Do you think birth control should be taught as part of sex ed?

Question

I don't know about you guys, but I don't remember being taught about the various kinds of birth control when I went through sex ed in the 7th grade. Maybe it's differant in differant places, but for me, it was just "This is what your body is like, this is how sex works, but don't do it untill you're married." Luckily, my mom did tell me about condoms, the various pills and patches, and other forms of birth control. I think if more teenagers were taught about birth control options in schools, less of them would be getting pregnant/getting their girlfriends pregnant.

What do you think? Should schools include birth control in their sex ed curriculum? Why or why not? Would you, as a parent, teach your kid about birth control? How old do you think they should be when you tell them about it?

Elaine F, I'm from Texas.

Answer 1

I absolutely believe birth control should be taught in schools. We learned about condoms in junior high, and again in high school along with other methods of birth control. Each time the message was pretty much the same: "Having sex involves a lot of responsibility and you probably shouldn't do it while you're this young, but if you do, use a condom!"

My analogy is a family living by a lake that has sharks in it. You're going to warn the children not to swim in it, and explain the dangers of swimming in this particular lake. But you'll still teach them how to swim, right? Just in case they decide to take a quick dip without your knowledge?

Answer 2

The kids today are taught all about condoms because condoms are the safer sex method My son is learning about it now in 6th grade move all the children to Canada all other methods are for pregnancy that is a personal decision and your our responsibilty Educate your children on what is important. The most affective Birth control is Marriage

Answer 3

Absolutely would help prevent at least some teenage pregnancies and a few abortions.How can you use what you haven't been taught? HAVE ANY OF YOU PAID ATTENTION TO WHAT ABOUT 2% OF THE QUESTIONS ARE ABOUT ON THIS SITE?!!!!! (From ages 12 to 27!) yes I talk to my kids about birth control and I would start at about 9, from what I'm hearing from my son now!

Answer 4

it definitely should be taught in school....not when you get in the military...like me...7 years to late .. age 17. if you are sexually active at 11 years old you need more education than education from the street, which is usually wrong, and their are a lot more diseases out there now...kids need to be safe

we don't need 12 billion people on this planet [to be fruitful and multiply] was good when there was a few thousand of us...but i think that , has been proven with out a dough, with 6 1/2 billion of us...and some are starving to death every day.

for me it would have had to be 8 years old, to be told.

Answer 5

I was taught the same things you were, and it should be that way.
But in this crazy world where the parents lack the ability to teach themselves yet alone a child, maybe they should teach birth prevention.
Where does it stop though. I hear they want to teach Gay sex now.
And I was thinking "you know they call it sex education. But what it really is, is reproductive education.
It shouldn't have anything to do with how to pleasure your significant other.
Just how we reproduce. Anything else is frivolous.

Answer 6

No, they could suggest that anyone interested in learning about birth control go to a class at the health department.

Answer 7

Most schools with government funding teach abstinence only, and only explain STD's and pregnancy. My nephew is 16 and hasn't even been through it yet, so we'll see if next year he gets any sort of sex education.

Answer 8

Sure, it should be taught. Not alone or out of context though, but yeah, it should be taught as a part of a larger and *complete* "Sex Education" class.

I mean, people on the other side of this fence politically say "what about the parents, wahhh...?" but they don't stop to consider just *how* over-worked, under-paid, over stressed, under-educated and just plain *ignorant* the average parent in America is...really, this isn't like the 1960s or 1970s where one or both parents *had* the leisure time to go to the local public library and *look things up*, you know? And the internet is hardly objective on the issue of sex.

Nah, I'll tell you this much, Montel Williams, a guy I *rarely* if ever watch or agree with, summed up my view on it: the only people who want to keep real Sex Education out of schools are the ones who *WANT TO* keep their kids IGNORANT until they are PREGNANT. Basically the so-called parents who *want to* keep their kids under their thumb and to keep them as dirt-poor, uneducated and *miserable* as they are themselves just out of pettiness and *abusive* spite.

Really....there *is* a way to teach contraception in the context of a Sex Ed. course *without* openly encouraging sex itself. It is called a) using the word IF liberally, making sure people get that sex doesn't *have to* happen, b) showing people and *testing them* not just on contraceptive knowledege, but on their knowledge of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (in explicit and gruesome, appetite-killing detail) *and also* on their knowledge of the *consequences* of unwanted pregnancy.

Really. That last one is the kicker. Show the teenagers what really happens to teenage mothers *ahead* of time--how social lives, economic lives and the mother's health can get ruined so *so* easily. Show them what an abortion physically entails. Show them how *rarely* kids get adopted. Show them the hell kids go through when they have to live with bad foster parents after good ones....or when they get bounced from Juvenile Detention Center to Children's Home, over and over again, *locked up* basically for the crime of not having a proper parent.

Then show the teenagers what can go wrong when the birth parents see fit to *be* neglectful and abusive.

Really, real life has enough mediocre-to-worst case scenarios that you can *seriously* deter teenage sex without screwing the teens themselves out of the kinds of contraceptive and disease-preventing knowledge that *is desperately needed* to save lives *of kids WHO ARE ALREADY HERE DAMMIT!!*

Sorry to shout, but really, the whole pro-life/pro-choice/professional complainer thing really gets on my nerves. Here we are sweating the civil rights of *lumps of tissue* and *bits of DNA* that can't possibly survive outside of a mother's womb and yet we *willfully* and *deliberately* let whole generations of *teenagers* and *children* living among us already slip through the cracks and wind up homeless, HIV+, stuck with children when they are barely beyond childhood themselves....

It gets my goat, ok? It pisses me off. If the mark of a civilization lies with how it treats its children, then what does this say about our own? That we don't care, can't be bothered, and are downright sadistic in insisting that we not *have to care*?

I'm just saying, hell yes, you do need to Teach a COMPLETE Sex Education curriculum in schools because if you don't do it there, the parents by and large either CANNOT or deliberately WILL NOT pick up the damn slack.

Answer 9

yeah, definitely. it's an important part of sex ed and there is no reason to leave it out of the curriculum. just saying "wait until you're married" won't stop millions of teens from engaging in sexual intercourse, but we can help them stay safe.

Answer 10

Of course it should be.

However, as long as Christians continue to shape this country and it's policies, abstinence will be the only thing taught because it is all the Bible allows for.

Sad sad sad.