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"Called the Hotshot, the condom has been produced after government research showed 12 to14-year-olds did not use sufficient protection when having sex."
This article from the 3rd of March concerns launching condomes for 12-14 year old boys in Switzerland:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...itzerland.html
"Seriously? I thought. Condoms for kids?"
A comment to above article.
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-r...n-switzerland/
What say ye? Should 12-14 year old boys have condoms?
No!
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Originally Posted by thir
Let's see.... as a teenager in the 60's I had condom access.
Never got any friendly ladies pregnant, never got any STD's.
I feel that if a male is producing sperm, then he BETTER be doing something to slow down the little buggers. Don't rely on the female all the time.
In this AIDS and fellow-bugs society it behooves every male to use whatever protection is available. Remember the old saying "VD travels in the best circles"?
Ah, heck. Forget it. All the uppity-uppity high-moral folks can go stick their head in the sand and pretend "Johnny" will just say no to sex. Yeah, right. That's how I got grand-children!
The reply to the article brought out some good points. Maybe the parents and school systems here in the U.S. should step back and rethink their Victorian messed up minds and do serious sex education.
Here's an idea. Why make the kids go to school! They know what they want to do so let them!
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Originally Posted by oww-that-hurt
Absolutely they should ... anyone who is sexually active should have a thorough education and the proper means to protect themselves and others.
That includes 12 -14yr old boys ... and girls.
It loooooong past time to look past our conditioned morality issues ... and face what is real. To stop placing these preteens in a manufactured dilemma. Time to face that "just say no" doesn't work unless they have the education and understanding of why it might be the right choice for them to say no.
Seriously ... "because it's the right thing to do" or "you'll go to hell for sinning" or "wait for marriage" just doesn't hold up well against all those endorphins, pheromones and other biological intensities that people of that age are dealing with.
However on the bright side of abstinence only education ... apparently females who have only this kind of sex education are more likely to engage in oral and anal sex! Yay ... good job moral majority. lmao.
Respectfully,
TS
Just when I thought it was safe to enter a thread where no one would try to make it personal,,,looks up and rolls my eyes.
I say YES they should have access to condoms and birth control, boy, girl, hermaphrodite it doesnt matter.
Teach them to not have sex at that age all you wish, if they want they will find a way to do it anyway. They may as well know how to be safe.
:) lets stay on topic here ok folks? (I am referring to the removed post not yours denu)
Thank you very much.
Respectfully,
TS
While it's true that 12-14 is far too young for kids to be having sex, it's undeniable that they are anyway. Trying to hold them back, keeping them uneducated, only hurts them in the long run. If they're going to have sex anyway, better by far that they're prepared and knowledgeable. So yes, provide condoms to kids (boys AND girls) and allow doctors to prescribe birth control medications to sexually active girls.
And most important of all, GOOD, intelligent sex education classes, for all kids. Take away some of the mystery and excitement, and you take away some of the causes of early sex in the first place. Keeping kids ignorant and unable to obtain birth control only makes for more teenage pregnancies and transmission of STD's.
(Didn't see the flames as they were removed long before I got here. So nothing said here is relevent to what may or may not have gone before...)
I heartily approve of sex education at a young age, curiosity appeased is activity deferred. It was true for me for alchohol, for tobacco, and possibly for sex (who knows how much earlier I would have started... but none-the-less, I did start early.)
And yes, that included condoms. I'd rather see a little youthful promiscurity than a little too youthful parenting.
And as to whether it's appropriate at that age... that's a societal convention. There was a time that 13 year olds were expected to make their own way in life, adding to the financial potential of the family... and adding to the family through marriage and child rearing.
Even in this country, just a few centuries ago, most "children" were fully contributing adults, already out of school and working full time by their teens.
So absolutely... if we wish to prolong their "childhood" and afford them the opportunities modern life delivers... rather than pretending that sexual activity doesn't start at puberty, educate... we should educate them and help protect them.
One, non-parent, opinion. I'd like to think, as my parents did, that I would have this opinion regardless.
I am a parent, Oz. Two boys, both grown now. I still get a chuckle remembering the time my wife found a condom in my oldest son's pocket while doing his laundry. She was furious! Wanted to wring his neck. I asked her, "Would you be happier if he was screwing around without condoms?" That quieted her down. A little!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozme52
Don't know how I would have reacted if I'd had daughters, though. <shudder>
Did not see the removed post either, but it seems to me people were before and are now.Quote:
Originally Posted by TantricSoul
This is a good point. Actually the concept of 'children' being a seperate categoy of people did not come about until about 18th or 19th century.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozme52
Leo9 reminds me that in Shakespears 'Romeo and Juliet' Romeo was 15 and Juliet 13 and that was not considered anything speciel by his audience. Romeo and Juliet were old enough to marry, and Romeo to carry a sword and use it.
