"Older children"

This is the only chapter of Good Children that has been more or less completely re-written since the second edition came out in 1990. At that time, the whole country was gripped by what might happen as a result of AIDS. Even the government thought that we were all "at risk" and a leaflet was put through the door of every house in the UK, telling people that they would have to be extra careful, regardless of whether they were old, in stable marriages, crippled by illness or decisively celibate, like a nun.

It was absolutely obligatory to mention it in speaking to young people then, since my own children were agog with what was going to happen next. So I spoke about the disease and how the ancient moralities of chastity and fidelity were likely to be some comfort and protection in such a context. The problem then was that no one was sure whether the disease could be spread by more means than simply sexual contact. I went to a parents meeting at one son's school, where the Headmaster told parents that the joint use of musical instruments might have to be discontinued, and that almost anything used by more than one person might prove to be a danger. My daughter at the Further Education College received a leaflet warning that "deep kissing" might be a source of infection if they had any lesions in the mouth, or gums that occasionally bled.

Thankfully, these fears turned out to be groundless and the disease has confined itself mainly to those who have had contact with the three known high-risk groups which were, and are, homosexuals, hard-drug users and those who contracted the disease abroad, usually in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent figures from the Public Health Authority show that the majority of AIDS cases in Britain are restricted to these groups.

So the debate has moved on, but the problem of infection resulting from what Nature plainly does not like or accept-that is, promiscuous behaviour-- has not. We are engaging in a major war with nature if we think we can change this just because of our new technology. In the past, people accepted the limitations of nature because they did not want to be diseased or infertile. Religious people would say that they observed God's hand in the laws of nature and based their morality on them. Agnostics would say that people made the best of a bad job and invented devices like religion and romance to make youthful abstinence more palatable.

Whatever your point of view, the fact remains that, for all our cleverness, 35% of all sexually transmitted diseases are incurable, and are spreading at an alarming rate, particularly amongst the young. In response to this, the authorities are clutching at straws and urging ever-more-sexually-explicit sex education upon children, including an obsessive concentration on the almost magical powers of condoms. Consider this highlighted information contained in a booklet issued by Health Authorities up and down the country:

"FACT: Only condoms provide all-in-one protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV."

This statement is just not true and, what is more, it seems to me to be deliberately misleading. What does "all-in-one" mean here? That it doesn't come in three pieces that need to be assembled? That there are other devices that have footwear and gloves to accompany them? It is meaningless but it gives an impression of being dependable and risk-free. That is what young people would make of it. That is what many of them do make of it.

The matter is therefore urgent and I decided, in this chapter, to follow the agenda that is most often set for me by young people. Since my own children have grown up, I spend a lot of my time giving talks to sixth-form groups and college students, sometimes following up on a recent article or a television programme I have done. Regardless of the title of any of my talks, we always seem to end up talking about what concerns them most-and that is their frightful ignorance about the "facts of life." They are propagandised in many of their encounters with "Health professionals"-but they are seldom told the truth about another reality that awaits them far more certainly than the ideal of sexual freedom they have been promised.

Many of these groups are quite large, two or three hundred young people, and someone will usually start the questions with something like, "Why do you think so many girls get pregnant then?" There is usually laughter at this point, and I turn the question round:

"Why do you think they do? Is it because they have never been told the facts of life, or do you think they didn't know about condoms?" There is usually quite a thoughtful answer then, because the person knows that his peers are checking the reply against their own experience.

"There's lots of reasons," they say. "They might not have done it right, (laughter); they might have been drunk or the condom, you know, like, fell off."

"So you do think they would have been using a condom then?"

"Yes, of course; everybody knows about safe sex, don't they? And you don't just suddenly have sex; do you?-unless you're a bit of a slapper. I mean, you know it's going to happen, she's probably your girlfriend at the time, so you take a condom."

"So what goes wrong? Do you think they are just inexperienced and put it on their head by mistake? Haven't they been shown what to do with it?"

"Yeah, they know what to do with it. Blimey! We've had so many lessons about that ... they'd be stupid if they didn't." (more laughter) "All right, you tell us why, you think, they get pregnant then."

