Sex ed sometimes awkward, but necessary
By Amanda Korman, Berkshire Eagle Staff,

Updated: 05/29/2011 08:51:14 AM EDT

Click photo to enlarge

Nicole Davies, right, says she’s... (Caroline Bonnivier Snyder / Berkshire Eagle Staff)

Sunday May 29, 2011

==========================================

The talk.

The birds and the bees.

It.

Whatever you call it -- or don't call it -- sex is a difficult topic to wrap words around, especially if you're an adult trying to talk with a teenager.

But a climbing teen birth rate in Berkshire County -- compared with the rest of the state's declining numbers -- is making sexual education in schools and homes a subject that needs attention, according to community leaders who are focusing on that education as a way to tackle the issue of teen pregnancy.

"There's the disease component, the pregnancy piece, but there's also the risk to their emotional health," said Annemarie Carpenter, head school adjustment counselor in Pittsfield. "That's a piece that's harder for people to get their head around."

In Berkshire County, sex education is all over the map, with some schools offering it and some not, and some schools starting in eighth grade and some in 11th.

At St. Mark's, a Catholic school in Pittsfield, for instance, you might get a "family life" lesson and a mention of abstinence, but at Wahconah Regional, the public high school in Dalton, you might never hear the word sex because the health class that would have covered it was slashed from the district's budget years ago.

Even among schools that carve out time to discuss all the options, there are still reams of questions:

In what grades should sex ed be offered?

What's the best curriculum?

Will students listen?

A group of students at Simon's Rock College of Bard -- most of them still teenagers, since they leave high school to start the "early college" program at the Great Barrington school -- believe that part of a good sex education is learning from peers. About 20 students have become certified sex educators and will start going into South County schools to conduct sessions in the fall.

Simon's Rock student Zach Mason, 19, sees traditional sex education as too much about mechanics and not enough about larger questions of sexuality. He said a discussion led for teens, by teens, would have a better chance of imparting information that actually would stick.

"Sex ed is just, ‘OK, put a condom on. Don't partake in risky behaviors,' " Mason said. "But there's so much more people need to know to be comfortable with the subject: What does it mean to be sexual? Not sexually active, but just to be a sexual person?"

Mason's questions were echoed by teenagers throughout the county who participated in focus groups and surveys earlier this year through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI), a Berkshire United Way-led effort to lower the teen birth rate among adolescents 15 to 19.

According to the most recent statistics available, there were 27 births per 1,000 adolescents in Berkshire County in 2008, and almost double that in Pittsfield, which accounted for half of all teen births in the county that year.

In Massachusetts as a whole, rates have been on the decline, at only 20.1 per 1,000 in 2008.

Kristine Hazzard, executive director of the Berkshire United Way, agrees with Mason about how teens view sex ed.

"This is the one thing we've heard from kids: They feel like it's about the mechanics -- here are the ovaries, the sperm. It doesn't include relationship negotiation, and that's what a lot of this," Hazzard said.

‘Refusal skills'

Getting the proper sex education at home as well as in schools is an issue close to Nicole Davies, 42, who gave birth to the first of her three children when she was 19.

As a former teen parent, Davies said she is especially interested in an open dialogue about sex ed for teens because she's now the mother of a 15-year-old daughter.

"I went to college with kids on my hip for years and years; it was way too young," Davies said. "I would be supportive of my kids, but I hope that they would really, really get their lives [in as much order as possible] before they have children."

In the Pittsfield Public Schools, where Davies' daughter, Kiana Reid, goes, elements of the curriculum address the negotiation known as "refusal skills," or, as one worksheet in the program says: "What Not Having Sex Means to Me." There's a real vacuum around articulating the desire not to be sexually active, according to Carpenter. Surveys of students from years past revealed that a significant number of Pittsfield teens had sex for the first time not because they wanted to, but because their partner did.

In the Pittsfield Public Schools, where Davies' daughter, Kiana Reid, goes, elements of the curriculum address the negotiation known as "refusal skills," or, as one worksheet in the program says: "What Not Having Sex Means to Me." There's a real vacuum around articulating the desire not to be sexually active, according to Carpenter. Surveys of students from years past revealed that a significant number of Pittsfield teens had sex for the first time not because they wanted to, but because their partner did.

That fact is alarming because of the possibility of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and emotional issues, Carpenter said. But to some teens, all this talk of delaying seems besides the point.

Mason, the Simon's Rock student, expressed frustration with the goal of encouraging teens to wait. It reminds him of every other mandate that few young people adhere to.

