Teenage Sexuality

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Adolescence is a time during which societal and family values, attitudes, and behaviors are learned. This period in a person’s life is marked by challenges and difficulties in self-exploration and identification. Sexual relationships are especially challenging and difficult for adolescent women and men. Teenage fertility is a reality for most countries that needs to be dealt with effectively. It is necessary that young people are educated about STDs, health risks, and contraception and that societies on the whole are made more aware of teenage sexuality.

In different countries, there are different social attitudes about sex and premarital relationships. This influences an adolescent’s decision making process concerning sex and pregnancy. In the United States from the 1950s, social mores enforced gender roles: women were domestic housewives and men were breadwinners. Women’s sexuality was monogamous, and she was expected to remain committed to her one and only husband. During the 1960s and 1970s, women broke from this rigid stereotype and began to define their own sexuality. With the availability of birth control (the pill) now widespread, women could control their fertility, enabling them to have more power over their sexual choices. The 1980s occurred with an AIDS scare, and sexual relations came with the threat of a terminal disease. Today, gender roles are constantly being challenged and redefined in both developed and developing countries. Across class and ethnicity, it is difficult for young people today to make decisions about sexual activity.

With the rise in urbanization and industrialization, premarital sexual activity began to increase (Luker, 141). This phenomenon is not limited to the United States, but has o...

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...ntraception. It is also critical that young women are empowered to make decisions in the interest of themselves. It is also important to try to increase the status of women so that women are not demeaned to submissive slaves of patriarchal men. It would also be beneficial to educate people about the effects of nutrition and health. This would help to delay menarche in adolescent women, reducing the reproductive years and limiting the chance of pregnancy. Another component to educational programs needs to be the implementation of prenatal care and pregnancy counseling. Teenage women need to know what their options are once they are pregnant, and also need to receive some counseling to support her decision. If more teens are educated about their choices in contraception and sexual activity, it is likely that birth control would be used more often and more effectively.

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