On sexual education: Talk is free, but ignorance can be costly

On a still-rare evening when the sunshine lingered past dinner, the places I could have been were limitless. The place I was was a schoolroom of parents, some nervously giggling, discussing our children and sex.

One of the burdens of our puritanical past is that Americans can't help but become nervous when talk turns to sex, the repressed equivalent of growing quiet when the conversation turns to money. But give us a break; the people sitting around me that evening were parents of children between the ages of 5 and 10. What could sex possibly have to do with kids so young?

Hence our nervousness.

Turns out denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It is a state of mind for us parents who were hoping to spring "the talk" on our children just before we escorted them down the aisle. OK, maybe not that late. But am I the only one who was waiting for the sex-education class at school?

Turns out neither option is right.

Sex education is best taught by parents. Experts recommend incarnations of "the talk" when children turn 2, the age at which they become curious about their bodies and gender differences. Most school-based sex education starts in fifth grade and schools are not required to offer it, save a talk on HIV.

Moreover, sex-ed curricula are among the most politically-charged issues in education. Nearly 20 states have rejected their share of $50 million annually in Title V federal funding, set aside for sex education, because it pays for abstinence-only instruction.

Here is where President Bush's $1 billion abstinence-only education program has gotten us: A congressionally-mandated evaluation last year found that students who received abstinence education in elementary and middle school were just as likely to have sex as students who didn't get such instruction.

Young people engaging in sex — armed only with the message, "Just say no" — are walking time bombs. They are destined to join what the Centers for Disease Control estimates to be one in four teenage girls being infected with a sexually-transmitted disease.

Responses I've heard so far swing between "those numbers can't be right" — good point, they're likely increasing as I write this — and, "they don't reflect anyone I know" — statistically speaking, unlikely.

"One in four, that's someone you know," says Amy Lang, a Seattle parent who hosts workshops called "Birds + Bees + Kids." "We're in denial about our kids being sexual."

The survey tracked the human papillomavirus, or HPV; chlamydia; trichomoniasis; and genital herpes. Unlike HIV, these are super easy to contract and have few symptoms.

The CDC study shows that, whether we're the parents of boys or girls, we're facing a public health crisis. The level of debate ought to extend all the way up to the presidential race. Who better than Sen. Hillary Clinton to get the horror of the CDC's finding that 15 percent of infected girls had more than one sexually-transmitted disease? Sen. Barack Obama, the father of two young girls, ought to be moved by the news that among African-American teenagers, nearly half have an STD, compared with 20 percent of white teenagers.

Conversation at that level ought to spark policy efforts, from increased medical screening to sex education that is medically and scientifically comprehensive. Meanwhile, the best defense is to educate our children early about how to make responsible decisions, including protecting their health.

Like many parents, I worry about making that parental gaffe known as offering "too much information." The presence of TMI is usually signaled by a look of disgust or shock from your kids, followed by a hasty exit. The other mistake parents make is misinterpreting how to preserve our children's innocence.

After my sex-education primer last week, I learned that a child my son's age, 7, should know where babies come from. He or she should be educated on the natural changes their body will undergo. They should know the difference between friendly hugs and touching of a more consequential, dangerous nature. None of this strips away their innocence.

Lessons can be short and sweet, preferably a series of 30-second conversations. In a perfect world, kids should not have a memory of learning, they just should have always known.

Sex education doesn't mean rejecting abstinence education. Abstinence works as a protection against STDs and pregnancy, but only if it is adhered to 100 percent.

That isn't reality. In 1999, the CDC reported that half of all high-school students and nearly two-thirds of graduating seniors reported having had sexual intercourse. One in five high-school seniors reported having had sex with four or more partners. And there is this snapshot of a single year: Of nearly 480,000 babies born to teens in 2000, 79 percent of the births were out of wedlock.

Talk is free. Its absence carries enormous costs for public health and the health of our children.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com