Sex and the scare tactic
William Mulgrew
Issue date: 2/9/07 Section: Ed-Op
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I came close to drowning when I was five years old. While vacationing with my family, I wanted to go swimming so badly I jumped into a lake all by myself. I didn't know how to swim. Kicking my feet and flailing my arms to keep my head above water, I suddenly remembered my parents told me not to go in alone. But it was too late by then; I was already in the water.
Sometimes our sex drives can be quite similar.
It's been three weeks and we're still waiting for facts to come forward regarding the deceased newborn found in a tote bag in Drexel Hill. Medical reports indicate the baby was dead for at least two weeks and the mother is suspected to be a freshman at our University. However, the family's attorney claims this was an instance of Pregnancy Denial Syndrome.
Widener University Professor Doris Vallone, from the School of Nursing, studies the phenomenon.
"Teenagers have magical thinking; they believe if they don't deal with it, it will go away," Vallone told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
What I find curious isn't so much the prevalence of the syndrome, which is very difficult to measure, but whether we do much to confront such magical thinking in public sex education classes for guys and girls alike.
I'm not talking about the nuances between abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education. Having gone through both in a public school and university setting, I think both should be taught, but abstinence might be more effective towards younger ages. No, I'm talking about the cold facts regarding contraception failure, sexually transmitted disease, and the broken family, what many deride as the scare tactic.
It's an argument over the lesser of two evils. On one hand, information that can be quite scary and entice teenagers to postpone sexual activity is suppressed because it might hurt their self-esteem. On the other hand, delivery is everything, and we risk losing their ever-so-short attention spans sharing inconvenient truths. After all, no one likes giving or receiving ill news.
Sometimes our sex drives can be quite similar.
It's been three weeks and we're still waiting for facts to come forward regarding the deceased newborn found in a tote bag in Drexel Hill. Medical reports indicate the baby was dead for at least two weeks and the mother is suspected to be a freshman at our University. However, the family's attorney claims this was an instance of Pregnancy Denial Syndrome.
Widener University Professor Doris Vallone, from the School of Nursing, studies the phenomenon.
"Teenagers have magical thinking; they believe if they don't deal with it, it will go away," Vallone told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
What I find curious isn't so much the prevalence of the syndrome, which is very difficult to measure, but whether we do much to confront such magical thinking in public sex education classes for guys and girls alike.
I'm not talking about the nuances between abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education. Having gone through both in a public school and university setting, I think both should be taught, but abstinence might be more effective towards younger ages. No, I'm talking about the cold facts regarding contraception failure, sexually transmitted disease, and the broken family, what many deride as the scare tactic.
It's an argument over the lesser of two evils. On one hand, information that can be quite scary and entice teenagers to postpone sexual activity is suppressed because it might hurt their self-esteem. On the other hand, delivery is everything, and we risk losing their ever-so-short attention spans sharing inconvenient truths. After all, no one likes giving or receiving ill news.
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