In the 12th century daughters of the nobility were often married off at 13-14 years old.
A close relative of mine had her debut at 12, I was a late bloomer at 18 though I made up for lost time ;-)
Laws recognize children as 'children' until a certain age, but biology has its own laws regardless. I must agree with the people who thinks that information and acces to condomes are a must.
Endorphins rule!?!?!
Then there is no such thing as morality?
Morality is like bravery, making the hard choices.
Besides in times past copius means of birth control was not available and yet there was not as many unwed births as now. And that does not even consider the number of pregnancies terminated.
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Originally Posted by TantricSoul
Don't you think that the fact that there are no consequences for their actions has a large bearing on the choices they make.
In a large part your post also reads as if kids have always been engaging in sex at the first opportunity. Yes I know a percentage do but that is not how your post reads.
All kids are going to have sex. At first opportunity. So let's not teach them discipline, just let them do whatever they want whenever. We will find a way to fix it so it does not present adverse consequences.
In large part that seems like teaching that there are no rules of any kind!!
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Originally Posted by denuseri
I think there is something more to it than just "mystery & excitement"
No matter how you think about it the species has divisions. Some are meaningless. But perhaps the greatest division is, although somewhat arbitrary, child and adult. Activities routine and normal for the adult are restricted from the child. Unless one wishes to say that no human activity is to be denied the child. Which would include sex, drugs, war, work, or any other number of things. Carried to that extreme, and many today bemoan the loss of childhood, means we will not have children. Merely little adults, which is how some actually refer to children already!
Just a few thoughts!
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Originally Posted by Thorne
"Even in this country, just a few centuries ago, most "children" were fully contributing adults, already out of school and working full time by their teens." (Ozme52)
Just a small little question.
Does anyone know why school is out for summer and returns in the fall?
In terms of actual penetrative sex I was a later starter than thir, but I had been playing sexual games of stripping and genital manipulation (usually also involving bondage and play-torture, but that's another thread) with siblings and friends from about age 11. I have no evidence that this is unusual.
The fact that none of us considered including penile penetration in our games might have been influenced by the fact that we had been told what it involved, and could share an unspoken concensus that it was too serious for games, just as we wouldn't include a real knife in play-fights.
But from age 13 I was certainly ready to fantasise about it, and if I'd been lucky enough to have found a like minded partner I'd have been keen to try it for real. Again, I've no
reason to think this is unusual.
I have one of each! Made every effort to deal with them as thinking entities. My daughter heard a lot of the traditional daddy threats about how their boyfriends would be treated. My favorite being a spiked baseball bat. But in reality her friendships were treated as just that. With attendant curfews and analysis as needed, same for my son.
After having made a multi-year attempt to teach values, responsibility, and yes, morals (which involve more than sex) the only option left when those come into play is to provide guidance, when required.
Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world. Even so one can not just abdicate, or allow others to substitute for you. Remember if you want a job done correct ....
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Originally Posted by Thorne
I think you're reading too much into my statement, Duncan. I'm not saying we should unilaterally permit rampant sexual orgies among teenagers. I'm saying educate them, responsibly not with fairy tales, to insure they know the problems and responsibilities of their actions. And if they DO become active, make sure they have access to condoms and birth control, where necessary, to insure they violently thrust into the world of adulthood by becoming parents while they are still, by our culture's standards, children.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
As for when children should be treated as adults, this can vary from person to person and from activity to activity. Obviously nature turns children into fully functioning adults, sexually, at puberty. Emotionally they may not be ready, but this is a product of culture more than nature. If they were taught from early childhood that they would become adults at a certain age they would be more emotionally able to handle it.
As for drugs and alcohol, obviously no one is adult enough to handle putting toxins into their system, but it has been shown that most people under the age of about 19 or 20 are unable to properly deal with the effects of alcohol, biologically speaking, than older people can. Younger children can be seriously damaged by even small amounts of alcohol in their systems. So our culture has decided that it's better to restrict alcohol to those who are old enough to metabolize it more readily, which we have defined legally as 21 years old.
As for war, well, children have been going to war almost as long as men have. Again, puberty seemed to be the point at which a boy became a man, with all the responsibilities that implied, including going to war. Our culture has assigned the age of 18 to determine if a man is able to be sent to war, but it is arbitrary at best. Some might be mature enough to handle it at a younger age, some might never be mature enough. (Aside, sort of: I was intrigued, and pleased, when watching "Master and Commander" by their somewhat historically accurate portrayal of what we would consider children as crew members of a ship of war. This was quite common throughout most of our history. Not surprisingly, though, they chose to ignore the sexual side of this in the movie.)
