Adolescent sexuality in the United States

rdf:langString Adolescent sexuality in the United States

rdf:langString The sexuality of US adolescents includes their feelings, behaviors and development, and the place adolescent sexuality has in American society, including the response of the government, educators, parents, and other interested groups. Teenage pregnancy is four times as prevalent in the US as in the European Union, but has been steadily declining since 1991, reaching a record low in 2012, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and continuing to decline through 2017. The CDC said in 2007, 35% of US high school students were currently sexually active and 47.8% of US high school students reported having had sexual intercourse. In 2017, the percentage sexually active was down to 28.7%, and the percentage who had ever had intercourse was 39.5%. According to a 1994 study, every year an estimated one in four sexually active teens contracts a sexually transmitted infection (STI). In 1999, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 95% of public secondary schools offered sex education programs. More than half of the schools in the study followed a comprehensive approach that included information about both abstinence and contraception, while approximately one third of schools provided students with abstinence-only sex education. In 2002, most Americans favored the comprehensive approach. A 2000 study found that almost all schools included information about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in their curricula. There have been efforts among social conservatives in the US government to limit sex education in public schools to abstinence-only sex education curricula. The effectiveness of abstinence-only programs has been an issue of controversy.