Condom distribution at prom: Ummm…does it encourage teenage sex?

Mom, Dad: How do you feel about high school condom distribution at prom? Does the safety effort actually encourage teenage sex? Is it worth it?

|
George Widman/AP
Condoms will be distributed at a Brooklyn school prom this year, but will it encourage safer teenage sex? Protesters demonstrate outside Philadelphia's City Hall on March 10, 2004. Public health advocates staged the rally to criticize President Bush's plan to expand abstinence-only education, which protesters said actually hurts sexually active teens.

So parents, how do you feel about this one? 

A Brooklyn high school has announced that it will be handing out condoms to students leaving their June 7 prom.

Officials at Bedford-Stuyvesant Preparatory High School say the move is part of a safer-sex education program it is planning for students in the weeks leading up to the big day. It’s apparently the only school in the area to take up an offer by condom manufacturer NuVo to give out free condoms for prom.

Which, as any mom or dad desperately trying to forget the movie American Pie knows, is considered a big day for teen sex.

(Anyone else out there shuddering?  And I’ve got 16 years before my daughter goes.)

The reaction to Bedford-Stuyesant Prep seems to be falling along the predictable contraception debate lines:

Some parents say handing out condoms sends the wrong message to teens already facing a lot of hype about sex and prom. (As if ill-fitting tuxes do wonders for romance.) Free condoms given by school officials will encourage sex, they believe.

Others say that teens are going to have sex one way or another.  Especially on prom night, with its later-than-usual curfews, peer pressure, and expectations. Therefore, it’s better to help them make safe any sexual experience they’d have anyway.

Others just cover their ears, squeeze their eyes shut, and look forward to graduation.

But here’s some good (and bad) news for parents.

Seventeen Magazine and Centers for Disease Control surveyed 12,843 students about prom. Only 14 percent of girls said that they had sex on prom night.  And only 5 percent surveyed said they had lost their virginity that evening.  (The number is even lower for boys – 3 percent said they lost their virginity on prom night.)

Compare this to other CDC research, which has found that nearly half of all high school students have had sexual intercourse.

Which means, parents, prom is not your problem.  At least as far as sex goes.  That conversation – whatever your values and feelings about contraception – should be happening far earlier and far more often than in the weeks leading up to prom.

The real concern, according to that Seventeen survey, is alcohol. Fifty-three percent of students told researchers that they had more than four drinks on prom night.  And the number of teens who die in alcohol-related accidents on prom night is in the hundreds.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Condom distribution at prom: Ummm…does it encourage teenage sex?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0525/Condom-distribution-at-prom-Ummm-does-it-encourage-teenage-sex
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe