This Wholesome World

MANIFESTO

Having been with teenagers for more than 7000 days of my life, this story couldn't help but interest me:

Fewer teens and young adults are having sex, a government survey shows, and theories abound for why they're doing it less ...

Comprehensive sex education — which includes abstinence but also teaches contraception and safer sex skills — didn't go away during the Bush years, said Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a national sex education organization at Rutgers University.

"We have been redoubling efforts and it has made an impact on these statistics," Schroeder said.

It's an interesting—though not entirely convincing—post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.

I thought that "data over the years on vaginal intercourse among never-married adolescents shows a steady decline since 1988" might provide a caveat, but

the study, ... based on interviews of about 5,300 young people, ages 15 to 24 ... shows the proportion in that age group who said they'd never had oral, vaginal or anal sex rose in the past decade from 22 percent to about 28 percent.

It sounds like when young people say they "never had sex with that (wo)man," it might actually be the truth.