Abstinence until marriage is something that will always be taught to students at a young age in schools. With the way our culture is today, sex and sexual images are everywhere from television and music videos to billboards and other forms of advertising. While students are being taught to not have sex until marriage in school they are finding out in the real world that it might not be as easy as they say to wait. In today's popular culture, one of the most watched shows on MTV is "Teen Mom", a show about the lives of teenage kids who engaged in sexual activity before marriage as 16 and 17 year old kids. MTV has portrayed sex in so many ways over the years through music videos, movies, and their everyday shows like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant. Bridget Maher talked about in her side of the argument that each year 3 million teens or 25% of sexual active teens are infected with a STD. She went on to talk about how the teens engaging in this pre martial sex experience fear of STDs, regret, guilt, low self-respect, fear of commitment, and depression. When I was in high school, if a girl was to become pregnant just about everyone in the school would notice it and talk about it. While some people might not think its a huge deal it is affecting that girl in one way or another.
The reading talked a lot about how sex before marriage campaigns are everywhere and how there is so much money being poured into it.But in my opinion I really don't see a great deal of it, instead I see more things advertising sexual things or sexual images being posted. Every time you turn on the TV you are most likely going to see something related to sex as you flip through the channels. I think another big part of abstinence comes from where you live or what type of culture you live in. Coming form the midwest you really dont get the big picture on things, most often things are scaled down to a smaller image where as someone living in maybe California or New York might get a much bigger understanding of this whole thing.
With kids starting to partake in sexual activity at younger ages all the time I think it is important to continue the ads and campaigns in order for the younger generations to hear the messages. But with the way our pop culture is growing and where our media is taking us it will be hard to continue to preach abstinence until marriage. In my opinion if kids are not waiting until marriage they should at least wait until an age where they are more knowledgeable on the subject and they are mature enough and know how to handle it so STDs and unplanned pregnancy dont occur as often.
Questions:
1. Why has pop culture overtaken all the money and time invested in abstinence until marriage campaigns?
2. What will it take for kids to understand STDs and pregnancy at young ages are not worth it?
2)I think this is a great question because I do not even think it is kids now days that do not understand what could happen to them. I think that many adults and college students choose to think that it will not happen to them. People live in the moment and do not think about how their choices can affect them in the future. I hate to say this but it is almost as if until it happens to them then they will learn or if it happens to a friend of theirs. It is not just the simple fact of telling them this is what will happen but they need to understand how it will change their way of life for the rest of their life. It is not just that they will be living with an STD or a pregnancy but they will have to tell every partner they are with, have to be on medication, and possible suffer through pain and sorrows.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately its becoming more of a learning first hand situation. Nobody realises the danger of actions until it dramatically changes life as they know it, and by then its already too late.
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