[Aditya]

You CAN Influence Your Teens Attitudes About Sex: Stay Connected!

Most parents would agree that they don’t want their middle- or high-schoolers to become sexually active. Teen sex can pose irreversible consequences including significant health risks, social and emotional effects and pregnancy. Sexually active girls are predisposed to genital tract infections, cervical cancer and pre-cancerous lesions. For boys, unprotected intercourse increases the chances of prostate and urethral infections.

Both girls and boys who have sex put themselves at risk for sexually transmitted disease. Sexually transmitted diseases acquired during the teenage years can contribute to adult infertility. AIDS remains a leading cause of death during adolescence.

Although teen pregnancy has been declining steadily over the last decade and more teens are delaying having sex, teen sexual activity contributes to medical, social and economic problems in our nation. As reported by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, four in 10 teenage girls gets pregnant at least once before the age of 20, resulting in 900,000 teen pregnancies a year.

The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of all the industrialized countries in the world by a wide margin. Children born to teenage parents are at higher risk for health problems, poor school performance, inadequate parenting, poverty and child abuse. By contrast, in families where mothers were in the early 20s, the rate for child abuse is less than half of those than in families of a teenage birth. Each year, the federal government spends about $40 billion to assist families that began with a teenage birth.