Contraception Education: Downloads

This autumn has seen an increase in interest in sex education and the publication of a number of papers relating to sexual behaviour and attitudes. Published in the Lancet in November 2001, the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles 1999-2001 questioned 11,000 people over two years. The findings provide the most accurate cross-cultural picture of sexual behaviour to date. The average age for first sex is now 16, though 30 per cent of boys and 26 per cent of girls had their first sexual experience before that. The average age of first sexual intercourse has dropped from 21 in the early 1950s to 17 in the 1980s to 16 at the millennium.

Many young women wished they had waited longer. Four out of five women and two out of five men aged 16-25 who had sex aged 13 and 14 regretted it. “Too many seem to have sex in circumstances that are not ideal,” said Kaye Wellings, director of the centre for sexual health research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, one of the authors.

Respondents used laptop computers in their homes to complete the survey, making the researchers more confident about the levels of honesty.

The survey showed that in the last 10 years both men and women have been choosing to have sex with more people than before. It found that among 16-24 year olds, 19.7% of men and 14.6% of women have already had 10 or more partners. Among women aged 25-34, the proportion with 10 or more partners is 22.7%. That is slightly higher than the figure among women 10 years older than them, the 35-44 year-old age group, at 19.4%. However the survey revealed that in the UK people are also less knowledgeable about how to prevent pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases than anywhere else in Europe.

Younger people are having more heterosexual partners, and more people are experiencing gay relationships - one in 19 men and one in 20 women. Unsafe sexual behaviour that might lead to HIV and other sexual infections is rising. Researchers found one in seven men and one in 11 women were involved in more than one sexual relationship at one time. Nationally one man in 23 in the last five years has paid for sex.

Anne Johnson, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College, London, is reported in the Guardian 30th November 2001 to have said that changes in social attitudes were part of the reason for the sex explosion. “We have become a more tolerant and less homophobic society. We have also become less censorious about one-night stands, but more intolerant of sex outside regular relationships. A higher proportion think of unfaithfulness in cohabitation as wrong. We are a more open, honest and tolerant society in terms of sexual relationships than we were 10 years ago.”

The Public Health Laboratory Service released statistics yesterday which showed that cases of gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia have all more than doubled in the last five years.

A second Lancet paper on the same study of 11,000 men and women aged 16-44 found that one in 10 adults had at one time caught a sexually transmitted infection. The most common is chlamydia. Most infected men and women do not notice any symptoms, but it can damage a woman’s fallopian tubes and is now one of the commonest reasons of infertility. Researchers carried out urine tests and discovered that one in 33 young adults of both sexes aged 18-24 is infected with chlamydia, and nearly all of them had no idea.

Kevin Fenton, senior lecturer in epidemiology at University College London, said: “People with new partners, those who have had unsafe sex, or those with many sexual partners, should consider being screened for sexually transmitted infections.”

Although 80% said they used a condom the first time they had sex, the proportion was low among the youngest. Most young people said they get most of their information about sex from school - those who said they heard it from friends or even parents were more likely to have intercourse early.

Dr Fenton has been tracking outbreaks of Sexually Tranmitted Infections. Urine samples taken randomly showed that one in 45 men and one in 66 women were infected. Most were unaware of infection because they did not have any symptoms therefore perpetuated the cycle of carrying the disease forwardthrough the population.
Chlamydia, a bacterial infection, is one of the biggest causes of female infertility. Young women are more easily accessed and screened for infection than men, who are les likely to present for contraceptive advice, screening and treatments. It would appear that there is a shortfall in men’s sexual health education and services which requires attention.

Jan Barlow, chief executive of Brook, said that young people struggled to get access to free, confidential and accurate information about sex and contraception which was reflected in the fact the UK continues to have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe. Whilst the survey overall indicates a change in attitudes, towards a more tolerant view of issues of sex in the UK in the last 10 years, Brook believes that this change is not apparent in attitudes to young people and sex. There continues to be a climate of fear around young people and sex, which acts as a barrier to sensible debate and to young people getting access to the information and services they need.

Last month a new board game, entitled “Contraception” was published by Contraception Education Limited to facilitate the raising of important safer sex and relationship issues. The inventor of the game Barbara Hastings-Asatourian hopes that this new sex education resource will make a difference to the way safer sex and contraception is raised and discussed in the classroom and at home. Contact her here

BUY SEX EDUCATION RESOURCES HERE

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RESOURCES:Surveys and Papers Autumn 2001