The experts don’t seem to consider a major alternative: we could encourage teenagers to take sex and child-bearing seriously. Our culture actively promotes sex as a recreational activity. We come up with more aggressive and intrusive forms of contraception, because we can’t bring ourselves to tell teenagers that they should take sex seriously.
We seem to be unwilling to face the fact that contraception itself contributes to the problem of not taking sex seriously. Contraception allows people to get involved in relationships that can’t possibly sustain a pregnancy. We then call the resulting pregnancy “unintended,” a mechanical problem requiring a technical solution. After all, we are not supposed to be “judgmental” or “moralistic” about sex.
But there really is something wrong with purely recreational sex with someone that would be a disaster to be a parent with. We are using the other person as an object that gives us pleasure. We are not seeing our sex partner as the potential parent of our child, which they are, even if we don’t “intend” it. We are not giving ourselves completely to the other person. We are holding ourselves back, even as we expect sexual satisfaction from them. We have created a culture of “use and be used,” instead of “love and be loved.” The fact that the other person agrees to be used doesn’t make it ok.
As long as adults consider unlimited sex an entitlement, our young people will have problems that contraception can’t solve.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love In A Hook-up World. She blogs at jennifer-roback-morse.blogspot.com
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