By the time they graduate from high school, 7 out of 10 girls and 8 out of 10 boys will have had sexual intercourse.

(Source: The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, http://www.cpyu.org.)

"A survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy found that 39% of teenagers said 'morals, values and or religious beliefs' were major factors in a teen's decision to have sex. And when it comes to a teen's decision to have sex-parents were the most influential-compared to friends-by a 3 to 1 margin. A companion study found that girls with no religious affiliation tend to be younger when they first have sex and are more sexually active."

(Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, http://www.teenpregnancy.org/keepprrl.html, quoted in "Culture Fast Facts," March 15, 2002, The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, www.cpyu.org.)

"The purpose of this study was to explore the comparative contribution that multiple sources of education about sexual topics (family, peers, media, school, and professionals) make on teen sexual knowledge, attitudes and behavior."  So begins a new Education study examining the role of sources in sex ed.

Using a measure of 14 different topics, the researchers found that there was no significant difference in sexual knowledge, regardless of the source of that information.  Not surprisingly, however, when assessing the sexual attitudes of the high school students, the researchers found that more liberal sexual attitudes were fostered by peer and professional education about intercourse (R=.29; p<.05).  This result has been long known by critics of both school-based and expert-based sex education.

What may surprise some of these critics, though, were the results when actual sexual behavior was examined: "A combination of less education from school and more education from non-sibling family regarding sexual intercourse was predictive of more frequent sexual behavior; 8% of the variance was accounted for (R = .28; p<.05).  Similarly, more education about birth control from relatives was predictive of more frequent sexual behaviors, accounting for 9% of the variance (R = .30; p<.05)."

While some of these results may seem counter-intuitive for those who want to keep sex education in the home, perhaps it suggests a path away from sex education as it has been traditionally practiced, even within the family.  More information is not necessarily a good thing: education is not, and cannot be, amoral.  As Theodore Roosevelt stated: "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."  Without some ethical guidance to temper knowledge, teenagers will act on their knowledge, with predictable results. Certainly, it can come as no real surprise to anyone that-even coming from parents-telling an adolescent how to avoid the consequences of sexual activity, that is, by contraception, will lead to more of that sexual activity.

(Cheryl L. Somers and Jamie H. Gleason, "Does Source of Sex Education Predict Adolescents' Sexual Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors?" Education, Vol. 121, No. 4 [Summer 2001]: 674-681.)