. Too often, things like cycles of bad parenting (from lack of discipline and care, all the way along the spectrum to abuse and neglect) seem to repeat. It's not that people want to do these terrible things as they were done to them, but often we don't know any better or it's what feels familiar. That, and poverty and bad education are big risk factors for teen pregnancy, and being born to poor, poorly educated people isn't likely to lead to you riches and a fine education.
lambdaphagy 11y ago
You'll have better arguments if you understand why your opponents hold the views they do than if you just stare at them incredulously. Why would anyone be skeptical of contraception? Perhaps because the normalization of contraception has come at the same time as a dramatic increase in single motherhood, from single digits in 1950 to about half of all children today [0]. If we are tempted to think that single motherhood is a problem of access to technology, it is sobering to think that we are worse at it than medieval peasants. At the same time, total fertility has fallen to sub-replacement rates in every Western country [1]. This creates top-heavy societies that are dependent for young workers upon cultures that don't share our enlightened attitudes. Is it certain that both of these trends can be attributed wholly to contraception? No. Do they suggest that Western cultures have adopted attitudes towards sex and reproduction that are proving incompatible with their own continued existence? Well... [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-unbelievable-rise-of-single-motherhood-in-america-over-the-last-50-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-u... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
- Aelinsaar 11y ago
  Maybe you can point to what I said that came across as incredulous staring?
  - lambdaphagy 11y ago
    > There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem. You're writing as though this were self-evidently absurd.
  - myslackusername 11y ago
    It was the patronizing last line with the capital LOT and italics for effect.
    - Aelinsaar 11y ago
      Hello new player. It sounds like instead of pointing out what was "incredulous staring" you seem instead to have offered a new accusation of "patronizing".

andreasklinger 11y ago

You could also argument that it has been fixed by "constant fighting" But society's pov, politicians or simply all teens haven't catched up yet

seizethecheese 11y ago

This runs counter to the belief that many have that when given higher access to contraceptives, teens will have more sex. Another knock against abstinence-only sex ed!

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
eru 11y ago
Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?
- dangerlibrary 11y ago
  Mathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.
  - valvar 11y ago
    It's not clear to me how (and if) Occam's Razor should necessarily be applied in this context. We are not choosing between a very simple, and a vastly complex alternative. Rather we are choosing between an unintuitive and probably complex option (contraceptives are causing less copulation - this does not sound at all like a simple suggestion to me), and admitting that our models and data may not be complete. Either way we need more research to be able to more clearly identify the root causes.
    - kristianc 11y ago
      And Occam's razor is really more of a 'which one should we test first' kind of criterion, rather than 'this one is automatically true as it's the simplest.'
    - pdpi 11y ago
      Teens are known to be rebellious and to like toeing the line By making things more accessible and banal, you remove the urge to do it just to spite authority. That simple argument justifies that teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink, and that kids who have ample access to sex ed and contraception are less likely to go and have sex both logistically and emotionally unprepared
      - valvar 11y ago
        >teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink That's patently false. Cf. http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.212 http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.212 So far I find the argument far from convincing.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    > You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do. Where did this idea come from?
  - andyjohnson0 11y ago
    Occam's razor is a heuristic, not a law.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- rmc 11y ago
  Or: Teens are having more sex, but contraceptives are stopping more pregnancies.
  - wernercd 11y ago
    Or... Contraceptives are stopping some pregnancies... And teens being too busy texting and not comfortable enough actually engaging with others are having less sex... Or religion... or being busy feeling #TheBern... or stopped having sex after feeling #TheBurn... Or are too fat... Or...
  - fizgig 11y ago
    (this is not meant to me inflammatory, but rather an honest rumination) Keeping the feminism/SJW/manosphere shenanigans in my peripheral vision, there's been a huge backlash rallying against single mothers in recent years. There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package. Shaming single mothers for being on state assistance or child support only seemed to increase feminist resolve, but a tangible impact in reduced desirability in the larger dating pool may be pushing women to be more responsible.
    - jandrese 11y ago
      I thought there were fewer single mothers because we have been decreasing the prison population. Lots of mothers were single because our Nixon era drug laws were aimed at locking up as many minority men as possible.
      - fizgig 11y ago
        For all I know, that could be the primary factor. I'm not well versed enough to speak with any authority. I just tossed an idea out there based from my sphere of online observations over the past 5 or so years.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      > There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package. If you're going to seriously date a single mother, what other option do you have? I'm not suggesting that you meet the kids on the second date, but if you're seriously romantically involved with someone for six months, you're not going to be able to continue that relationship with the single parent without having some involvement with the kids, too. It seems crazier to me to have the option of opting out of the kids in this scenario. Do you just live separately until they turn 18?
JulianMorrison 11y ago
What bugs me is that if abstinence only sex ed pushers are going to defy the obvious, they should at least make their claims more entertaining. Virginity will grant you the ability to fly and speak to birds. Contraception causes vampires. Having sex outside of marriage will make your skin split and a 20-foot tall bright red demon will emerge from your fleshy husk. Kissing gives you polka-dot leprosy. I mean, if you're going to be unbound by facts or reality, why be boring?
- ajuc 11y ago
  > I mean, if you're going to be unbound by facts or reality, why be boring? To be more persuasive.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Well they do that with Global Warming as well, so But it is unfair to blame only that group for "magical thinking"
criddell 11y ago
My kids get abstinence-only sex ed and it makes me laugh. If abstinence-based education was effective, they could eliminate the problem with childhood obesity by just telling kids to ignore their urges to overeat. To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten.
- newjersey 10y ago
  > To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten. Reminds me of this time at my Baptist (yes, the upper case C christian kind) university where someone did the same thing by biting a cookie. I ate the half-bitten cookie just out of spite. People are not cookies!

