All work no play? Sex isn’t what it used to be
Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? Kate Julian, The Atlantic
Excerpt: To the relief of many parents, educators, and clergy members who care about the health and well-being of young people, teens are launching their sex lives later. From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds, the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent.
Meanwhile, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate has plummeted to a third of its modern high. When this decline started, in the 1990s, it was widely and rightly embraced. But now some observers are beginning to wonder whether an unambiguously good thing might have roots in less salubrious developments. Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood.
Bottom Line: Surprised? Not about the substantially lower teen pregnancy rate, that kinda makes sense when less activity taking place. Instead that there is a decline. Ironically, our society for all of its debauchery has been in a bit of a pendulum swing away from free love. As much as I’d like to point to an increase in morality that’s behind this... That’s not really where the information takes me. Instead, it appears to be an economic story of Ms. Independent.
I pulled the percentage of women in the workforce by decade from the Bureau of Labor Statistic and found this...
Percentage of women working:
- 1950: 33%
- 1970: 43%
- 1990: 58%
- 2010: 62%
Notice just a bit of a trend? Nearly twice as many women are career oriented today compared to 60+ years ago and it’s been a straight line upward along the way. With more girls and eventually women focused on careers rather than raising a family immediately after school – well, it kinda all adds up. And that is the good news for you as a parent. The truth is that if you kids aren’t active – they're the normal ones. More so today than at any time in decades. It might be worth having this conversation with them. Especially your girls.