Chapter 8: Sexual Decision Making

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About this Chapter
Adolescents are beginning to explore their sexuality at the same time they are being bombarded with a jumble of confusing messages about sex. Mainstream movies, television, and music (not to mention the pornography industry) make sex seem highly desirable but ignore its consequences, and peers typically perpetuate a wide range of misinformation as they brag, exaggerate, and tease each other. Both create psychological pressure to have sex. On the other end of the spectrum, parents and other adults, including teachers, often communicate vague or dire warnings that aim to cast sex as unappealing, dangerous, or sinful, but all too often give biased or incomplete information, which fails to prepare young people for the joys and heartbreak, responsibilities and risks, that they will inevitably experience when they do have sex.

The fact is that most teens do not feel ready or want to have sex until later in adolescence, but they may find it difficult to communicate their wishes or feel good about a decision to abstain. In between abstaining and having intercourse are a range of behaviors in which they will likely be engaging. As educators, our role is to help adolescents understand their options, including but not limited to abstinence, and how they can communicate their wishes to a partner.

Most young people have no models of positive, healthy sexual relationships in which partners talk about sex together and make decisions that allow both to safeguard their health. In addition to providing those models, educators can validate abstaining from intercourse as a positive choice and give adolescents skills to implement the decision if they choose it. However, to be effective in protecting the health of all adolescents, these lessons must not be “abstinence-only.” To withhold information in the era of AIDS is irresponsible.