Parents don’t think own teens are having sex

Many parents don't think their kids are
interested in sex, but believe that everyone else's kids are, a new
study reveals.
"Parents I interviewed had a very hard time thinking about their own teen children as sexually
desiring subjects," said study researcher Sinikka Elliott, an assistant
professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. "At the same
time, parents view their teens' peers as highly sexual, even sexually
predatory."
These disillusioned parents are factually wrong, as there were 435,436 births
to teens aged 15 to 19 in 2006, and 6,396 for those aged 10 to 14,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the
dual thinking about teenage sex has its own consequences. By viewing their own children as
holier-than-thou, parents shift the responsibility for potential sexual activity to others.
If little Janie somehow gets pregnant, mom or dad might say she was pushed into it, the thinking goes.
Elliott interviewed 47 parents of teenagers, including six fathers and the rest moms. Interviews,
which lasted from one to 2.5 hours, included various questions about
parents' beliefs and experiences regarding teen sex. Questions about
sexuality focused on what parents teach their children about sex and the
dynamics of those discussions, including: why parents say what they
say; how they feel about talkingto teens about sex; and what they think of teen sexuality.
Parents consistently characterized their children as young, immature and naïve.
For instance one mother, 52-year-old Beatrice (white, lower middle class) commented on her
16-year-old daughter, saying, "One thing I've noticed is that she's
probably a little bit more immature than some of her friends, and that's
okay, I think it will come."
Even though Elliott interviewed many more moms than
dads, she found fathers similarly viewed their daughters as immature.
Another mother, Beth, 39 (white, upper middle class), believed her son, 16, was a virgin because
that's what he told her, and he hadn't dated. This mother added, "When
you look at your child, they're just so little and young. You just don't think of them ever even
thinking about [sex]. It's hard to even think about what you should be
saying to kids. You don't think they are old enough when you think about
those things."
Speaking of her 14-year-old son, one mom (Kate) said, "I don't think it's safe
for his age. Maybe it's just him, I don't know. But he's a little naive."
As for why she didn't think it would be safe, Kate said, "I guess, [that] he'd do
something he didn't want to do. Get pushed into something or let himself
be pushed into something. I think he would definitely do that. 'I'm not
going to be cool if I don’t do this.'"
Essentially, these parents considered their teens as sexually innocent, and even asexual, Elliott said.
Another theme that came up was the association between teen sex and deviance.
Portia, 46 (Latina, upper middle class), discussed her shock when her then 15-year-old son said
his girlfriend might be pregnant: "Because he was such a young teenager
and I really didn’t think. And again, this is a really good, solid kid,"
she said. Since then, Portia has not discussed contraception
with her now 16-year-old and doesn't plan to until he's off to
college, because "he's just a good kid who got in over his head."
Parents seemed to have no trouble envisioning other people's teens as having sex, however,
saying their teens' peers were "real sexual," and "promiscuous." One
parent said, "[Teenagers] got their cute little bodies and their raging
hormones. They're like raring to go."
Some parents specifically contrasted their kids'
lack of sexual desire with peers' hedonistic tendencies.
"This binary thinking does more than simply establish their teens as asexual and, therefore,
good; it also creates a scenario in which their teenagers are imperiled
by their peers," Elliott writes in the May issue of the journal Symbolic Interaction.
For instance, parents of teenage boys often voiced concern that their sons
might be lured into sexual situations by teenage girls who, the parents
felt, might use sex in an effort to solidify a relationship.
Meanwhile, parents of teen girls expressed fears that their daughters
would be taken advantage of by sexually driven teenage boys.

Parents concerned about their daughters putting
on extra pounds may have a new reason to worry. Overweight girls are
more likely to start having sex early, to have multiple partners during
their teen years, and to eschew condoms compared to thinner teens, a new
study shows. And the situation worsens as the number of excess pounds goes up.
South Carolina researchers found that obese girls were almost three times as
likely as others to have had sex before age 13 and 30 percent more
likely to have had sex with more than three partners during their teen
years, according to the study presented this month at the annual meeting
of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Girls who were simply overweight had a lower, but still significant, risk of starting sex
early. Compared to normal weight teens, they were 60 percent more likely
to begin sex before age 13 and 30 percent were likely to have had sex
with more than three partners.
