FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
Advocating condom usage to teens can be dangerous
By Dr. James Dobson
UESTION: If

Dr. Dobson

you were a parent

and knew that your son or daughter was thinking about engaging in sexual intercourse, wouldn’t

you talk to them about condom usage? If our Q kids are going to have sex anyway, shouldn’t we make sure they are properly protected?

DR. DOBSON: I would not, because that approach has unintended consequences. By recommending condom usage to teenagers we inevitably convey five dangerous ideas: (1) that “safe sex” is achievable; (2) that everybody is doing it; (3) that responsible adults expect them to do it; (4) that it’s a good thing; and (5) that their peers know they know these things, breeding promiscuity. Those are very destructive messages to give our kids.

Furthermore, Planned Parenthood’s own data show that the No. 1 reason teenagers engage in intercourse is peer pressure! Therefore, anything we do to imply that “everybody is doing it” results in more — not fewer — teens who give the game a try.

What I’m saying is that our condom distribution programs do not reduce the number of kids exposed to the disease — they radically increase it! And consider this: Research indicates that where disease prevention is concerned, the failure rate of condoms is incredibly high, perhaps 50 percent or greater. Condoms also fail to protect against some STDs that are transmitted from areas not covered (the base of the male genitalia, for example).

After 25 years of teaching safe-sex ideology, and more than 2 billion federal dollars invested in selling this notion, we have a medical disaster on our hands. More than 500,000 cases of herpes occur annually, and the number of reported cases of chlamydia has risen 281 percent since 1987. Fortysix percent of chlamydia cases occur in teenage girls ages 15 to 19. In addition, there are now more than 24 million cases of HPV (human papilloma virus) in the United States, with a higher prevalence among teens.

Having acknowledged these problems, why in the world would I recommend this socalled “solution” to my son or daughter? Look at it this way. Suppose my kids were skydivers whose parachutes had been demonstrated to fail 50 percent of the time. Would I suggest that they simply buckle the chutes tighter? Certainly not. I would say, “Please don’t jump. Your life is at stake!” How could I, as a loving father, do less?

I should add that, despite the popular myth to the contrary, teens can understand, accept and implement the abstinence message. It’s not true that young people are sexual robots, hopelessly incapable of controlling their own behavior. As a matter of fact, almost 50 percent of all high school students are virgins today, even though hardly anybody has told them it is a good thing. These kids desperately need to be affirmed in their decision and held up as positive examples for others. None of this will be accomplished by pushing condoms.

QUESTION: I read in the paper that a 14-year-old boy shot a woman in the face for no reason at all. Things like that are happening all around us. When I was a kid I wouldn’t even have sassed a teacher, much less assaulted one. Today the level of violence among the young is like nothing I’ve ever seen! Please comment on this.

DR. DOBSON: You are right, an epidemic of violence is occurring among the young that is expected to actually worsen in the next few years. During a meeting of Prison Fellowship workers in our city, a group of hardened former criminals said the kids growing up today scare them because they have no consciences. They can kill without a hint of remorse. It is true.

In Seattle a few years ago, two boys, 12 and 13, beat to death a person coming out of a convenience store. There was no motive except a desire to brutalize someone — anyone — with a baseball bat. In Virginia, a 14-year-old shot the driver of a nearby car six times in the face. Why? “Because he looked at me,” the boy said. In Los Angeles, a family made a wrong turn down a street and was subjected to a hail of gunfire that killed their little girl. Gang members poured bullets into the car for the sheer fun of it. And finally, who can forget the 5-year-old Chicago boy who was pushed from an upper-story window and fell to his death. His killers were 10 and 11 years old. This kind of random violence is more common among children and adolescents today than ever before in our history.

Send your questions to Dr. Dobson, c/o Focus on the Family, PO Box 444, Colorado Springs, CO 80903; or to his Web site at www.fotf.org. These questions and answers are excerpted from books authored by Dr. James Dobson and published by Tyndale House Publishers. Dr. Dobson is the President of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the home. Copyright 1997 James Dobson, Inc. All rights reserved. International copy secured