171–180 of 211 posts
I wonder how big a role obesity plays in all of this. It may be that teens are having less sex because so many of them have effectively taken themselves out of the sexual marketplace.
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Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?
Or: Teens are having more sex, but contraceptives are stopping more pregnancies.
Keeping the feminism/SJW/manosphere shenanigans in my peripheral vision, there's been a huge backlash rallying against single mothers in recent years. There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package.
Shaming single mothers for being on state assistance or child support only seemed to increase feminist resolve, but a tangible impact in reduced desirability in the larger dating pool may be pushing women to be more responsible.
"The first is the most important and may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessors, and more of them are taking advantage of innovations like long-acting injectable and implantable methods that can last years over a daily birth control pill. But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- des…
This runs counter to the belief that many have that when given higher access to contraceptives, teens will have more sex. Another knock against abstinence-only sex ed!
To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten.
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This theory doesn't make sense (and I read three articles that repeat what you say). If you use contraception, you won't have pregnancy. So why are the rates down? Health? Then why are 25% of kids obese (I looked up those figures). I can only assume that technology has created more social isolation.
> technology has created more social isolation This. If you think that technology has done a good job of informing teens about the risks of pregnancy and the importance of contraception, you are probably being far too optimistic in the face of a dire situation (i.e. mass estrangement).
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Yes, but you still had to get them shipped home, where parents would ask you what you've ordered. Now with amazon it takes 3 clicks, and you can get them delivered to a drop-off location anywhere(at least here in UK I can get amazon parcels delivered to a nearby corner shop for example).
Most teens do not have a credit card or access to their parents' on Amazon.
You would be surprised how many 5 year children make one-click purchases on their parents account. Suddenly all their favorite toys begin to appear magically at the door.
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Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?
Or: Teens are having more sex, but contraceptives are stopping more pregnancies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.
Education probably plays a good part in it. When I was growing up, and I'm only 30, we didn't get much sexual education in school, were taught to simply not have sex and many of my friends thought many untruths like pulling out is fine, douching is a form of contraception and even one unfortunate friend who thought ziplock bags were just as effective as condoms.
That's the big reason that, if it is mentioned at all in an educational context, it's to tell people not to do it, and play up the dangers. Scare the kids (who are at higher risk of the method failing) into no using it. Obviously, there are much better methods of birth control, but the withdrawal method gets a lot more flak than it deserves, IMO
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Vasalgel, an excellent contraceptive for men is slowly making its way through the FDA's testing process: https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/
Not sure why you're getting downvotes. From what I've read it is as effective as vasectomy, but fully reversible.
From the email:
> A key goal for the first Vasalgel studies, in addition to demonstrating the contraceptive's safety and effectiveness, was to establish its reversibility. Vasalgel was reversible after a year in rabbits, but as we've reported, reversibility has so far been elusive in large-animal studies.
> We suspect we simply haven't found a suitable large-animal model; for example the baboon vas deferens is smaller and more fragile than that of the human. We're cautiously optimistic that everything will be much easier in human trials, because the human vas is larger and sturdier. And we're hard at work trying some other things too. But in the meantime, the first clinical trial will be designed to include just men who aren't counting on reversibility, while we sort out those issues.
> Thousands of people would like to be in the first trial, but there are only a few spots. And the researcher will have to pick local men who are the best candidates and want vasectomy anyway. So we're trying to keep everybody's focus on the ultimate prize: getting Vasalgel to market, with availability to ALL. If trials go well, then the sky's the limit: we'll seek approvals to bring Vasalgel to market, starting in the U.S., E.U., and Canada... and expanding from there.
Anecdotally, I knew a few women in high school who got pregnant, and it seemed to add a great deal of excitement and hope for their future, rather than the other way around. If you have nothing going for you, having a kid can seem like a good plan.
If you start giving people other options, other things to work for, and exposing them to other cultures, they might find better alternatives. Heck, this whole thing might still be caused by the Internet! But not for the reasons some other people said...
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I'm 33 and grew up in the Bible belt. Looking back, I'm shocked at how good my Sex Ed was. We were taught that abstinence was the only 100% effective choice, but also about condoms and birth control pills, as well as things like the sponge (which was not recommended, but still covered) and long term hormonal implants. The biggest misinformation we were given was stuff that was genuinely believed then (and still belie…
I'm 34, and was in a religious, conservative, school. They did one sex ed class (a single one hour, one off thing). In it they mentioned how condoms fail a majority of the time, that you could get pregnant from oral sex (that semen could leak from the digestive tract to reproductive), and that mutual masturbation could also cause pregnancy (as in a guy could ejaculate in just the right way). It's like they went out o…
Well, there was that one case...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/02/01/ncbi-...