Everybody's Doing It

Essay # 50785

Child, Youth Issues
Gender and Sexuality > Gender Studies
Gender and Sexuality > Sexual Politics

Covers key points surrounding teenagers and premarital sex.

1,882 words () | 8 sources | MLA | 2002 United States

Paper Summary:

According to a national study report done in 1995 by the State Department of Education, every 10 seconds, a teenager becomes sexually active for the first time, meaning that 7742 teens become sexually active each day. Of those, 46% used no form of contraception. This paper shows that the problems of AIDS and other STDs, abortions, and babies born out of wedlock are costly in terms of both human heartache and the strain on America's financial and medical resources. The paper argues that, although preaching sexual abstinence is praiseworthy, it is not realistic in a world that promotes sex so widely through the media.

From the Paper:

"Teen pregnancy, Bill Clinton says, is the nation's "most serious social problem." (Whitman 1). For him, crying over the affliction of "babies having babies" is a no-lose proposal, as it is for most politicians. But in preaching the virtues of adolescent abstinence, Clinton failed to mention (and probably is not likely to in the future) the startling fact that many more 20-something adults than teenagers give birth to babies out of wed-lock, and not only that but the most current social ills that are looped around sexual behavior (STDs, abortions, etc.) arise chiefly from adults who have premarital sex, and not from sexually active teens (Whitman 1)."