"Well, I would have thought it might have something to do with the failure rate of condoms, don't you?"

That is the first bombshell! They often howl with laughter at that point and shout out, "Haven't you ever heard, it's safe!" They invariably turn to look at whichever teacher is responsible for "Health Education" at this point-- if she is in the hall-and this lady generally nods sagely in agreement.

So I point out that even the contraceptive manufacturers concede that there is a failure rate for their products in practice and that it is about 15% for married couples and a good deal higher for people of their age. "Some researchers have found it to be as high as 40%, but let us take a lower figure and say that it is about 20%. That still means that if there were one hundred girls in this room who all used condoms at all times, about twenty of them would get pregnant. In other words, there is a one-in-five chance of getting pregnant-roughly the same odds as Russian Roulette!" This is a useful analogy because anyone can see that you would not shoot yourself every time. Other things have to be factored in when calculating how soon you would shoot yourself.

The young people are incredulous and disbelieving. At one talk, they even appealed to the teacher to refute me but, since I always carry the relevant statistics in a folder with me, she didn't argue and I was interested in her obviously sincere answer. She said that she was well aware that condoms had a failure rate but didn't over-stress it. Since young people could not be restrained from "having sex," it was her responsibility to see that they at least lessened their chance of getting pregnant by using a condom.

It is a common point of view; but doesn't one usually mention the risk factors inherent in any dangerous activity, and then leave the participants to make up their own minds about whether it is worth it? The fact is, most young people don't know about the dangers of what is often a fairly experimental, rather than a deeply felt, foray into sexual experience.

At a meeting at Cambridge University, I asked a group, "What do you think `Safer Sex' means? Safer than what?" Their answer was so interesting that I have asked it many times since and the result is always the same. About half of any group think it means, "safer than nothing at all." The other half thinks it means, "safer than safe." As they often say, "You were safe before, but this one is even safer than that! Man, are you safe now!"

I tell them that the answer is, of course, safer than nothing-which is exactly what condoms are. Then I ask them why they think this product is labelled in this way and, after thinking about it-usually for the first time-- they say that probably it is because they could be sued if they claimed a thing was "Safe" when, in practice, it wasn't.

I agree with them and do not believe that it is just happy chance that the condom industry has stumbled upon a form of words that is ambiguous to most young people. It encourages them to use it, in the belief that they are, indeed, "safe."

This pattern of misleading young people-for their own benefit, supposedly-has extended, even more crucially, into the way the government health authorities are handling information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The same booklet that I mentioned before contains the information that "many young people do not know about STDs." Having said that, the booklet then says nothing whatever about most of them-except for two things. They have the following, prominently highlighted information: "Factoid: Up to one in fourteen young people have an STD called chlamydia, often it shows no symptoms but, if left untreated it can leave 10-15% of sufferers infertile. Always use a condom."

Now doesn't that suggest that if they use a condom, they won't catch it? I think it does, otherwise why mention condoms at all? But they know this is untrue and the fact is often mentioned, in muted tones lest it offend anyone, in the medical pages of newspapers. In fact, "one in fourteen" young people sounds quite small, doesn't it? It doesn't sound as alarming as "hundreds of thousands" anyway.

The most definitive study we have was conducted by the prestigious and dependable National Institutes of Health in the United States, which published a report in July 2001 in which it reviewed all the published literature on the subject of condom effectiveness to date. It found that "there is no clear evidence that condoms reduce the risk of most sexually transmitted diseases, including gonorrhoea and chlamydia" (my italics).

Just think about that for a minute will you? There is nothing to show that condoms reduce the risk of catching an STD. So why are we telling teenagers-who are, according to government figures, the most vulnerable to acute STD infection-that they will be "safe" if they use one? Young people obviously fear STDs yet, instead of telling teenagers about them plainly and with some of the graphic precision that they bestow on other areas of sex education, the Health Authorities seem to be doing everything they can to leave them in ignorance.

Here is another pearl of wisdom from an ubiquitous advice booklet, issued in this case by Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: "Many young people today are not fully aware of the risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. If you are worried that you may have been in contact with a sexually transmitted disease through unprotected sex ... then you can go for free, confidential, anonymous tests at the Dept. of Medicine."

In what other field, dear readers, will you be warned about a dangerous activity by being told where you go to get help after you've got hurt, but nothing else. They just avoid the issue.

They certainly are not telling them that condoms offer little protection against STDs, nor that they are a growing menace. I have not seen one booklet which mentions that STD infections doubled from 1990 to 1999 and that, in that year, they stood at 1,170,000 and are still rising in great leaps. In other words, they give young people no idea of what their chances are of catching a disease by means of sexual activity.

I recently gave a talk to teenagers and their parents in a small town in a sparsely populated part of the country. The figures I had obtained about STDs there, showed that they had more than 400 cases of Human Papilloma Virus in just 3 small towns in the area. This is the most common STD in Britain and is incurable. It produces unsightly warts in the genital area. It can respond to long and uncomfortable treatment, but the virus is there for life. The American National Institute for Health Report said that it was responsible for 98% of cervical cancers in women. The report also said that condoms have "no impact" on the spread of this disease, which can thus be passed on at every sexual encounter, with or without a condom.

This is startling, isn't it? And yet no mention is made of this-let alone the implications of it-in the booklet or in the information produced by the local Health Authority. They simply ignore it as if it will go away rather than go on spreading.

The reason I think this is wrong in itself and potentially disastrous is that, at about the time the original AIDS "scare" was filling the media, some people began to voice concern about what was happening in Africa. We had a medical student living with us at the time and he did his probationary year in Africa so we got it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. He told us that medical opinion there believed that if the spread of AIDS followed the level of STDs in Africa, there would be an epidemic of the disease in that country. Well it did, and now they have catastrophic numbers of people sick and dying of the disease, and still no solution in sight.

The reason for the original speculation was that it was always suspected that the spread of HIV was related to venereal infections which cause lesions in the reproductive organs and it is these which facilitate the entry of the HIV virus into the bodies of heterosexual men and women, who are outside the usual risk groups. Once it got into the heterosexual population, then it would spread like wild-fire. Any country, therefore, ought to be taking a great deal of notice of any increase in STDs, particularly in young people.

In the UK we know that the official "risk" of catching HIV is 1%, but that is because it is not yet widespread in the general population. The American National Institute figures for condom efficiency against HIV infection is 87%; that is, they have a 13% failure rate in laboratory conditions and if the condoms are in perfect condition. Even so, it seems to me to be wicked to promote, in Africa, the use of something that will cause 13 people to die out of every 100 who use it during sex with an infected person.

However, in practice, the situation is even worse. A study among prostitutes in Kenya found a 33% infection rate amongst those who always used a condom. This is roughly the same as that found amongst HIV-infected young people by Dr. Margaret Obola in the Cottolenga hospital. "The disbelief and shock in the reaction of young people when they are told they have AIDS is heartbreaking; 'But it was SAFE sex,' they tell me," she said.

Quite so; but we are ensuring the same habitual ignorance here and, furthermore, we are perpetuating the myth that young people are incapable of restraining themselves in sexual matters, even if they were to know that it might be fatal.

One final reference to the American Report-that seems to have sunk without trace here-is that the President of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, who contributed to the Report, said this: "All future sex education programmes must reflect the information that is consistent with the Report's findings, otherwise the programme should be considered `medically inaccurate.'"

Well, I've asked the question so I might as well try and answer it. Why do the relevant authorities mislead young people in this way? The answer is, I think, because they have a certain way of looking at things. So many of those who work in the area of sex education come from the Family Planning Association (FPA) and its off-shoots and they are, and I don't suppose they would disagree, "contraceptive-minded."

As a matter of fact, they also have what some would see as a financial interest in not discouraging sex. The Brook Advisory Centres were set up by the FPA in 1964 and were, at first, funded by the FPA. Some of the joint directors of these companies then formed a separate company in 1972, Family Planning Sales Ltd. The interesting thing is that the surplus profits from this company are covenanted back to the FPA. In other words, the FPA does have a financial interest in the selling of condoms. In any other, similarly controversial area-such as smoking or drugs-the media are hot-foot after any conflict of interest. Why is it only in this area that they have gone in for a "willing suspension of disbelief'?