The study found that 6 percent of normal weight
teens had sex before age 13, as compared with 11 percent of overweight
teens and 15 percent of obese teens. And 39 percent of normal weight
teens reported having sex with more than three partners as compared with
45 percent of overweight teens and 47 percent of obese teens.
Making matters worse, obese and overweight girls were also less likely to use condoms and
other birth control. The study found that girls with weight issues were
almost 20 percent less likely use condoms than thinner girls, and more
than 30 percent less likely to use other methods of contraception.
The magnitude of the findings surprised even the researchers, said Dr. Margaret Villers,
the study’s lead author. “We didn’t realize what a strong predictor body weight would
be,” added Villers, an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Villers and her colleagues analyzed data from 21,773 teenage girls who had
taken part in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth
Risk Behavior Survey. The survey is given to students at a broad range
of middle schools and high schools across the nation every other year.
Overweight girls tend to hit puberty earlier
One possible explanation for the findings may be the impact excess pounds have on
girls’ bodies. Overweight and obese girls tend to hit puberty earlier
than those of normal weight.
“They develop sooner,” Villers explained. “They look
like women sooner. And maybe that’s why they are more likely to be
pressured by their boyfriends to have sex at a younger age.”
Another factor could be low self-esteem and poor body image, which have been correlated with
obesity in other studies.
“It may be harder for girls who don’t feel good about themselves to say
‘no,’ or even to stop a partner long enough to say they need to use a
condom,” Villers said.
Shesaid she decided to look at the relationship between weight and sexual
activity in teens because of the high rate of obesity in South Carolina,
where she practices, and the exploding rate of sexually transmitted
diseases in her area. She had noticed in her own practice that
overweight girls seemed to start having sex earlier.
Villers said the rate of pregnancy and STDs in heavy girls haven't been studied yet.
Low self-esteem
She says she isn’t sure how to stop heavy
girls from having sex early, but suspects that efforts to build
self-esteem might help. Further, she said, young women need to be taught
how to stand up for themselves. “It’s hard to say ‘no,’ if you feel
badly about yourself and someone is validating you, saying ‘you’re
attractive, and I want to have sex with you,’” she said.
Parents can play a big role in helping their daughters not only to eat right, but also
to develop the social skills needed to ward off sexual advances, said
Patrick Tolan, a professor in the department of psychiatry and
neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia and director of
Youth-Nex: The University of Virginia Center to Promote Effective Youth
Development. But, Tolan allowed, it can be a tough line for parents to straddle. As they
try to encourage weight loss through
healthy diet and exercise, parents also need to be protecting their
daughters’ self image, Tolan said.
Because of society’s emphasis on thinness, overweight
girls may feel so unattractive that they start having sex as a way to
hang on to a partner. “Parents need to find a way to help their
daughters feel good about themselves,” he said.
Though the results are convincing, parents
shouldn’t overreact, said Dr. Lauren Chernick, a researcher in pediatric
medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.
“It’s not as though every overweight girl is having sex just because she’s overweight,” Chernick
added. “And, of course, the flip side of that is that parents shouldn’t
assume that they don’t have to worry if their daughters are normal weight.”
What researchers do know is that girls who start having sex early and with
many different partners are more likely to become pregnant, Chernick said.
“The conversations parents have with a daughter should be the same whether or
not the girl is overweight,” she added. “Parents need to talk about sex
and about how girls can protect themselves from sexually transmitted
diseases and pregnancy.”

RALEIGH, N.C. — Carole Bullard considers herself open-minded when it
comes to dealing with the sexuality of her teen son and her almost
teenage one.She and her husband, Roger, have age-appropriate
talks with their sons, ages 17 and 12. And though she believes the older
boy and his girlfriend have not had sex, she's realistic that they
might."Do I want them having sex? No," said Bullard, 42, of Cary.
"I've told them I'm not going to be a grandparent until I'm 60."At
least the Bullards are aware that their children are interested in sex.
