Sex Won’t Keep Teens Off the Honor Roll

Proponents of abstinence-only education use a slew of (sometimes fabricated) reasons why teens should be denied comprehensive sex education, including promoting the idea that proper sex ed encourages sex, and having sex will ruin grades, attendance, and chances at higher education. Not so much, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of California-Davis and University of Minnesota found that teenagers having sex in committed relationships can brag about their grades and college prospects just as much as their sexually inactive counterparts. The study even suggests that sex can be — wait for it — good for teens: "Teens in serious relationships may find social and emotional support in their sex partners, reducing their anxiety and stress levels in life and in school."

Now, teen pregnancy definitely has a negative impact on a student's ability to juggle midterms with morning sickness and homework with diapers. But schools should focus on overly high preventing teen pregnancy, and delaying students' first time having sex is only one component of that agenda. Unless, of course, you're promoting abstinence-only ed, in which case the issue is sex and sex only, with teen pregnancy the scare tactic used to keep teens from having sex.

No matter how much ab-only education you throw at teenagers, many of them will still have sex. They'll just be more likely to do it without using protection. And while often people of all political stripes will say well, nobody wants teens to be having sex, but if they're going to do it anyway, they should at least be prepared, I take issue with that stance.

This study demonstrates that teen sex isn't harmful to academic performance, and can even provide benefits to the participants. I don't believe in drawing an arbitrary line, that no high school student should ever be having sex, and then that magically changes. Acting like teen sex is always wrong, but something we're willing to talk about for the good of making sure it is safe sex, undermines our ability to work with young people to make the best decisions for themselves. We should be helping teenagers to figure out what point that is for them, saying not, "Don't have sex, but if you do, use a condom," but rather, "Don't have sex until you are ready." It's a more realistic and effective standpoint.

Unfortunately, many reports on this study have hyped the finding that teens who participate in casual sex have lower grades. Well, sort of. Teen girls having casual sex have GPAs 0.16 points below teens who haven't had sex at all, a sliver of a difference. For teen boys, the discrepancy is larger, at 0.30 points, and it would be interesting to know the reason behind that. While casual teen sex is far from most people's dream, and at that age is often seen as tied to factors such as problems at home or peer pressure, the media response is grabbing at a way to demonize sex in a way that overreacts to the actual impact on teen girls. As fellow Women's Rights blogger Brandann Hill-Mann's has written, sex, even casual sex, isn't going to destroy you.

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