Birth Control or Abstinence?
By Teresa Ambord
Birth control for teenagers is a hot potato. The subject itself may make you feel like you’re on the horns of a dilemma. Is it better to protect your kids from becoming teenage parents by helping them get birth control, or is the best way to teach them about abstinence and hope they listen?
Many parents give in, believing that, no matter what they say, their kids are going to be sexually active. They tell their kids that it’s better to wait, but just in case they can’t, here’s some birth control. It might seem safer, but isn’t this one of those cliché moments when a picture truly is worth a thousand words? Telling them to wait, then handing them the birth control is the same as telling them with a wink that we expect them to fail.
You’re Not Alone
If you want to teach your kids abstinence but don’t feel quite brave enough, you don’t have to stand alone. There is a lot of support out there.
The Aim for Success website encourages parents to understand their teenager's physiology, as well as their psychology before supplying them with birth control. Aim for Success provides information for parents, teens, and teachers and even has programs and speakers for presentations in high schools. The program is called, Teens Take Charge. After all, doesn’t it really boil down to teens taking charge... taking personal responsibility for their lives and behavior and health? The Teens Take Charge program can help young people develop self-control, self-respect, and self-discipline. If you want support, Aim for Success.
Morality Aside
Many parents and teenagers take no moral issue with being sexually active. But there are other, concrete reasons for abstaining. Birth control pills, which Planned Parenthood will tell you are the most effective birth control method if taken properly, do nothing to prevent sexually transmitted disease. And if a girl should contract the number one sexually transmitted disease, chlamydia, this might be the ultimate birth control, since this disease can lead to other problems that greatly reduce a girl’s chance of having children at all.
And condoms, touted as the “safe sex” solution, fail almost 15% of the time, which explains the old joke: "We have a name for people who rely on condoms for birth control: parents." Every time the condom fails, whether pregnancy is achieved or not, the possibility of the spread of disease increases.
As the saying goes… abstinence works every time it is tried. However, be aware that two recent studies state that teenagers who broke their abstinence pledge were one-third less likely than non-pledgers to use contraceptives once they became sexually active. Even the recent preliminary report on a study commissioned specifically by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to study abstinence-only programs found no proof that abstinence-only education programs decreased sexual activity, unwanted pregnancies, or sexually transmitted diseases among U.S. teens.
Bottom line, there is no magic bullet. The best course is always to discuss all the options intelligently and openly with your child, then make decisions together.
For More Information:
To find more support for abstinence, log onto one of these websites:
For General Birth Control Information
Planned Parenthood will send you a free catalog if you call toll-free 1-800-669-0156 or visit:
