HACKENSACK, N.J. — Word has it that eighth-graders are having oral sex in the dugout behind the middle school — during recess. Or, the talk is of kids dodging into bushes for hanky-panky on the walk home. And in some areas, kids are rumored to be having oral-sex parties when parents are away.

In a culture saturated with sex, today's young adolescents are freely passing along whatever gossip they hear. Their tales of purported trysts are echoed at PTA meetings, on the bleachers and in the supermarket aisles, as alarmed parents grill each other for details.

But hold on: According to several well-respected national surveys, the chatter apparently far surpasses action among young adolescents. Although experts agree that younger teens are far more knowledgeable about sex than previous generations, the studies find that middle-school kids are actually waiting longer to become sexually active than they did just seven years earlier.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2002, 13 percent of girls had had sex by the time they turned 15, down from 19 percent in 1995. The drop for boys was similar, from 21 percent to 15 percent. Rates for black teens, which had been two to 3.5 times higher than for whites, fell even more dramatically.

"Isolated incidents"

Although skeptics might question teens' truthfulness in reporting their own sex lives, the trend's consistency across multiple surveys suggests the data are reliable.

"The kids who are sexually active are doing it in more visible and public places — on school buses, in the cafeteria or auditorium, or at school dances," says Nora Gelperin, education director for the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University, New Jersey's largest trainer of sex-education teachers. "Those isolated incidents are what we all hear about, and people then think that all middle-school kids are doing it."

Gelperin is a repository of such gossip. As one of the state's most popular trainers, she works with hundreds of health teachers and school nurses every year. At one recent session, a suburban teacher told her about the "Touchdown Club," with cheerleaders allegedly promising oral sex to any football players, even eighth-graders, who score a touchdown.

Gelperin helps instructors teach middle-schoolers effective strategies to remain abstinent, as required by the state curriculum. But her best-attended workshop is one on middle-school kids and oral sex.

Warnings vs. facts

Public alarm about teen sexual behavior is not new, of course. A sharply rising teen pregnancy rate fed concern in the 1980s. And although the 1990s saw a drop in sexual activity among older teens, studies then found the proportion of sexually active girls under age 15 was soaring.

When President Clinton's Oval Office escapades moved oral sex into the public vernacular, the media were off and running.

Headlines declared middle-school oral sex an alarming new fad. Journalists casually passed on unsubstantiated rumors about sexual encounters in study halls and in a Midwestern middle-school math class. They obsessed about supposed oral-sex parties. In a May 2002 broadcast, Oprah decried the "oral-sex epidemic" among kids as young as 12.

So pervasive is the idea of runaway young libidos that a book due out next month is titled "Teaching True Love to a Sex-at-13 Generation." In it, the 29-year-old author — who says she lost her virginity at 15 — suggests faith-based solutions to despairing parents.

The dire warnings, however, seem undermined by facts. For starters, kids are telling researchers they're delaying sexual activity. More easily measured is the teen-pregnancy rate, which fell steadily through the 1990s, particularly among those 14 and younger. Their rate dropped 40 percent from 1990-99.

Some of that drop is attributed to increased contraceptive use. But experts say it's also strong evidence of a sexual-culture shift nurtured by fear of AIDS, strong public education and a changing social script that no longer defines virginity as a source of humiliation.

Epidemic of rumors

Still, parents worry. A few years ago, Tenafly, N.J., was abuzz with claims that countless middle-school girls had been diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases. In Maywood, N.J., last summer, parents fretted about the jelly bracelets young girls were wearing, each color purportedly promising a different sexual favor. And today in many towns, rumors fester that kids are being sexually adventurous at parties and on buses taking them to field trips, bar mitzvahs, school overnights and even home from school each day.

"My mom is totally convinced that all those rumors are true," says Zack, a Bergen County, N.J., eighth-grader who had a girlfriend for most of sixth and seventh grades. "But I've been on lots of buses and to lots of parties, and there's never been anything like that.

"There's always lots of guys hanging out with girls, and maybe one or two couples making out, but nothing more than that," says Zack, who agreed to be quoted if his last name were not printed. "Most of the guys in my grade know that the real thing — you know, like, sex — is for when they're older. And most kids in our school actually look down on the kids who go too fast."

Surveys support his take. A recent poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates, commissioned by NBC and People magazine, found that 5 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds had had intercourse and 4 percent had had oral sex. Nine of 10 kids ages 13 and 14 said they frowned on kids their age having sex.

And those oral-sex parties? Less than one-half of 1 percent of 13- to 16-year-olds said they'd been to one, a figure the Princeton researchers said was so small as to be statistically meaningless.

"Some kids brag about having oral sex, but my son says most kids aren't even making out," says Michelle Conahan, a Teaneck, N.J., mother of a seventh-grader. "They think they have girlfriends, but they barely talk, they only I.M. [instant message]. They all know about sex, they all talk about sex, they all think about sex, but that's very different from actually having sex."

"It just doesn't happen"

So should parents be concerned about young adolescents being sexually active?

"You betcha," says Bill Albert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "Should they be panicked that there's an epidemic? No. The evidence just doesn't support it. There may be oral-sex parties going on somewhere, and there certainly are some middle-school kids having sex, but it's far from the norm. Less than 15 percent of kids have had sex by the time they reach 15. Yes, we're moving in the right direction, but that doesn't sound like victory to me. We still have work to do."

The rumors have been a boon for Evan Wofsy, a middle-school teacher from Livingston, N.J., who doubles on weekends as the Bar Mitzvah Bouncer, a tamer of 13-year-olds at fancy affairs.

Anxious parents, including plenty from North Jersey, hire him to make sure kids don't misbehave on the bus between the synagogue and the banquet hall, or in the bathrooms, alcoves and parking lots outside the party room. He gets enough calls to keep him and a few teacher friends chaperoning more than 200 parties a year.

"Do the kids try and make out? Oh, absolutely," Wofsy says. "But more than that? It just doesn't happen. I can't say what goes on when I'm not there, but even when the kids tell me the stuff they've heard, they admit they've never actually seen any of it happen. I think things get fabricated: One thing happens and overnight, there are 14 versions of the story, none of them accurate. That's how middle-school kids are.

"Not that these kids don't keep me busy. They have food fights, throw things out of the bus window, wrestle, put toilet paper rolls in the toilet to clog it, pull fire alarms or break things or hurl party favors at each other. I've got to tell you, keeping these kids from being sexual is the last thing I have to worry about."