However, it is seldom simply commerce that has the power to drive along a great band-wagon like that of liberal sex. That is where ideology comes in. After all, what are the logical consequences of having to accept that casual sex-of the sort we see all the time on the television and in every other medium-is actually dangerous to health in a serious way?

The "chattering classes" have given their unconditional support to the sexual revolution that is producing so many young, hapless casualties. These are often the same people who scan tins of vegetables to see if there are minute traces of something that might knock ten minutes off their life expectancy; and who complain if someone lights a cigarette in the same building as themselves. How can they face having their most cherished lifestyle option branded as "dangerous"; even "deadly"?

It would be the death of all their dearest fantasies and would involve having to concede that religion had grasped more of the truth about real life than they had. In short, they just cannot bring themselves to say that we may have to accept that the price of sexual freedom is too high; for the individual and for society.

Fortunately for our survival as a society, however, there is a growing movement that does not have this horror of nature's way. They are young, enthusiastic, and they are the driving force behind the programmes of abstinence education that are currently making such progress in the USA. They have reclaimed chastity for the young as their birthright and they are not a bit embarrassed about it.

Various "spokespersons" for the sex-education lobby have, predictably, tried to rubbish this movement, even though they seem to know nothing whatever about it. But distinguished commentators like Melanie Phillips 2 have taken the trouble to go to America and to judge for themselves how it is working and what is the effect. It has been, for the most part, a well-- documented, thumping success and their government is now vigorously supporting it, even financially. It has been effective in lowering illegitimacy and disease, sometimes dramatically, whilst in many cases increasing the educational achievement of the most disadvantaged pupils well beyond what most people expected.

These abstinence programmes work because they are imaginative, new and exceptionally well thought out. One of the many initiatives used in this new way of educating children in abstinence rather than sex, is the use of young people, usually students, who go round schools to demonstrate a positive view of chastity. They use sketches and quick-fire games to demonstrate typical situations in which young people find themselves. They are often very funny, as when they demonstrate "ten ways of saying No"; and reproduce some of the cheesy "chat-up" lines that are current. They are also touching in their personal experiences of being used and discarded, and of the fear and worry that blights the lives of those who have got caught up in an often unwanted sexual merry-go-round.

They are not embarrassed by virginity but treat it as an asset that demonstrates personal autonomy. It is a part of their youth and they want to treat it as special. The ensuing freedom from anxiety is shown to be worth more than keeping up with the sexual Joneses of their peer group.

Until I saw one such group, "Challenge" from Canada, giving their presentation on a tour of schools in England this year, I would not have believed it possible to be so up-beat on the subject. In fact, the contrast with the typical sex-education professional could not be more marked. For a start, they are unpaid and do it because they believe in it enough to subsidise their trips out of their own pockets. They are also at the start of their lives and full of the energy and "can-do" optimism that often goes with that. They also do not use crudity as a means of establishing their credentials to talk on this subject. None of the young people in their audiences needs cringe with embarrassment at graphic descriptions and crude, mechanical scenarios. We can only hope and pray that abstinence education faces down its critics and becomes the norm here too.

In fact when you think about it, in the context of what young people are really like, what appeal is there in the idea of having a penis in the middle of a board game; or huge black and white drawings of genitalia to pass around a mixed group in order to teach them-what? How to be crude, how to overcome any feelings of delicacy or modesty? It associates the subject entirely with lust, ugliness, and-oh, yes, "Don't forget to buy those condoms now, will you?" That's always the end result of any lesson-don't forget the product it is promoting.

No wonder some young people have rebelled against it, and no wonder their current dreary, middle-aged sex-educators-who try so hard to appear "with it"-fear having the whole thing taken out of their hands and given back to this new generation, whose lives are still in front of them.

