Condoms and Young People

another day, no more dollars...

i suppose this is something I won't write every day, I'm not a very disciplined person.

The subject for today class is condoms and young people. I've just been listening to a debate on radio 5 about whether schools should give out condoms. I was very nearly moved to phone in, but that's not really my thing.

I think condoms shold be freely available to anyone that wants them. My first job out of college was on an HIV prevention project as an outreach worker. In this role i gave out lots of condoms, and had long discussions with people about how to make their sex safer. Our philosophy with young people was to familiarise them with condoms early on, before they were sexually active, so that when the moment came they were well prepared. We would encourage boys to practice putting them on alone, in the dark under the duvet, to prepare them as much as possible for the real fumbling. We would show girls how to put them on chocolate bars and fake penises with their hands and by mouth. The aim of this would be to take the embarrasesment out of the moment, and give young people the skills and confidence to actually use the horrible things.

Most of all we'd recognise and acknowledge that condoms aren't very 'nice' to use, and can be embarrassing, and we'd certainly encourage abstinence and other methods of safer sex. Some people seem to think giving out condoms and encouraging abstinence are mutually exclusive, but not so.

Many, many condoms were blown up, put over boys' heads or filled with water and thrown around. We would often have to clean the surrounding streets of discarded condoms afterwards. This all served its purpose, the young people got over their embarrassment, saw how much water a condom could hold (so no more excuses about them being too small or not strong enough) and it led into serious discussions about when sex was appropriate, where to get more information or advice, what sexually transmitted diseases existed and their consequences, and many other issues important to the young people.

I don't know of any evidence that this work, or other similar projects, increased the levels of sexual activity, STIs or teenage pregnancies.

Moving on a bit, I think parenting is the vital missing ingredient out of our children's education. Neither parents nor schools seem to focus on the one role that most young people will eventually perform - that of parent. If there was more focus on what parenting actually entails I'm sure young people would act more responsibly. They need to know not just about the endless nappies, bottles and sleepless nights, but also about the lifetime commitment that is required both to the child and to the other parent, whether or not they are still getting along. They need to discuss what they want to pass onto their children, and to do this they need to discuss how they were parented themselves. There are too many chioldren suffering from poor parenting - I work with young people who fear going home becuase of the violence that exists there - this society needs to have a massive review of what's been going wrong and to involve children and young people. They are the future parents, and right now we are teaching them some very bad habits.