Are you single? Sexually active? Do you assume your partner or partners are healthy?
Bad call.
Disease isn’t personal. It isn’t judgmental. It doesn’t know if you attend church, if you brush your teeth and floss. If you’ve only had two sexual partners in a lifetime, or 302.
What about your teenagers? Do they use condoms? Are you making assumptions, or looking the other way?
A recent Times article reports that sexually active teenagers (14-17) are doing far better at using condoms than adults.
Is this a case of do as I say, not do as I do? Is it time for us to look to our adolescents as models of healthy behavior?
I have to admit, I find the statistics in this article both reassuring (relative to teens) and disheartening (for adults). As a woman over 40 (and on my own for 9 years), I’m hardly a wild child, but nor have I relocated to the neighborhood nunnery. In my own experience, I’ve been surprised by the number of times that a condom wasn’t part of the courtship, and a firm request was required. That, or lab work – in writing.
Protecting our teens
I am pleased to know that our teenagers are taking the need to protect themselves seriously. And I recall pointed, disapproving remarks when I’ve mentioned or written about making condoms available to my kids. No questions asked.
Who doesn’t think there’s a likelihood of sexual activity at 16, 17, 18? Who doesn’t think that the emotional, physical, and social issues around sexual behavior weren’t part of the discussion many years before that?
Sexually active over 40, and beyond
What concerns me is the drop-off in condom use over 40, by both men and women, even among casual sex partners. However, the data reflect that condom usage is considerably higher in black and Hispanic men.
Is there an assumption that a white man of a certain age is healthy? How crazy is that? What other assumptions are we making about those we bed in middle-age and beyond?
In the 40-49 age group, condom use by women with casual partners is only 20%. In contrast, for the same age group among men, condom use with casual partners is roughly 35%. Now compare this to teens 14-17, male and female, with over 80% indicating condom use.
A woman’s view
Why are we disregarding the lessons of sexual health that we’re teaching our children? What role might self-image play in all this? What about our physicians?
Once I hit my late 40s, I was no longer asked if I was sexually active. Not by male doctors, nor female doctors. It was assumed that I was not, particularly as a divorced mother, working and raising kids. No discussion of birth control. No routine blood work for STDs. I had to request it – and do – as a responsible adult.
- Do these statistics concern you?
- Given the number of divorced adults over 40, shouldn’t condom use and routine testing be the norm?
- As women, are we embarrassed to buy condoms? To insist on their usage?
- How do you feel about providing them for your teens – just in case?
This is an important post, BLW. I’m curious why the statistics skew the way they do for men and women over age 40.
My boys (1 and 3) are still too young for the big sex talk, but I did have some experience with this issue while teaching at a boarding school. The school’s policy was to have condoms available – no questions asked – in the health center, even though the stated and unstated policy of the school was that sex wasn’t appropriate on school grounds. I understood and respected the policy, but couldn’t help but wish that the doling out of the condom would come with some honest conversation. Ideally, kids would be having these kinds of conversations with a parent, not the young teacher acting in loco parentis. But I suppose it was better that some of them at least chose to have the conversation at all.
Thank you for your thoughts on this, Kristen. Especially as you are a teacher, I’m glad to know that some schools at least recognize the inevitability of teenage exploration. And apparently, the statistics in this study support relatively responsible behavior.
As for the behaviors of those 40+ I have my ideas. Having been part of the post-divorce dating pool, assumptions are rampant (in my own little non-representative sample). And those assumptions include little to no sexual activity (therefore assumed lower risk), that white suburban moms and dads are automatically healthy, and I suspect, some other psychological factors are at play.
We’ve experienced sex both with and without condoms. Let’s face it, without is better. Which is specifically why I’m not on the pill, or anything like it. It would be far too easy for me to get caught up in the moment, and want to experience it for all its worth. So by NOT being on birth control, I am adamant about using a condom. Because, frankly, the thought of another pregnancy is scarier than the thought of a disease! Is that the right reason? No. But at least it keeps me from making the wrong decision.
Well, it’s an excellent reason! But how do you explain that apparently women over 40 are the worst offenders? Fear of pregnancy is far less a factor.
The statistics are surprising among the 40+ age group. I think people would want protect themselves more as they got older. I think there still isn’t enough talk to educate kids/adults in general about STD’s. People always assume it won’t be happening to them.
Very important post BLW. Thanks for writing it.
You would think that, by the time we’re in our 40s, we’d recognize the risks and take all action necessary to prevent them. I’d like to think we’re intelligent enough at that age to do so. I suspect it’s more of the “can’t happen to me” or “THAT only happens to a lower class person”. During our single years, my BFF and I used to joke that we were going to require both a certificate of health and a credit report before we’d date anyone.
I like that idea, Carol – health records and credit report! 🙂
I have to say, as a single woman over 40, that men get really annoyed when asked if they have been tested recently for diseases. I am willing, if asked, to provide proof I do not have a communicable disease, particularly a sexually transmittable one. Men seldom ask. They then “cop an attitude” when you question them about it – at least in my experience.
As a parent, I will say that I discuss condom usage on a fairly regular basis with my college and high school aged children. Strangely enough, I am somewhat comforted that the condoms at #5’s school are available at both Health Services – which is out of the way on campus – and in a fish bowl as you come into the dorm. I do think that Kristen is correct.
Just handing out condoms at high schools or at colleges is not the answer. These kids need to have some idea of what they doing, of the emotional and spiritual and physical connections they are making when “hooking up” and how it will influence their lives.
My experience with men has been similar to yours, Nicki. Not all the time, but enough of the time to surprise me. (I, too, have “documentation” if they have documentation… ;)) And I couldn’t agree more with you and Kristen. Availability of protection does not absolve parents of discussing the risks and rewards inherent in sexuality and all its implications, including protecting your emotional health, and that of your partner.
My local paper has a story today about a guy who, when his girlfriend refused to have an abortion (they have one child together and he has another with another woman; he lives with neither woman), pulled a gun out of the glove compartment of her car and forced her to drive to the clinic. The police arrested him in the car as he waited outside the clinic. Dude needs to start strapping them on. Condoms not bullets!
WOW. That is some alarming statistics. “Is there an assumption that a white man of a certain age is healthy?” I want to LOL @ this of course, but the reality of such a false assumption makes it terrifying.
Is it possible that women of our generation, many of whom married early and divorced in middle-age, came out into the dating world with no experience with condoms? When I was dating as a teenager the biggest concern we had was pregnancy, not STDs and birth control pills were fairly easy to obtain. If you became sexually active in the early 70’s there was a lot of sex around and not a lot of condom use (at least in my disaffected, white, upper-middle class ‘hood!) Could it be that the embarrassment of having to admit that at the age of 50 or so, you’d never used a condom could be so overwhelming that you just don’t say anything? Still foolish but it makes more sense to me than the idea that single, middle-aged men aren’t having much sex and so are “safe”.
Interesting point, SF. You might be on to something. I married in my 30s, but many married much younger. In the 70s, STDs were less of a concern than pregnancy – rightfully or not. (But I bet those middle-aged men are hitting it more often than we think! We believe what we want to believe, don’t we?)