Why Is Teen Oral Sex Skyrocketting? An Economist Unravels The Puzzle
The prevailing argument is,
a) the perception of oral sex and anal sex to be acceptable substitutes to vaginal penetration.
b) a backfiring of sex ed classes which offers an incomplete picture of all types of sex.
c) fear of pregnancy and the social stigma of becoming a soccer mom.
In short, teens are merely acting the way all little maximizers do, they want to get the most out of a zero sum game. Is that the whole story? Tim Harford opines on the incentive equation and what has changed in the past decade to make rainbow parties a hot topic on Oprah.
“Parents, brace yourselves.” With those words, Oprah Winfrey introduced news of a teenage oral-sex craze in the United States. In the Atlantic Monthly, Caitlin Flanagan wrote, “The moms in my set are convinced—they’re certain; they know for a fact—that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, 12- and 13-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can.”
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Now, this is a glib explanation. A real economist would want a tighter hypothesis and serious data to back it up. That economist might well be Thomas Stratmann, who, with law professor Jonathan Klick, has pushed the idea of the rational teenage sex drive. Their hypothesis is that if teenagers really did think about the consequences of their actions, they would have less risky sex if the cost of risky sex went up. They discovered a very specific source of that higher risk: “In some states, there are abortion-notification or -consent laws, which mean that teenagers can’t get an abortion without at least one parent being informed or giving consent.” If teenagers are rational, such laws would discourage risky sex among teens, relative to adults.
Whatever the hypothesis, this big question remains.. how do you react when you find out your just out of grade school teenage daughter has been going to all these rainbow parties?
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