This week the Center for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics released new findings from 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth in a report titled Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing, 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth.
The report has some good news for sex educators: For one thing, just 43 percent of never-married female teens and 42 percent of never-married male teens have had sexual intercourse at least once, a number that has not changed significantly, according to the CDC, and which has been in overall decline over the last 20 years. That's an important stat for comprehensive sex education proponents running up against conservative commentators who insist today's teens are headed to hell in a horny handbasket, and it's one that bears repeating: As sex education has increased and become more comprehensive, teen's levels of sexual experience have decreased. In other words, today's teens are less likely to be sexually experienced than their parents would have been as teens a generation ago.
The big news from the report that's getting a lot of press this week is also good news for sex educators and proponents of comprehensive sex education: 8 in 10 teen males reported condom use in their first sexual experience, "an increase of 9 percentage points from 2002," according to the CDC. Translation: The infamous old condom-on-banana demonstration and other teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease mitigation efforts by sex educators, health departments, free condom distribution programs in major cities across the country, and campaigns like the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy are paying off significantly.
"The nation's teen pregnancy and birth rates are now at record lows and the credit for this truly extraordinary progress goes to teens themselves who are making better decisions about sex and contraceptive use," said Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, in a statement released on Wednesday. "We also applaud NCHS for this important report and for continuing to set the standard for quality data on many important issues."
In fact, teen contraception use is up all around: The report found "a significant increase" -- 2 percent over 2002 -- in female teenagers who had used hormonal methods other than the pill (contraceptive patches, etc), and a 6 percent increase in the percent of male teens who had used a condom in combination with a female partner's hormonal contraception method. The report refers to this as "dual contraceptive use" and that's a win for comprehensive sex education, too: It demonstrates that more of today's teens know hormonal contraception doesn't prevent sexually transmitted diseases and that condom use isn't 100 percent effective against unplanned pregnancy.
To download the full report and related documents, www.CDC.gov/NCHS/.
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