R.E.S.P.E.C.T

Why Scare Tactics Don’t Stop Sex

A new study to be published in the August issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health is offering encouragement to parents who prefer to use love, understanding, and reasonable boundaries over fear, intimidation, and control in raising their kids. From a prepared release:

In the new study, Coley and colleagues examined the results of an annual survey of American teens born between 1980 and 1984. The researchers looked at the survey results for 4,980 teens and used a number of statistical techniques to try to pinpoint the effects of various parenting styles.

Regular family activities — “things like eating dinner together as a family or engaging in fun activities or religious activities together” — seemed to make sexual activity less likely, Coley said.

Children also seemed to be less sexually active if their parents did not engage in “negative and psychologically controlling behaviors.”

Of course the study can’t draw any causal conclusions but the size of the sample and strength of the findings will hopefully give some parents pause. When I’ve been invited to talk to parent groups about sexuality in the family there are usually a few parents who come up afterward who want to be open and trust their kids, but who are so afraid of the consequences of unprotected sex and the possibility of sexual assault, that they give up and try fear tactics.

I understand the draw. If you keep saying to your kids things like “you would never do something so stupid” “you’d have to be an idiot to take that risk” eventually you can delude yourself into believing that by saying it you make it more likely to be so. It’s a nice story to tell yourself, but it’s still a delusion and it doesn’t really keep your kids any safer.

Leaving space for your kids to take educated and calculated risks is much scarier. But if you’re doing your job and giving them the education they need about sex as well as the skills to calculate risks and make informed decisions you’re actually making them safer. At least that’s what these study findings suggest. I’ll give the last word to Prof. Don Operario who commented in the release on the study findings:

“This research is not necessarily saying to parents: ‘Go and talk to your teens about sex and counsel them on condom use, pregnancy, HIV and delaying sex…It is saying: ‘Support your teens, spend time with them, be less critical and controlling and more nurturing in their adolescent development. This, in turn, can help them make more informed, safe decisions about sexual activity.’”

Read more – Center for the Advancement of Health: Freedom’s Just Another Word for Less Sexually Active Teens

Related – Taking to Your Kids About Sex