TEEN SEXUALITY AND IGNORANCE

In Europe the problem is much less and the ignorance is less. Could less ignorance mean less irresponsible sex ? Did God make a mistake by creating humans to physically mature at 12 when they need to wait till 18 (or older) for marriage ?

Living in rural Paraguay for most of 12 years, I learned parents and children there sleep together and children see their parents make love from infancy on. It's natural and seems to cause no problems. But here it is a criminal offense. Why is that ?

Do we fear teen sexuality only because of the danger or are there other reasons such as "control" issues ?

When four boys and four girls in a Catholic high school formed a love group where they freely shared sexual intimacies from 14 to 16 with an absolute agreement to leave intercourse for later, they had to keep that absolutely secret whereas other kids who did have intercourse could be more open. Why? Why was more fear attached to totally safe sex than to the risky kind ?

Yet totally safe teen sex was found to be very healing (by that group and the research of Dr. Brian Gilmartin of THE GILMARTIN REPORT).

In her book, HARMFUL TO MINORS Judith Levine shares her detailed research on this issue. Recently she was interviewed on Philadelphia's NPR station WWHY-FM by Dr. Daniel Gottleib on his weekly program "Voices in the Family". You can hear that 48 min. interview in RealAudio here.