Today’s teenagers would not have an also unbridled sexual life maybe that one says it since some years. The majority among them would have generally responsible behaviors concerning sexuality.
That is what the authors conclude has made heart the Canadian Association heart Teenage Health (ACSA). The researchers analyses the results of has survey conducted in Canada at 1 171 teenagers aged 14 to 17 years and 1 139 mothers of teenage in the same age.
According to the results of the poll, 27% of the teenagers interrogated were sexually active to a middle age of 15 years. Those that had an active sexuality, the girls as the boys, had had 2,5 sexual partners on average and their current relation lasted since about eight months. With regard to their last sexual relation, 76% among them told to have used a condom.
These data present a picture of the sexuality of the young less alarming than the one that is often transported in the media’s. The very precocious active sexuality (at the children and the pre-teens), the sexual practices to very high risk and the sexual violence would be less widespread than one could have believed it.
Close to 40% of the teenagers said to have become sexually active because they found the good person. However, it is the simple curiosity that pushed 47% of the respondents to have sexual relations. The pressure of the friends (10%) as well as the one of the media’s (6%) don’t appear as determining factors. To have some feelings for sound or his/her/its partner doesn’t seem to be always essential: 38% of the teenagers told to have had sexual relations already only for the pleasure.
Of the limited knowledge
However, besides the dangers associated to the VIH, the knowledge of the young on the sexual health and the infections transmitted sexually are rather limited, even at those that estimate themselves very well aware. About 69% of the young interrogated said not to be able to find the information that they searched for concerning sexuality and 62% declared to get round some obstacles in their research of information.
The school and the friends are the most quoted sources of information concerning sexuality by the teenagers (respectively 80% and 76%). The parents arrive in third position: for 63% of the young, they are the main source of information. according to the Dare Miriam Huffman, pediatrician and member of the team that led the survey, " the parents underestimate the importance of the role for which the young wait to see to play them concerning transmission of information concerning the sexuality and the sexual health" systematically.
The young must have access at sources varied of information, conclude the authors of the report. They estimate that the governments, the authorities of public health and the world of the education must to transmit to the young an exact, accessible information, complete and adapted to the reality concerning sexuality.
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