The research of Dr. Sinikka Elliott indicates they may be an anomaly.
The assistant sociology professor at North Carolina State University
says she's found that parents believe that other teens are having sex —
and lots of it.But their sweet, fresh-faced babies? No way.
Especially the boys."With boys, I found that parents described
their own sons as young, naive, immature," said Elliott. "What I think
they were doing was illustrating to me they're not really like these
other boys."As for daughters, the whole "good girl/bad girl"
stereotype was handy. "My daughter's not like that," the parents told
Elliott. "But I do know there are girls out there who are like that."In
other words, the parents hold seemingly contradictory thoughts about
teens and sex: Everyone else's kids are hypersexual, but theirs are way
too innocent to even be interested. For example, Elliott interviewed one
mother who had, in the past few years, caught her 16-year-old son
smoking dope, drinking alcohol and watching porn and told Elliott that
she believes her son is a virgin. Along the way, she said, the parents
perpetuate stereotypes of girls as aggressively looking to trap a boy
and boys who are "out for one thing."Elliott, who interviewed 47
parents in Austin, Texas, then another 18 fathers in the Raleigh area,
is a qualitative researcher, meaning she interviews a few people
in-depth. That means her research doesn't necessarily represent a wide
cross-section of parents, so she can't conclude that most parents share
the perceptions of the ones she interviewed."I don't think all
parents are thinking this way, but I think this group of parents is
thinking this way," she says, calling the issue worth further study.
"And I think it can tell us something important about how we're treating
daily life and talking about teenagers and sex within society itself."Elliott
wrote an article based on her research for the May issue of the
journal, "Symbolic Interaction" and has another in the August issue of
the journal, "Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning." And New
York University Press next year will publish her book titled "Not My
Kid: Parents and Teen Sexuality."Bullard's husband, Roger, 43,
says he doesn't have a problem thinking about his sons as sexual beings,
although he thinks his wife does "because it's her babies having sex
with somebody. ... I don't have a problem with it. My problem is I want
them to do it at the right time or do it later in life."Despite
the family's many frank discussion — Carole Bullard says she and Roger
"have more blunt conversations with them than they would prefer" — she's
not sure her oldest son will tell her when he has sex for the first
time."What kids will share nowadays and what they want to keep
private is bizarre," she says. "They'll put anything out on Facebook or
Twitter. But when it comes to having an intimate conversation with their
parents, it just grosses them out."Writer Betsy Flagler of
Davidson, whose syndicated parenting column appears in 30 newspapers in
the U.S. and Canada, says she's not surprised that parents aren't
dealing with teen sexuality."Teenagers are so easily embarrassed
by their parents," Flagler says. "To keep the peace, parents tiptoe
around everything from eating habits to Facebook friends. So naturally
they're in denial about how early their kids are engaging in sex. The
mindset, at least in the South, is: If you don't talk about it with your
kids and your friends, it's not happening. Everything is fine, just
fine."While she hasn't researched this part, Elliott also
speculates that teens are complicit in their parents' head-in-the-sand
mentality. As part of the research, she asked parents what they had told
their children about dating, puberty and sex and sexuality."And
basically, the parents would say, we have tried to talk with him or her,
but the teen says, 'eww ... Mom, I don't need to hear this information.
I'm not doing anything,'" she said. "So I think that the teenagers are
actively presenting themselves to their parents as asexual."Elliott,
the mother of a 16-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter, isn't judging
these parents — instead, she's empathizing. "We talk a lot about sex in
my household," she says. "But I think I'm still ambivalent about them
having sex. I think it's hard not to be as a parent in this culture."Although
she will draw conclusions about what parents ARE teaching children
about sex, Elliott isn't ready to say what they SHOULD teach their
children. She's not that kind of researcher, and she's not that kind of
parent."I don't feel confident enough to say 'this is what we
must do,'" she says. "I think that what I found might spark a dialogue
that makes parents, educators and policymakers go, why are we thinking
about teens and sex in such negative ways? We're giving parents and
teenagers a real fatalistic view about any kind of teen sexual
activity."