gozur88 11y ago

How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
Education probably plays a good part in it. When I was growing up, and I'm only 30, we didn't get much sexual education in school, were taught to simply not have sex and many of my friends thought many untruths like pulling out is fine, douching is a form of contraception and even one unfortunate friend who thought ziplock bags were just as effective as condoms.
- Retric 11y ago
  I am 35 and in the US we had very detailed sex ed including how to use a condom, how wide the contraceptive window was ect starting around 12ish. IMO, this is really more an issue with many local schools being horrible than anything else.
  - salgernon 11y ago
    It is certainly local as there are some school boards and states that use religiously defined criteria to define their coursework. Hence creationism debates and elected officials that believe that women can "shut that whole thing down" to avoid being pregnant.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    I am 34 in the US and didn't learn how to apply condoms until I was an adult, and I learned it from pornography.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dpark 11y ago
    I'm 33 and grew up in the Bible belt. Looking back, I'm shocked at how good my Sex Ed was. We were taught that abstinence was the only 100% effective choice, but also about condoms and birth control pills, as well as things like the sponge (which was not recommended, but still covered) and long term hormonal implants. The biggest misinformation we were given was stuff that was genuinely believed then (and still believed by many) like there being a high likelihood of pregnancy from pre-ejaculate. But I am also confused how there are/were actually sexually active teenagers who think things like "Ziploc bags are as effective as condoms". Maybe the trickle down effect of decent Sex Ed was responsible for dispelling these kinds of beliefs before we were at the sexually active age. I certainly didn't know anyone who thought (or at least expressed) an opinion this ignorant in high school. If nothing else, having sex through a Ziploc bag sounds miserably uncomfortable. But then, I did know a guy in college who apparently thought the condom was supposed to be stretched over the scrotum, so this ignorance is out there (or at least was).

SmirkingRevenge 11y ago

If I were gonna bet on it.. the first explanation I would gravitate towards would be that these teens might have been the children of single teenage mothers/fathers themselves.. and lived through the hardship of that situation first hand.

kbenson 11y ago
On the one hand, I can definitely see that happening. On the other, is the observed phenomenon of children following in their parents' (parent's?) footsteps whether they mean to or not (perhaps because outcomes are commonly the emergent result of different behavioral and attitude markers that are harder to shake). I don't know which of those influences wins out more often, but unfortunately (for disadvantaged children) I suspect it's the latter.
dionidium 11y ago
If I were gonna bet on it, the first explanation I'd gravitate toward is universal, easily-accessed, high-quality pornography.
- jbclements 11y ago
  Interesting. Love to see actual analysis of this.
- visarga 11y ago
  > the first explanation I'd gravitate toward is universal, easily-accessed, high-quality pornography Also games and social networks - they drive teens crazy and tempt them to lock themselves in their homes for much of their free time. When you stay at home, you get less sex. On the whole, teens are replacing sex with more computer time.

mc32 11y ago

I would tend to agree. More information about sex (the reproductive "risks" as well as contraception availability, shift in acceptance of oral sex (as alternative when contraception is not available) as well as the acceptance of same-sex sex experimentation by these teenagers as well as young adults. It's astounding how before the wide availability of information, people believed in "folk" contraception.

Aelinsaar 11y ago
I'm 35, American, middle class, Northeast of the country. I remember people in my early TEENS who thought you could not become pregnant from your first sexual experience, among other "folk" tales. It is, as you say, astounding. What makes it so absurd though, is that for decades it's been a largely artificial state of ignorance enforced by people who forgot what it was like to be young.
- huuu 11y ago
  I'm sorry but I want to point out you are not middle class. There is only one class: humans.
Aelinsaar 11y ago
I want to believe in that model for human nature, but I think you would only have a minority of people actively avoiding their parent's mistakes. Too often, things like cycles of bad parenting (from lack of discipline and care, all the way along the spectrum to abuse and neglect) seem to repeat. It's not that people want to do these terrible things as they were done to them, but often we don't know any better or it's what feels familiar. That, and poverty and bad education are big risk factors for teen pregnancy, and being born to poor, poorly educated people isn't likely to lead to you riches and a fine education.

lambdaphagy 11y ago

You'll have better arguments if you understand why your opponents hold the views they do than if you just stare at them incredulously. Why would anyone be skeptical of contraception? Perhaps because the normalization of contraception has come at the same time as a dramatic increase in single motherhood, from single digits in 1950 to about half of all children today [0]. If we are tempted to think that single motherhood is a problem of access to technology, it is sobering to think that we are worse at it than medieval peasants. At the same time, total fertility has fallen to sub-replacement rates in every Western country [1]. This creates top-heavy societies that are dependent for young workers upon cultures that don't share our enlightened attitudes. Is it certain that both of these trends can be attributed wholly to contraception? No. Do they suggest that Western cultures have adopted attitudes towards sex and reproduction that are proving incompatible with their own continued existence? Well... [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-unbelievable-rise-of-single-motherhood-in-america-over-the-last-50-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-u... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Aelinsaar 11y ago
Maybe you can point to what I said that came across as incredulous staring?
- lambdaphagy 11y ago
  > There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem. You're writing as though this were self-evidently absurd.
- myslackusername 11y ago
  It was the patronizing last line with the capital LOT and italics for effect.
  - Aelinsaar 11y ago
    Hello new player. It sounds like instead of pointing out what was "incredulous staring" you seem instead to have offered a new accusation of "patronizing".