survey

adam and i periodically have intelligent conversations. i know most of our conversations are complete nonsense, but occasionally it does happen. while on our long, long drive to laura & sean's wedding, we were discussing how early kids are exposed to sex as compared to when we were young. now that we have a baby girl, things like the bratz dolls, micro-mini's, size aaa training bras (and no that is not what i wear!) and britney spears take on a whole new meaning. and a scary one at that.

first and foremost, please understand that we both graduated from a small, rural high school, so not all of our observations are going to mesh with yours perhaps.

when we were in high school (1992/3-1996/7) the number of kids that we knew of having sex was not that great. honestly, perhaps a handful of sophomores and less than 25% of seniors. and it's not just because of the groups that we hung around with, because adam and i had totally separate friends outside of "the group", of both good and bad influences. together, we knew a ton of people through swimming, track, soccer, baseball, after-school clubs, band (not so proud to admit that one), and after-school jobs. what i'm getting at, is that parents think that the kids that do bad stuff must not do anything, only wear black, look like trouble, etc. but they can be anyone.

through my high school experience, i knew of two abortions. one was a band girl. the most well-behaved girl scout also had lost her virginity at the age of nine. two record-holding varsity swimmers also smoked pot every day. one of the highest gpa's in our school was obtained by using cocaine. my assigned partner in government drank a mug of alcohol every day in class, and my teacher thought it was so "grown up of him to drink coffee." should i really go on? in a small town, we were still able to get access to just about anything at any age. but for some reason, there just wasn't a whole lot of sex.

in reality, however, a lot has changed over the past ten years, an the definition of sex is only one part of the problem. here's some stats from a 2002 CDCP survey:

percentage of teens who have had intercourse and their ages:
Boys
15 - 25.1%
16 - 37.5%
17 - 46.9%
18 - 62.4%
19 - 68.9%

Girls
15 - 26.0%
16 - 39.6%
17 - 49.0%
18 - 70.3%
19 - 77.4%

so what is all of this about? i'm asking for an anonymous survey. simply click on the comments and type in the age at which you first had intercourse. i would like all of the readers to participate, because there are so many of you that never say anything. instead of logging into blogger, simply click on "anonymous," complete the word verification and post your comment. i can assure you that i will not be looking at ip/isp addresses or anything, adam and i were just talking and wondering. if you'd like to post general comments, you don't have to remain anonymous unless you choose to.

thanks.