Since this chapter follows on from the one about sex education, you may well ask whether it alters anything I said there. The answer is, no, but there is a rider. Children today sometimes need to be protected from those in authority. It was only in January, 2002 that public pressure from parents forced the Scottish authorities to withdraw sex-education material that was quite plainly obscene from their schools. People who talk graphic sex to children in any context outside the family, should be treated with suspicion and may be suffering from paedophilic tendencies. Parents would be wise, therefore, to protest forcefully if any material comes into the classroom that would be seen as abusive if it were presented to their children in any other context.

Actually, if one considers the effect of the government actually deciding to promote chastity in schools, one can see how enormous the changes would have to be and how total the shift of emphasis. When looked at from that point of view, one can clearly see just how propagandistic current sex education is. Good heavens; can you imagine trying to discourage football hooliganism by showing films and photos of young men battling with one another? Close-ups and examples of the weapons they use and scenarios of how a fight might start; the "cool" armour they could don in the heat of battle; all bullet-proof, of course. Plus, of course, absolutely no mention of either the nature or the number of the injuries inflicted, the cost to society and, certainly no interviews with casualties. Would anybody seriously think this was the way to do it?

The root of the problem is that the people who are currently in charge of sex education are not basically in favour of young people abstaining from sex. In its Annual Report 2001 the Brook Advisory Centres describe their mission as: "Equipping young people to enjoy their sexuality without harm." Unfortunately, they cannot deliver the one without the other, except by chance.

If only that "mission statement" had read, "Helping young people to enjoy their youth without harm," how much more suitable it would have been. But then, it wouldn't have included the obligatory reference to the "equipment" they provide and the clinic would probably have no reason to exist.

My own family is Christian, so chastity before marriage, and fidelity within it, have always been accepted as normal and natural, despite the odd backsliding relation or two. Neither does it seem to have been too onerous. In many respects the young actually have less need of sexual intercourse to animate their relationships than almost any other adult age group. With their extravagant emotions and acute, obsessive perceptions they have a feast of enjoyment from one another without the necessity of fornication. Of course sexual attraction is the basis of a lot of their behaviour, but how that attraction is deployed in their own interests is crucial. I do believe that they need to beware of being seduced by their culture into abandoning their natural inhibitions, which are, after all, there to protect them-their feelings, their self-respect and their health, now and in the future.

The problem is that romance is a crusading ideal and not just a sloppy emotion. It is a serious philosophy which believes in the seminal value of passion, properly harnessed for the good of all. As such it needs to be passionately and seriously expressed, as it was when it first swept Europe in the thirteenth century, by troubadours travelling from place to place spreading its message and gaining converts to a new, much more interesting way of seeing the relationship between the sexes, that was called "romance."

Their eloquence started a romantic tradition that lasted until the beginning of the permissive age and the marketing of sex as a commodity that has reduced almost every kind of relationship to a simply sexual one.

If the will is there, it could be rescued by that modem equivalent of the troubadour-the mass media-and restored to its former importance. As a tradition, it has never lost its appeal to the imagination; and romance, both in the classics and in popular culture, is as sought after today as ever it was.

The return of an ideal of unconsummated sex in youth might have another fundamental effect apart from its role in limiting the spread of misery and disease. It could help reduce the number of divorces by returning the courtship behaviour of young people to something akin to its true nature.

The 1960s were a great period of social change and many old laws and traditional practices were abandoned in the name of progress and improvement. Many of them have produced results that are quite contrary to what the advocates for change originally envisaged, and nowadays we can hardly remember the reasoning behind some of their theories.

One such perverse improvement was the idea that if a couple lived together before getting married, then there would be fewer mistakes in choosing a permanent mate and, hence, less divorce. Now however, official statistics confirm that marriages contracted after a couple have lived together first break up more quickly and more often than other marriages. The intriguing question is why; and the answer is, I believe, relevant to the foregoing remarks about romance.

Romance is a sort of courtship ritual transformed into an art. The art, though highly artificial, nevertheless only disguises a process that is even found in some animal behaviour, where it serves a strictly practical purpose associated with the survival of the species. Its function in those animals where it features is largely to provide time for the male to demonstrate his skills as a provider of food and shelter and his devotion and fortitude as a protector of the female and her young. The female needs the time to decide whether he fits her instinctive criteria. She then consents to mating and, a pattern of cooperation having been established, they stay together to raise the young.

