Teen Sex

Teen Sex

In this article the author Susan Rose discusses reproductive and sexual health of teenagers as well as sex education in public schools. Rose compares the Danish approach to sexuality education and family planning to the American approach to these issues/topics in order to point out differences. While the U.S. seems to concentrate on "Abstinence-Until-Marriage Programs", Denmark focuses on a more pragmatic approach (p.229). After discussing Abstinence-Until-Marriage Programs in detail (p.229-232) Rose illustrates Cross-National Data on Teen Sexual Behaviour (p.233). The reader becomes aware that the American teen pregnancy rate, teen birth rate, teen abortion rate and rates for HIV are much higher than in other industrialised nations. The purpose of this article is to question whether abstinence-until-marriage programs can substitute honest sexual education.

A major strength of this article is definitely the good use of quotations to explain the point of view some International Organization and especially Denmark regarding sexual issues. The quote of Adrienne Germain (President of the International Women's Health Coalition) (p.232) underlines the seriousness behind the abortion practice, for instance. It states that the current position of the U.S delegation is to ally with countries like Sudan, Iran and Iraq in the oppression of women. Bjarne Rassmussen is a Danish AIDS-Secretariat at the Frederiksberg Hospital. Through quoting Rassmussen, Rose shows for example that in Denmark young people are seen as equal members of society, and if you give them the option you can also demand that they behave responsibly. Quoting these experts is a strength of the article because the reader accepts them as authorities and is likely to remember the content of the quotation.

Though Rose emphasises that the influence of the Religious Right on social policy is disproportionate to their numbers, a weakness of this article is that she does not give a reason for this. Other industrialized countries have Religious Right as well, and yet the Religious Right does not accomplish its goals when the vast majority of the population has a different opinion on teen sexuality. This is a weakness, because the readers understand, that Denmark and the U.S. had the same rates of teen pregnancy and attitudes towards sexuality 50 years ago (p.229), but they do not understand what caused Denmark to change its approach to teen sexuality or why the U.S. did not change it (/why the Religious Right remained so powerful).

In her article Rose demonstrates how a 17-year-old girls' attitude towards love is socially constructed through her environment. Rose quotes two girls, one from Denmark and one from the U.S.. The 17-year-old Danish girl, on the one hand, brought up in a country where honest