Resources for Best Choices in Relating to Kids About Sex

Children (beginning at age 12) in Nova Scotia are presently being told by educators and the province of NS to "Be prepared! Carry condoms and oral dams with you. If you don't need them, a friend might."  (Sex? Manual, p. 52)  It has been said, "Condoms don't cause sex any more than umbrellas cause rain" but if you are carrying an umbrella every day, it is because you are thinking about rain every day.  You can't change the weather, it is outside of your control, but only those obsessed with rain would carry their umbrella daily.  It is when we treat sexual activity like an uncontrollable force over which we have no power where we must "be prepared for in case it strikes" that we disregard any notion of self control, fidelity and faithfulness.  If we cannot control our urges, how can we ever trust anyone enough to marry them and believe their promise to be faithful?

READ ME FIRST: "To date, there is no evidence that condom use in oral or anal sex reduces your chance of getting most STIs.  However, there is some evidence that consistent use of condoms for anal sex may cut your chance of getting HIV by up to half.  In fact the only STD for which condoms actually reduce risk by more than half (if used every time) is HIV. This is corroborated by both the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - [the USA's] premier federal health agencies." - (source1  source2 source3)  Besides this, Herpes Simplex Virus types 1 & 2 (for which there is no cure) can spread through kissing alone.  (Note: Efforts are made to keep this site up to date.  However, the scientific research is continuing to bring new results which may need to be compared to correct this site.)

Using condoms 100% of the time 100% correctly only reduces risk for syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia by about half in adults. - (source)  Youth statistics are even lower. Maybe a child thinking that condoms "protect" him/her is what contributing to the epidemic proportions of STIs among Canadian youth today. As it says in the “Sex?” manual on page 43, “In Canada, young people, ages 15-24, have the highest rate of STIs. The rate of STIs is also increasing faster in this age group than in any other.”

We believe it is counter-productive to teach children beginning at age 12 or 14 to carry condoms at all times (as educators in Nova Scotia are now doing - see Sex? Manual, Pg. 52) and try to reduce teen pregnancy and STIs at the same time.  By carrying condoms every day, the young person has a constant reminder of sex (beyond his/her own hormones).  If a situation presented itself for children to engage in sex, they would be more eager to try it if they are carrying condoms than if they were not.  They may think that they are "prepared" for sex by the simple possession of a condom.

Uganda:  "To encourage children to use condoms is to admit that you have no faith in the ability of human beings to make correct choices, once they are equipped with the right information. The young people of Uganda have proved that people, even young people, can make correct choices, because the greatest reduction in the number of infections has occurred among the age group of 15 to 25 years, and this reduction occurred in the period before the onslaught of the condom campaign in Uganda ... Giving young people condoms is tantamount to giving them a license to go out and be promiscuous; it leads to certain death." (emphasis ours) - Taken from an address by Her Excellency Janet K. Museveni First Lady of the Republic of Uganda "Common Ground: A Shared Vision for Health" Conference Hosted by The Medical Institute for Sexual Health Washington, DC -- June 17- 19 2004 (source)

Hamilton, ON:  Hamilton, Ontario's Public Health Department, in a 1998 report on their perception of the need for sexual health clinics, wrote, “The availability of effective birth control led the way for more liberal attitudes towards pre-marital sexual involvement and adolescents began participating in sexual activities in significant numbers.”  In 1996, Hamilton-Wentworth Family Action Council intervened and educated City Hall, local school boards and parents about the failure of our sexual health clinics. This led to a 29.7% cut-back in Public Health/Planned Parenthood sexual health services to our youths, which, in turn resulted in adolescent attendance at the clinics plummeting 57%. According to Mr. Bielak and Planned Parenthood, this should have had ‘tragic consequences’, however, it did not. During this same period of time from 1997 to 2000, while service cutbacks were imposed and attendance rates dropped, Hamilton’s teen pregnancy rates declined 27.3% to 37.3 / 1000 which is the lowest recorded teen pregnancy rate in Hamilton’s history.
     The truth is, that Public Health’s condomized safe-sex approach under a cloak of confidentiality, has resulted in a generation of well-adjusted fornicators, and this is the tragedy. Like it or not, the best method of birth control for adolescents continues to be their parents. The less our youth are exposed to the Public Health ‘safe-sex’ ideology the better they fare." (source)

We are sending a mixed message to kids that says, “Sex is dangerous, so use a condom" (which does not make them safe) while at the same time we say, “Smoking is dangerous, so don’t smoke.” We do not offer school kids extra filters for their cigarettes. We tell them “Smoking is not for you.” We do not educate children in how much they should drink to avoid getting drunk. We tell them, “Drinking is not for you.” Why do we seem so afraid to say to our children, “Sex is not for you”? What parent of a 14 year old would not blink an eye at their child’s arrival home from school to announce they’ll be up in their room having sex with friends? Are we simply trying to avoid guilt associated with questions like, "Mommy has sex with her boyfriend, why can't I?"

Dr. Meg Meeker, author of "Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing our Kids," cites a study indicating that "teens who developed sound morality and avoided non-marital sex and other enticements of the teen culture had three things working for them: (1) a relationship with a stable adult (parents); (2) friends who shared the same moral values; and (3) a religious grounding."