April 17, 1998

Sex and the single teen

We're all familiar with the stereotype of today's high school student having sex with abandon while throwing contraception to the wind. Sensational media reports, especially from the U.S., paint the contemporary teenager as largely reckless and irresponsible.

Dr. Gretchen Hess doesn't buy this image, however, and never has, at least as far as Alberta is concerned. From her years as a high school teacher and guidance counsellor, the professor of educational psychology has suspected a far different picture from that suggested by most studies. She has since devoted much of her academic career to finding out the truth about teenage sexual activity.

"The more I read the literature in the area, the more I had questions, because it didn't seem to fit the high-school kids I had known and worked with," says Hess. "Our kids are a heck of a lot better than we think they are in terms of using contraception."

When Hess and her graduate students began surveying schools in 1991, they discovered 78 per cent of sexually active high school students were in fact using some form of contraception the first time they had sex, radically different from the 20 per cent figure turning up in previous studies. And while Hess has only looked at five schools in rural and suburban areas so far, the more recent surveys she and her students have done are turning up similar results.

Hess is mainly interested in what is called "sexology," or the social/historical context in which sexual behavior takes place and acquires meaning. She therefore looks at all of the factors in teenagers' lives influencing how they approach sex and contraception, such as relationships with parents, religion, performance in school, geographical setting and substance abuse. Even when so examined, says Hess, the results are far from predictable.

"There are sexually active kids that have never had a drink in their lives, have never had a mark below ninety, who will do unbelievable things in their careers, they just also happen to have been sexually active since they were about 14."

Contrary to what one might expect, the presence or absence of religion in teenagers' lives does not seem to determine sexual behavior much either way. Neither do parenting methods. For young women, however, career plans do make a difference. Those who are mapping out their futures tend to be less likely to engage in sex at all.

One reason Hess continues to be surprised by her findings, she says, is that not much work has been done on adolescent contraception use in Canada. Studies are predominantly American, and different social and cultural context aside, are often methodologically shoddy or politically suspect.

"One big researcher in the States does his survey by mail-out, and gets about a 20 per cent return rate. Would you trust the 20 per cent that return a sex survey?

"There's also an awful lot of research going on out of church groups with the whole abstinence movement. I think I trust that about as much as a Penthouse or Playboy forum survey."

Hess is reluctant to announce her own good news too loudly, however. While the statistics may be a testament to the curriculum and successful teaching of Career and Life Management in Alberta schools, she says the battle is by no means over. Pregnancy rates are still far too high, at a quarter of those teenage women who are sexually active. "I'm a clinical psychologist - one teen pregnancy is too much for me," says Hess.

Laurie Schnirer, a doctoral student also studying teenage contraception use, agrees. She says some of the results she's been gathering in a rural population beg as many questions as they answer. If girls are using contraception, as the surveys suggest, but are getting pregnant at the rate of one in four, "are they lying, are they not using it properly, or are they not using it regularly?"

Schnirer's doctoral work will attempt to untangle some of these incongruities, partly by focusing on "deeper developmental constructs" connected to sex and identity formation, "such as separating from parents, and the egocentrism that all kids go through."

Hess says her research has convinced her that more sex education is required at the junior high level, where most students are deciding, consciously or not, whether they will have sex in high school. She also says the definition of "sexually active" (which applies to about half of all students in high school) is one that also needs further questioning.

"It seems fairly clear-cut, but if someone has had intercourse once, are they sexually active, or three times in five years? On that record I wouldn't call them sexually active, would you?" There is also a difference, she says, between couples who meet in Grade 10, and remain together throughout high school, and those who have multiple partners.

Her findings may not be exhaustive or conclusive, but Hess says she's confident they are arrived at carefully with the participation of every student in the respective schools, conveying an accurate impression of at least one segment of the population. The next stage in her study will be breaking into the urban setting.

"We're working at getting into the bigger schools, but sex in Alberta is still a pretty controversial issue." There is support at the administrative level, she says, but "when it gets down to parents, and some teachers in schools, there are some people who don't want us to answer these questions."

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