young women and contraception
By Dr. Charlie Glickman • Jul 22nd, 2009 • Category: Blog
According to a recent article published by the Guttmacher Institute, “sexually active 15–19-year-olds are more likely than their 20–49-year-old counterparts to use contraceptives inconsistently and, on average, experience a 25% higher rate of contraceptive failure.” These numbers are the result of research conducted in over 40 countries around the world, so this seems to transcend the peculiar attitudes we have in the US around both teens having sex and contraception.
These stats are especially important because having kids at a young age has significant and fairly obvious impacts on one’s ability to go to school or get a job. According to the researchers, some of the barriers that teens face when it comes to contraception use are lack of access, unpredictable or irregular sexual activity (when compared to older women), and less information about correct use. In addition, teens have higher rates of contraceptive failure, in part because they tend to use methods that are less effective.
While I find the research fascinating, especially because it includes participants from around the globe, it seems to me that there’s at least one factor that they’ve left out of the discussion. For most people, the ability to make optimal decisions doesn’t really develop until the early to mid 20’s. Anyone who’s ever spent time with a teen has seen this up close and it’s even become part of the dialogue around teaching driving skills.
Of course, folks like Planned Parenthood and other organizations have been saying that safer sex and contraception information needs to be provided in age-appropriate ways for years. So I find it a bit surprising that in an otherwise excellent bit of research about the contraceptive challenges that teens face, the authors left out the fact that simply from a developmental perspective, young women have a barrier that their older counterparts don’t. And that seems like it would some pretty obvious consequences when it comes to contraceptive use.
But all in all, it’s a valuable piece of research and I hope that it can inform sex education practices.
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Dr. Charlie Glickman >> Dr. Charlie Glickman has been working at Good Vibrations since 1996, when he joined the staff at our Berkeley store. Currently, he is our Education Program Manager and (among other things) runs our in-store After Hours workshop program, our Off-Site Sex Education Program, trains our Sex Educator-Sales Associates and writes copy for our website. In 2005, Charlie received his doctorate in Adult Sexuality Education from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, he offers classes on sexuality for psychotherapists and workshops on teaching for sex educators.
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This information is interesting even if not necessarily surprising. I have a hard time with the idea that young people are just “developmentally immature” and they are incapable of good decision making. I think that there is definitely some truth to it, but I think the argument has largely been used as an excuse to continue adultist practices that limit young people’s rights and access to information around sex and other sensitive topics. I think that in terms of development, everyone is different, and as such young people may be mature for their age while older folks can be really immature. I wonder how much of young people’s “ability to make optimal decisions” is more about conditioning than innate truth. What might happen if we began teaching contraceptive use to young women in a way that empowered them to take control of their bodies and their reproductive decisions.
Perhaps I’m too idealistic, but as a Youth Development worker I hope to find out!
Great article, Thanks!
I think there’s definitely some truth to the idea that developmental immaturity is used against young people who are certainly capable of making good decisions. Part of that is that adults often react when youth have different ideas about what to do, rather than youth being incapable of making decisions.
Of course, part of the task of growing up is learning how to make decisions in age appropriate ways. For example, it’s not realistic to expect most 16 year olds to be able to understand the complexities of high finance. But they also need the opportunity to learn how to make budgets, balance checkbooks, etc. so that they will be able to understand more complex issues later on. There need to be ways that we can offer opportunities for youth to learn, make mistakes, and grow without either coddling them or withholding all information from them. In order to do that, adults need to have some tolerance for mistakes.
Having said all that, I know from my personal experience that when I was 16, I really couldn’t imagine the potential consequences of my actions to the same degree that I can now. It wasn’t just a lack of experience- at the time, a month seemed like a long time to plan something. Nowadays, I plan things that won’t come to fruition for months or years. And that ability has definitely shifted how I think about risk taking. From what I can tell, there really is a developmental shift, although you’re right when you say that different people move through that at different ages.