The Kids Are Alright

Something that never ceases to amaze me is people’s ability to completely forget what they were like as teenagers once their kids become teenagers themselves. My kids aren’t there yet, so my memories of my teenage years are, so far, still intact.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that I just saw a segment on the Today Show about a new study by the CDC into the sexual practices of teenagers. Who ever said research was boring? So here’s what The Today Show (and other reputable media outlets) had to say.

54% of males between the ages of 15 and 19 have had oral sex. 52% of females between the ages of 15 and 19 have had oral sex.

And it seems that everybody is up in arms about these statistics, which brings me back around to my opening paragraph. Now see, I’m 35 years old, soon to be 36. My kids aren’t teenagers, but there’s plenty of people my age who have kids that are. And I remember back in 8th grade, when I was 13 or 14, there was a fair number of blowjobs going around, so this is nothing new. And this was a special school for smart kids. We were the good kids, you see. Now I wasn’t one of the popular kids, so I never got blown back then, but it’s safe to say that by the time I was 18 I’d done about all there was to do sexually. I don’t think that was unusual then and I don’t think it’s unusual now.

And this is my problem with this new study. The only data anybody is mentioning is really vague. I mean 15 through 19? That may only be 5 years, but they also happen to be the years during which virtually everyone becomes sexually active. A 19-year-old could well be a sophomore in college for fuck’s sake. Is anybody really going to be shocked that college sophomores are engaging in oral sex? Honsetly, I’m surprised the numbers aren’t much higher than 54% and 52%.

Of course nobody is mentioning the full data. In fact, I couldn’t find a thing on it on the CDC website. Maybe they’re just slow to put their studies online. At any rate, here’s what we don’t know about this study:

• How many kids were surveyed?
• How many were male and how many female?
• How were they distributed geographically?
• How many were there at each age?
• Was their anonymity properly protected?
• How did their responses vary by age?
• How many of them are also engaging in full-fledged intercourse?

If we’re going to know anything about this study, what we need is a graph. Even a very simple one that your average USA Today reader could follow. Something like this:

I should stress that I just pulled some numbers out of my ass there, this is in no way a representation of the actual data (which as far as I know has not yet been made publicly available). I would imagine the actual data would follow a similar pattern though, where numbers progressively rise with age. For that matter, the incidence of parachuting will increase with age too, simply by virtue of having had more time to do it.

But a graph like that still tells us nothing of sample size, which is of course very important. If 75% of the respondents were 18 and 19, that’s going to skew the data quite a bit. I’m not saying that’s the case (of all the people who can properly conduct a study, I hope the CDC is one of them), I’m just saying it’s important information to have. It also doesn’t provide any context of other sexual activity the respondents are engaging in. All it does is breaks the numbers down by age, which is a start. It’d be much better than just throwing out two numbers.

The implication seems to be that teenagers are having oral sex before they have full intercourse, possibly as a replacement for it. Again, from my personal experience, this is nothing new. I really don’t get what the fuss is all about. I also haven’t seen any data presented to support this, though presumably such data exists and the people discussing this in the media aren’t just jumping to that conclusion. At any rate, I don’t think anybody’s ever gotten pregnant from cocksucking, so if they’re using oral instead of the real thing, parents should be happy at least for that.

The bottom line is, teenagers fuck. They have for at least the last 30 years, since the invention of the pill and the whole sexual revolution thing. This is not news. The parents of the kids this study was done on were probably fucking in their teens as well. What’s the big deal? At some point you just have to accept the fact that your babies grow up. Teach them to be responsible and safe. They will not be traumatized by their first sexual experiences unless you have them riddled with guilt over something that is completely natural.

I’m not going to say that this study was designed specifically to be alarmist, or that the media presenting it is being alarmist, but Christ, could this country be any more fucking uptight?