ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 1996 TAG: 9612170097
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Personal health
SOURCE: JANE BRODY
Parents, doctors, teachers and counselors who deal with teen-agers and preteen-agers may be able to draw some good from the case of the teen-agers from New Jersey who were indicted Dec. 9 on charges of first-degree murder in the killing of their newborn baby at a Delaware motel. This case can be an opportunity to discuss sexuality and its potential consequences with young people.
This killing is hardly an isolated one. The very day of the desperate act in Delaware, a Long Island teen-ager gave birth in the bathroom of a movie theater in Commack and left her asphyxiated baby there, the authorities said.
If you think your teen-agers are not at risk of an unwanted pregnancy and other unfortunate outcomes of sexuality, note these statistics:
*At any given time, more than half of teen-agers are sexually active, and only about 20 percent reach the age of 20 having never had sex.
*Only about one-third of girls from 15 through 19 use contraception the first time they have sex. In a survey of 1,510 Americans from 12 through 18 conducted for the Kaiser Family Foundation last spring, fewer than half of sexually experienced teen-agers said they always used contraception when they had sex.
*Each year nearly 1 million teen-age girls, including one in five from 15 through 19, get pregnant.
*Of unmarried teen-agers who become pregnant, one-fifth do so within the first month of becoming sexually active and half within the first six months. Only half of girls who have babies before the age of 17 finish high school by 30.
Add to that the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.
Parents often say they are too embarrassed to discuss sexuality with their children. Or, although the facts say otherwise, they fear that any such discussion will appear to give the child parental permission to become sexually active.
Preventing teen-age pregnancies requires much more than a ``just say no'' approach.
Robin Herstand, a counselor at Planned Parenthood in New York City, said: ``A lot of parents are in denial. They don't want to accept the fact that their kids are growing up and going to have sex. Parents don't have to condone the behavior, but neither can they force their kids not to have sex. Parents must avoid being judgmental. They can say things like, `I wish you'd wait until you are older' and explain why, then say: `But if you do decide to become sexually active, I want you to act responsibly. These are your options.'''
Then, Herstand said, parents or a knowledgeable surrogate must provide information on various methods of birth control and where to get them, and on what can be done if a teen-ager becomes pregnant.
Parents who are ill-informed about birth control can refer children to a family planning clinic. There are 900 Planned Parenthood clinics around the country, including one three blocks from the New Jersey girl's dormitory in Delaware. All provide birth control counseling, information and devices to young people without requiring parental consent.
Doctors and schools can also play a vital role in a teen-ager's sexual education, which should start in early childhood with age-appropriate information.
By ninth grade, 38 percent of teen-agers are sexually active. In the Kaiser survey, more than half the teen-agers said that when they did get information about sex and birth control, it often came ``too late.''
Doctors treating teen-agers must ``stress at the outset that the visit is strictly confidential, that no one is going to talk to her parents about the visit and whatever is said between that young person and me,'' said Dr. Ann Davis, a gynecologist who treats adolescents at the Floating Hospital in Boston.
Doctors should be specific and factual in talking with teen-agers about sex, say Dr. Bradley Boekeloo and his colleagues at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington. They conducted a survey of 221 12-to-15-year-olds that was reported last month in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
``If physicians talked about ways of reducing sexual risks, such as using condoms, delaying sexual intercourse and limiting the number of sexual partners, adolescents were more likely to say that they would be comfortable talking to the physician if they had a sexual problem,'' they wrote.
But the authors noted that fewer than half those surveyed had received any specific messages from their doctors about sexual risk prevention.
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