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WASHINGTON – Teen sex is not OK even for youths in a committed relationship, challenged an expert in response to a new study published this week.
The contested study, featured Thursday in the American Journal of Sociology, suggested that having premarital sex does not harm the mental health of teens in relationships, except for those age 15 or younger whose relationships tend to be less committed, according to USA Today.
“For this study to state that teens 15 and younger tend to be less committed in sexual relationships demonstrates its incredible disconnect from reality,” said Linda Klepacki, analyst for sexual health at Focus on the Family Action, according to FOTF’s Citizenlink.
“Research shows us that young girls are much more likely to be pressured into sex by much older boys than older teen girls,” she said. “The term ‘statutory rape’ is more apropos for 14-year-olds having sex than the term ‘committed.’”
The report by Anne Meir, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, found that those most vulnerable to depression or low self-esteem are girls who had their first sexual experience before 15 and boys before 14. However, her study overall found that sexual activity is not mentally harmful for teens over the age of 15 - leading to the suggestion that teens having sex under 15 are in a less committed relationship.
“Among those who had sex, only about 14 percent experienced increases in depression or decreases in self-esteem,” Meir said, according to USA Today. “In terms of depression, these are relatively modest increases. For 86 percent, it had no big effect.”
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Yet other studies have shown the opposite – that teen sexual experience, even for teens in the upper age bracket, is emotionally harmful.
A report by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in 2003 using similar nationally representative data to Meir found that sexually active teens are significantly less likely to be happy and more prone to depression than teens that are not having sex.
In addition, 63 percent of teens 12-19 years-old who had sex said they wish they had waited longer, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
At the heart of the debate is a multi-million dollar federal abstinence-only program, Title V, set to expire on June 30.
Democratic leaders have vowed to pull the plug on the program and not renew its funding after citing evidence from a new report which claims the nation’s abstinence-only program is a failure because students enrolled in the course were no less likely to engage in sexual intercourse than students who had not taken the course.
The latest study furthers the argument of opponents of abstinence-only education.