So yes, Duncan, sometimes we need to treat our children as little adults. Make them aware of the problems which can occur when engaging in sexual activities, emotional and physical. Teach them the reasons they are feeling what they are feeling, and how to control those feelings. Let them know that masturbation, far from being the dirty, filthy habit that some would procaim, is actually a healthy activity, albeit one which should be practiced in private and discretely (kinks aside, of course). Teach them that they should feel free to say no if they don't think they are ready, and that they shouldn't allow themselves to be pressured into sex. But sooner or later some kids are going to experiment. It's what kids do. It's how they learn how to be adults. Regardless of what morality you try to teach them, some kids are going to want to make their own rules. All you can do then is try to steer them in the way you think is right and hope they don't fuck up their lives while doing it.
As two other contributors have pointed out, historically speaking, childhood is one of those meaningless divisions you mention. Obviously, younger people are physically unable to do some things, but up till the last few centuries the rule for everything was that when they're big enough they're old enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
In the 10th Century "Njal's Saga" (which might be called the first recorded celebrity biography) the hero at age 12 asks his father to take him along to a feast, and is told that he can't come because he gets too violent when he's drunk. So he steals a cart-horse and comes anyway, gets into a fight and kills another boy. All this is reported as the story of a berserker who started young, but with no idea that there was anything intrinsically strange about such behaviour in a "child". Compare with a couple of recent cases of murders by preteens in the UK, where the media response has been not only a perfectly reasonable outrage at the details of the killings, but also an almost superstitious horror as if there were something monstrously unnatural about the perpetrators, purely on account of their age.
The reason for the invention of childhood, in the opinion of historians, was firstly the need for a higher level of general education in more technically advanced societies. It therefore became necessary to class people as schoolchildren who had previously been classed as young adults. This became complicated by the Victorian obsession with innocence, narrowly defined as ignorance of sex; moralists took the completely artificial redefinition of childhood as real, and equated teenage sex with child abuse. The resulting conventions were so hammered into Western society that when Europeans encountered cultures where sex still started at puberty, they took it as evidence of the savages' immorality and set out to save them by teaching their children shame.
There are areas where it is a genuine advance of civilisation to restrict young people's access to adult practices: young Njal's drunken brawls were the mark of a barbaric culture. But if we are going to debate the question of chidren's sexual behaviour, it must be on the basis of known realities of physical and mental health and the welfare of society, not an undiscussed assumption that some things are just wrong because it's always been so.
If I remember my history, it was because when the mandatory school laws were enacted it was understood that farm children were needed on the farm. There was far too much work to do to allow them to "fool around with education".Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
Which shows another reason this distinction is arbitrary. Your "we" is the USA: here in the UK that limit is set as 18, and in other countries lower still. Similarly, there is no global agreement, even within the Western world, on the legal age for sex. In my and thir's countries sex is legal at 16, and sex between younger teens (as illustrated by the original article) is officially ignored unless older people are involved or there is evidence of coercion or bullying. So far, this has not led to the fall of civilisation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thorne
Yeah, the spiked baseball bat sounds like what I would be thinking about. But it's good to hear that you were treating your children as young adults, not as chidren. You were teaching them what they needed to know as they moved into the adult world. As you say, it is a very hard job indeed, one which seemingly will never end.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
And I, for one, am not saying one should abdicate that responsibility. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. Some things, such as biology and psychology, might be better taught in schools, with qualified teachers who know more about the subjects than I do. That doesn't mean you can just ignore the topic, though. There is still much about it that must be taught at home. Morality being perhaps the most important. But there has to be a certain amount of common sense and understanding mixed in with that morality. Trying to teach your kids that something is filthy and sinful and disgusting one day but perfectly fine once you sign that marriage certificate is just confusing the issues. Sure, you can try to impress upon them that they'll be happier if they wait, but at the same time they are seeing all around them signs that sexual activity among loving couples can be just as rewarding without marriage.
Perhaps your kids didn't experiment with sex, or drugs, or alcohol. But how can you be sure? And if they were sexually active, what could you have done about it except try to understand them? Would you have locked your daughter away in the basement and found a suitable mate for her, as some cultures might?
No, it's far better to teach your kids what they NEED to know, not hide it from them until you think they're old enough.
