Why is it so important we talk to our kids about sexuality health? After all, you DID tell them to wait until they were married, right? Or in love? Or at LEAST in college….? And we know if you told them to wait, they most certainly will! (Shall I remind you of my little skydiving story?)
The fact is, kids are deciding to engage in sexual activity before they are married. Or in college. Or even in love. Don’t believe it? Take a look at this stuff….
I’m not showing you these statistics to frighten you, because when you think about it, if about half of high school students have had sex by graduation, then half have not! I’m almost 100% certain your child is in the 50% who has not engaged in such activities because, well, you asked him or her not to, right? We will then address this blog for all those OTHER parents…
Okay. I’m done laughing. Whether or not your child is sexually active RIGHT NOW is irrelevant. One day he or she will be, and we want to arm our children with tools to help them make solid, healthy choices.
The good news is that in the last 20 years, high school kids have been choosing to wait to have sex. In 1991 54.1% of students engaged in sexual activity – in 2011 it’s only about 47%. Also, kids are using condoms more frequently as well. Yay!
However, out of 20 million new STI diagnoses, half are found in the 15-24 year old age group. Yikes. I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure my kids stay healthy. However, if they do contract an STI, I want to be confident they know how to handle their situation.
If you would like more information on some of the stats given, click on the link below to the CDC page. It has volumes of information you can look over.
**The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) is a survey given to students across the country that asks about different aspects of their healthy (or lack-of) behaviors. The study breaks down results according to gender and race/ethnicity as well, however I used the results for ALL kids. This information is used to look at trends and to figure out if our educational efforts in the community and schools is working. Using that information, we can then figure out the changes needed to improve how we address these health-behavior issues.
