Most teens don’t choose oral sex over intercourse
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Many U.S. teenagers have had oral sex, but usually not as a “substitute” for intercourse, a new study suggests.
Using data from a 2002 national survey, researchers found that just over half of 15- to 19-year-olds said they had ever had oral sex. But it was much more common among teens who had already had intercourse than among virgins.
The findings counter the common idea that many teens use oral sex as a stand-in for intercourse, according to the researchers.
“There is a widespread belief that teens engage in non-vaginal forms of sex, especially oral sex, as a way to be sexually active while still claiming that technically, they are virgins,” lead researcher Dr. Laura Lindberg, of the Guttmacher Institute in New York, said in a statement.
“However,” she said, “our research shows that this supposed substitution of oral sex for vaginal sex is largely a myth.”
The findings, published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health, are based on a computerized survey of 2,271 U.S. teens ages 15 to 19. Overall, 55 percent said they had had oral sex, while half had had vaginal sex. Another 11 percent said they’d had anal sex.
While some teens had only had oral sex, the study found that for most, oral sex and vaginal sex were closely connected. Most teenagers who’d started having intercourse also started having oral sex within six months.
According to Lindberg, the findings have “clear policy implications.”
While oral and anal sex carry no pregnancy risk, she noted, they do make teenagers vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
“Counseling and education should take into account total STI risk by addressing the full range of behaviors that teens engage in, including oral and anal sex,” Lindberg said.
She also argued that the federal government’s “exclusive emphasis on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs does not give teens the skills and information they need to be safe.”
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, May 2008.
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