"It's a good idea not to smoke. It's a good idea not to drink. It's a good idea to exercise every day. It's a good idea not to eat fast food. These things just don't happen," Mason said.

And the adults who work with teens recognize that disconnect. In the adult world, there are two opposing tropes: wanting kids to postpone sex vs. the reality that they probably won't.

"Every adult wants to delay a young person's sexual activity, but at the same time, you can't realistically," said Nakeida Bethel-Smith, outreach educator at the Elizabeth Freeman Center in Pittsfield, a center for women's services. "So if you're trying to prevent things from happening, the best thing is to give them all the tools and how to assess those tools. We don't want them to be blind."

The human body

Without sex ed class, it's not clear whether kids would get an accurate notion of how their bodies function.

Dan Caritey chuckles when he thinks of some questions he has fielded from students in his Hoosac Valley High School sex ed class.

"It's amazing how a lot of these kids are really naïve to what's what," Caritey said.

When Caritey forces students to quit using slang and identify body parts by their real names, he realizes that many don't know the workings of all sexual organs, believing, for instance, that women urinate through their vaginas.

Students also are shocked that they could contract gonorrhea of the mouth or get pregnant the first time they have sex.

"I've had kids say to me, ‘I've only done it once,' " Caritey said. ... "There's no warm-up period here, kids. It's important, and I try to be as honest and straightforward as I can, and my philosophy is we use the proper language. No slangs. You should know your body."

Parents' role

Americans' squeamishness about sex can be summed up in the fabled idea of "the talk," that awkward conversation between parent and child. The Teen Pregnancy Parent Initiative is trying to scrap the notion entirely, insisting instead that there should be a lifetime of family discussions.

"It can't just be ‘the talk,' " Hazzard said. "You need to be talking all the time."

Katrina Mattson, the health services manager at Tapestry Health, a Western Massachusetts reproductive services agency with a branch in Pittsfield, pointed to the striking difference between how well adults and kids believe parents are doing at discussing sex.

"If surveyed, parents say they've talked to their kids about sex, and yet the kids' perception is that they haven't yet gotten that conversation," Mattson said. "That's a real disconnect."

But even Mattson, who makes a living at an organization dealing with reproductive health, said she has a difficult time broaching the subject with her 11-year-old daughter.

"It's hard to think about your children entering into a world that's scary, a relationship world," Mattson said.

Davies, the Pittsfield mother, said that although her daughter wants nothing to do with any conversation regarding sex, she and her husband aren't afraid to broach the subject with her because they couch it in humor.

"I joke with her all the time. Before we drop them off at the mall we say, ‘Don't have sex; don't do any drugs,'" Davies said with a laugh. "We try to make light of it by joking, but also that we're cool-headed about it to talk to."

However a parent does it, Mattson said, the discussion is pivotal because it helps to convey their values about this major -- if sometimes uncomfortable -- part of life.

"Parents are having a conversation about it -- they feel like they are -- but kids want to know more, and that is: What are your opinions on this; what should I be doing?" Mattson said. "It doesn't mean they're always going to do it, but at least there's an expectation."

Davies' daughter, 15-year-old Kiana Reid, said she can't imagine a situation in which she would enjoy talking to her mom about sex. Nonetheless, she said, her mother's light-hearted approach is more effective than having it held over her head all the time.

"My mom doesn't press me about it; she just brings it up every now and then, which I think is a better way of dealing with it than pressuring [teens] to make better decisions," Reid said. "It doesn't really work that way. In teen pregnancy, I completely understand why. But at the same time, I know people who do [have sex] it just because they know we're not supposed to."

To reach Amanda Korman:
akorman@berkshireeagle.com
(413) 496-6243.

Teen births

The likelihood of a Berkshire County teenage girl, age 15 to 19, giving birth increased 20.5 percent between 1998 and 2007. In Massachusetts as a whole, the same rate decreased 21.7 percent.

In 2008, the county's teen birth rate was 27 per 1,000 teens. Pittsfield's was 47.2 and Massachusetts' was 20.1. Adams, Dalton and North Adams also have teen birth rates above the state average.

77 percent of teen births in the county in 2008 were to women ages 18 and 19.

Source: Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative

Note: Surveys conducted in Berkshire County in January corroborate the difference between how adults and teens view sex: While 75 percent of adults said they think teens should wait until they're out of high school to have sex, only 47 percent of youths felt that way.

(source:.berkshireeagle.com/ci_18163676)

================================================