My responsibility is to teach my kids values, morals, and about making choices. The technical stuff is what I hire teachers for.
When our kids are young we teach them that cigarettes are nasty and disgusting?
If we do not instill them with values and a sense of morality how can we expect them to make the hard choices? The clerk gave me too much change! What oh what do I do??
That "loving couple" part is very important! Nor is it anywhere near what the subject of this thread is asking about!
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Originally Posted by Thorne
The sad and bad reality is that in very many places in the world, this is exactly what happens. Children soldiers, children addicts, children prostitutes, children workers.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
Now, I think most would agree that that is not what we want for our children, or any children, and that the protection from working exploitation and so on is a good thing indeed. But there is such a thing as going overboard with it, and seeing children as sort 'cut out of' the world we all live in, as little blank slates just waiting for us to write on, and nothing to do with the 'real' world.
Children are personalities with opinions, and they share our world for better or worse. We cannot protect them from it, nor in some cases should we, meaning they must learn the world, in as protected ways as can be managed, but they must not be kept apart from it or be seen as apart from it.
Yes it is. YOUR values, YOUR morals, and YOUR choices. But you have to understand that some of those values, morals and choices are not universal. Some are cultural, some are religious, some are inherent. And unless you terrorize your kids into following your ways, chances are that somewhere along the line they are going to experiment with someone else's values, morals and choices.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
Then make sure that your shool district, or church leaders, or political leaders, don't restrict the "technical stuff" that the teachers need to teach. It's only biology, after all.Quote:
[/B][/COLOR]The technical stuff is what I hire teachers for.[/B][/COLOR]
No we teach them that they are unhealthy, especially for children, just like alcohol. "Nasty" and "disgusting" are subjective terms. You may think that broccoli tastes good and is good for you. I think it's "nasty". Who's right?Quote:
[/B][/COLOR]When our kids are young we teach them that cigarettes are nasty and disgusting?[/B][/COLOR]
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Originally Posted by thir
Quote:
Originally Posted by thir
In a manner of speaking they are blank slates. Else why would they need to be taught values or morals?
Never intended to suggest they be " 'cut out of' the world". But they do need to be taught about the world.
As far as "waiting to write on". That is exactly what the schools are doing. Unfortunately much of what they are writing is not appropriate!
Quote:
Originally Posted by thir
Personalities, yes! But their "opinions require development. Learning the world is a dual task job, that of their parents and the schools. Many parents abdicate to the schools and that is a bad thing. And much of schooling is misdirected.
I never said you couldn't teach them morality and ethics, thats not what the topic of the thread is even about anyway.
Again is simple logic that the knowledge of safe sexual practices should be available.
If anything we would be the imoral and unethical ones for making such things forbidden fruit.
Actually, it's only some morals that need to be taught. Watch children, very young children playing together. They experiment with each other, quite literally. One may strike the other, causing that other child some distress. If the parents immediately jump in and stop things, the first child learns that he can hurt his companions without any repercussions. If you leave them alone, however, the second child will probably retaliate. They have both learned a valuable lesson, without any intervention from "moral" adults. This is most likely they way in which our most basic moral attitudes were originally formed. People learned that there were prices to pay for certain actions. If the price is too high, they learn not to do them.Quote:
Originally Posted by DuncanONeil
Appropriate to whom? If the schools are doing their jobs, and we are doing ours, our children should be learning about the real world. And sexuality is a part of the real world. Like it or not, our children are going to be exposed to it for the rest of their lives. Far better to have them learn the truth young, when it can make a lasting impression, than later on when their minds are already too warped to understand the truth.Quote:
As far as "waiting to write on". That is exactly what the schools are doing. Unfortunately much of what they are writing is not appropriate!
Parents relying solely on the schools is certainly a bad thing. But to some degree, the schools are teaching the values of the community and culture to which they belong. If they are not then it is up to the parents to change them. But remember, the schools are teaching to children of different races, different economic classes, different religions, and vastly diverse cultural backgrounds. They must concentrate on those things which are required by all for their future survival as adults. Trying to limit what is taught to those topics considered "safe" by a vocal minority, or even a silent majority, would be just as wrong as not teaching them at all.Quote:
Many parents abdicate to the schools and that is a bad thing. And much of schooling is misdirected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by denuseri
Jumping in here for a moment: As the originator of the thread, I'd like to say that I do not mind if the discussion goes in that direction. These things - what to teach our children - are so darn difficult and good to get turned over now and again.
Agreed unreservedly.Quote:
Again is simple logic that the knowledge of safe sexual practices should be available.
If anything we would be the imoral and unethical ones for making such things forbidden fruit.