This natural need for a relatively uncommitted period of assessment between people, to establish intimacy and knowledge before they get married, is what we have ignored in our recent culture. We have failed to grasp that the function of courtship is to establish compatibility before the commitment of marriage. We haven't noticed that consummated sex is important after marriage for precisely the same reason that it is counter-productive before it.

After marriage, a new sexual relationship is important because it has the power to blind the parties to the inevitable difficulties of adjustment to a situation where, however desired it is, there is a certain loss of independence and "sovereignty." It cements a relationship in the face of those aspects of it which at first do not work very well and it makes bearable the sometimes painful process of two people growing together. "Making love" is a literal description of what takes place in a fully consummated act, and the time for that is after deciding, more coolly, that you are genuinely compatible.

This blinding power of sex which is such a help within marriage is, however, disastrous when you are choosing a mate. You do not want it to cloud your judgement and disguise major differences when you are getting to know someone. You cannot afford to be swept away in a sea of emotion at a time when you should be assessing more deliberately those qualities of character and temperament you will need to last a lifetime.

When talking about marriage rather than casual affairs, sexual intercourse has always been described as a consummation. That is, the culmination of a ritual and not just part of a journey. This ritual, which we call romance, most likely served as a vehicle for minimising mistakes at a time when men and women were becoming more free to choose their mate than they had been previously when the choice had been made largely by their families.

In departing from the time-honoured practice of a sexually unconsummated period of courtship, we have bequeathed to our children an unworkable strategy for choosing a mate that has caused immense suffering to couples and to their children, who lose one of the people they love most in the world when their parents separate.

There is another aspect of cohabitation that I would not have thought of myself if friends of my children had not mentioned it to me. It concerns the difficulty that some couples have-particularly the young men, I must sayin deciding whether to turn cohabitation into marriage. They live together, so they share all the advantages of the married state; they have intimacy, companionship and mutual help. They are also free. Mentally, psychologically and legally, they can "walk out" at any time without too much hassle.

When they come to contemplate getting married, therefore, the married state is at a disadvantage. It offers no more than cohabitation and it is loaded with responsibilities and expectations. I have on several occasions comforted a weeping girl who has spent several years living with a young man until she felt ready to settle down and have children. Then she found, to her great grief, that he was not willing to marry her. In the shock of discovering that this person whom she felt was her friend and soul-mate could treat her so badly, she left the home they shared, only to hear a short time later that he had married someone else.

This is quite a common scenario and a heart-breaking one, particularly if it is the girl who is ditched. She has a much shorter time in which to have her family before nature makes it difficult to conceive, and no amount of "equal opportunities" has altered the fact that a man in his late thirties is still considered quite eligible, whilst a woman is usually not.

Maybe it is the unacknowledged recognition of this fact that makes women, if they are sensible, take marriage very seriously. Let us just say then, that it does not take "true love" to make a man live with you-which is probably why only 4% of cohabitees stay together for even ten years, with or without children. Marriage is the test and, despite any impression to the contrary, a big majority of them do last.

NOTES

1. N. Nzila, M. Laga, M. Kivuvu, R. Ryder: Evaluation of condom utilization ... among prostitutes in Kinshasa, 1989.

2. America's Social Revolution by Melanie Phillips, Civitas, 2001.

3. The "Challenge" team can be contacted by e-mail at: challengeteam@comnet.ca.

4. "Less than four per cent of cohabitations last for ten years or more." [Cohabitation in Great Britain, Ermisch & Francesconi, Institute for Social and Economic Research, 1995].

Lynette Burrows is a well-known English educator and journalist. A revised edition of her 1989 book, Good Children, will be published this fall by Family Publications, Oxford. "Older Children," the chapter we reprint here, "has been more or less completely rewritten," Ms. Burrows tells us. It appears with permission of the publisher and author. (C) Family Publications 2002.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Summer 2002
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