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Originally Posted by NoSoup
To me, it seems like a lot of these children have sex simply because they aren't supposed to - it's forbidden.
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I think this is really true in a lot of cases. Particularly here in NZ, we have one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, also a very low age for loss of virginity (and its still falling apparently).
Talking to people I know, I have encountered a very wide range of first-time ages, all the way from 8 to 22. In a hefty majority of people who's first time came very young, when I ask: "Why?", I get "I dunno... cos we weren't supposed to, I guess. You know how it goes..".
Indeed, if you haven't done a whole bunch of stuff that your parent's said no to by the time you're seventeen, arguably you fail at being a teenager. Its faily easy to see why sex might be an area for exploration, what with the mulititude of different stigmas and taboos, media exploitation, and of course religious ideas in the mix.
Sex education is in place in about 1st form (age 11ish) in NZ public schools, aimed at ironing out all these confusing ideas in a way parents can agree on (or opt out of).
In NZ, with its high rate of teen pregnancy, sex education is slanted towards preventing pregnacies as opposed to preventing sex - the idea is roughly: "teenagers are going to have sex anyway, so they might as well know what they're doing." (I'm fairly certain this is the case in most of the world, its just that the pregnancy angle is big in NZ).
Critics of sex ed programs claim that this is the cause of some amount of sexual exploration that goes on at a young age, justifying sex.
Would less teens/children explore sex if sex education wasnt in place?