On HU
Most of the week was devoted to the ongoing Asterios Polyp roundtable. Derik Badman, Craig Fischer, Vom Marlowe, Richard Cook, and me have all had our turns; Caroline Small, Robert Stanley Martin, and Matthias Wivel are still to come.
Also this week, Erica Friedman talked about condescension in comics.
Utilitarians Everywhere
On Splice Today I reviewed Prince of Persia.
So, okay, it’s true—this is a big, dumb, Hollywood action-adventure vehicle with nothing in its head except things blowing up, sword fights and pretty actors staring soulfully into each others eyes for a moment before more things blow up.
I’m okay with that.
Also on Splice Today, I talk about hook up culture, teens, and how the Atlantic Monthly is turning into an exploitation rag.
If you want to know whether girls have become more or less promiscuous, you don’t look at what they’re reading or listening to, or even at what big sex scandal occurred in which random college or prep school. You look at teen pregnancy rates. You can find out in less than 120 seconds that teen pregnancy rates fell in virtually every state between 1988 and 2005. After 1995, teen pregnancy rates nationwide declined every year for a decade, hitting their lowest point in 30 years in 2005, smack dab in the middle of Flanagan’s hook up decade. It’s true that the next year, in 2006, rates rose by three percent, and preliminary findings suggest they may have risen again in 2006. Even so, rates remain historically low; in 2006 teen pregnancies were only 71.5 per 1000, as compared to, 83.6 per 1000 in 2000, 99.6 per 1000 in 1995, and 116.9 per 1000 in 1990. To suggest, as Flanagan does, that teens were especially promiscuous in the past decade and a half is simply wrong. On the contrary, teen pregnancy has apparently declined for more than a generation, the growth of the Internet notwithstanding.
Other Links
Dara Lind explains why Facebook sucks.
Alyssa Rosenberg talks about MIA and Courtney Love.
Tucker Stone and Benjamin Mara have a long, thoroughly entertaining discussion about The Rise of Arsenal, of all things.
Looking at teen pregnancy rates to determine “promiscuity” seems kind of half-baked. It completely ignores very important factors: sex education and use of contraceptives. If teen pregnancy rates tell us anything, it’s that teens are more educated about it and they take better precautions than they did.
I honestly have no idea whether they are more or less promiscuous than they were a decade or two ago. My uneducated guess (based on nothing in particular) would be that it’s probably about the same. But I’m almost convinced that pregnancy rates tell us nothing about it.
Otherwise, though, I agree with your position in the article. Flanagan’s moral panic is quite ridiculous (though, sadly, not at all unusual).
I think it tells us a lot more bout promiscuity than about sex education. I’m pretty unconvinced that sex education does anything in particular. In any case, sex education over the last years has been gutted, from what I understand. Certainly, it didn’t get progressively better through the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, which is what you would expect from your hypothesis.
At the very least, if teen pregnancy rates are dropping, it seems like the presumption has to be that promiscuity is not increasing, unless you’ve got strong evidence to the contrary.
I disagree. I think the only presumption that we can make is that there is not enough data.
It’s certainly true that sex education hasn’t been massively improved (in the US), but there are other factors that determine whether teens will take precautions that they would not have taken before, including public awareness of AIDS and STDs, etc.
Still, I tend to agree that it’s unlikely that teen promiscuity has risen dramatically. Like I said in my first comment, my gut feeling (based on no scientific or statistical data) is that it probably hasn’t changed very much. I just think it’s a little bit disingenuous/simplistic to use the teen pregnancy rate to “prove” this point, as if there was a direct correlation. All I’m saying is that there are other factors that have to be taken into consideration.
That’s fair enough. I don’t agree that there’s no correlation between teen pregnancy and promiscuity (which you seem to suggest in your first comment), but I can see there being other factors at work as well.
You can’t ever really prove anything with the social sciences. Too many factors at play….
My two cents: I think Basque is correct in that teen promiscuity probably hasn’t changed much over the last few decades.
But Noah is right that teen pregnancy and promiscuity are correlated (I would argue that they’re highly correlated), but any statistical figure you generate will be biased unless you also control for race, socio-economic status, and even region of the country (for example, conservative Mississippi has a higher teen pregnancy rate than the den of sin that is Massachusetts).
My other two cents: The problem with Flanagan’s piece, and the problem with so many other “those kids are out of control!” articles, is that they’re only concerned with suburban, middle class, white teens. Who are not the major driving force behind teen pregnancy rates, and never have been.
Yes; there’s an assumption, more or less explicitly stated in the article, that her personal experience is a good barometer for What Tweens Experience. When, of course, many tweens have experiences that are nothing like hers. Trying to build intergenerational truths on your own relationship with your mother is, obviously, easier than doing actual research or reporting, but that’s probably it’s only upside.
Oops. That last paragraph came out wrong. I read Flanagan’s article so I know she wasn’t talking about teen pregnancy. My point was there’s very little evidence that middle class, white teens are at risk of becoming sex-crazed maniacs who will bring down Western civilization.
Right…and obviously minority teens aren’t likely to be sex-crazed maniacs bringing down civilization either. But minority teens tend to be poorer, and poorer people in general often have earlier sexual experiences for reasons that have little to do with sex-crazed pop culture, and a lot to do with things like lower marginal costs for early pregnancies, fewer resources leading to less parental supervision, and other fairly dry practical considerations, none of which have changed substantially in the last 30 years, I wouldn’t think.
Which is why the relevant issue with Mississippi is probably not “conservative” but “poor”.
That’s a good point. And I didn’t mean to imply that poor kids were sex fiends.
Do you think sex education matters at all? Most of the studies I’ve read have only focused on the abstinence-only programs of the Bush years, and they tend to agree that abstinence-only is worthless in terms of reducing teen pregnancy (it might even be worse than worthless). But part of me is doubtful that “comprehensive” sex ed would make a substantial difference.
Yeah. I haven’t read a ton about this, but I’ve read a little bit, and I’ve never seen any evidence that sex education has a major impact one way or the other. So take that for what it’s worth.
I think the main way to lower teen pregnancy rates/promiscuity is to make birth control more accessible. I bet condom dispensers in all high school bathrooms would be more effective than any kind of education.
After that, probably the best bet is raising living standards…and taking steps to end segregation, which exacerbates the effects of poverty. All those things are a lot less (ahem) sexy than arguing about sex education and inciting moral panic, though.
It’s worth noting that even if you don’t believe teen pregnancy rates are correlated with teens having sex, you’d have to believe they’re correlated with teens behaving responsibly with sex one way or the other. That is, if you’re saying that the pregnancy rate went down because teens are using more contraception — then teens are using more contraception, which would mean that they’re behaving more responsibly, not less. Or, to put it another way, even if teen pregnancy rates aren’t correlated with teens having less sex, they have to be negatively correlated with teens behaving like completely irresponsible sex maniacs.
D.C. just adopted a new condom distribution program. It used to be that students had to ask a school nurse for free condoms, and a lot of teens found that embarrassing. Now guidance counselors and teachers can distribute free condoms if they complete a 30-minute online course (which sounds like an exercise in legal ass-covering, though I suppose it counts as an improvement). They still refuse to provide condom dispensers in bathrooms.
The District also spent extra money buying Trojan Magnums in the gold wrapper, since teens seem to have a higher estimation of that brand.