Guilt Harms Teens
A Reuters news story is headlined Sex of any kind can harm teens emotionally and it reports on a paper in the journal Pediatrics. I will briefly quote the Reuters story: "Researchers at the University of California San Francisco
found that up to one-half of the sexually active teenagers in
their study said they’d ever felt "used," guilty or regretful
after having sex.Though such feelings were less common among teens who’d
only had oral sex, about one-third reported some type of
negative consequence." (Actually, it seems odd that only 1/3 had ever experienced regret after sex. Ever? Surely almost all adults have experienced some regret after sex. Say on the way to work the next day feeling sleep-deprived. But maybe that’s not the sort of regret they mean.) I recommend anyone who is serious about this go to the original source for the information–see below for details–because it’s interesting what aspect of the research that the Reuters reporter picked up on. My response is really a response to the Reuters article not the journal article, which I have read, thanks to a computer hooked up to a university library with free online access to most journals.
While I don’t doubt that kids feel guilty after sex, given our society’s widespread beliefs about sex, many adults still struggle with sexual pleasure and feelings of guilt. Notice though that no one recommends that adults stop having sex because of guilt and shame feelings. Instead, we recommend that adults think about society’s views of sex and realize where there views come from. Could we do the same with teens? The researchers Dr. Sonya S. Brady and Bonnie L. Halpern-Felsher note that girls are twice as likely to report feelings of shame and of being used. Again, I suspect the difference holds with adult women as well. That’s because of the belief, widely held, that good girls don’t. The researchers only suggest that parents talk to teens about the emotional consequences of sex, not that anyone tell them not to have sex.
The original research finding is not that teens have guilt
feelings after sex it’s that they reported these feelings in the case of oral
sex, hence the “sex of any kind” part of the headline. Is guilt an emotional harm? If so, who is to blame? Let’s consider that outside the context of
teen sex first. Suppose a young woman is raised by a conservative Christian
family and has a certain worldview about the kind of sex that good women enjoy—marital
sex, procreative sex, loving sex and so on. Suppose she finds herself at
university and falls for another woman. At a party, she enjoys a few drinks,
puts her inhibitions aside, and finds herself in bed with another woman. The
sex is amazing. She never knew this kind of pleasure was possible. Fill in
details as you wish. Now imagine our imaginary young woman awaking in the morning
and feeling mixed emotions. Guilt is part of that mix. If we imagine that the
guilt feelings are strong enough—she has disappointed her parents, broken the
rules, disobeyed her God—that she never does it again and lives a miserable,
repressed life in an unhappy, mostly sexless and certainly joyless, marriage,
who is at fault? Certainly she has some agency in the situation but the whole
story looks to her upbringing and the messages she was taught about sex.
The point I’d want to make about the teenagers is the same.
We need to know more. We need to know why they feel guilty and what they feel
guilty about. Parents and sex educators need to address the guilt in order to
get at the mistaken beliefs that generate guilt about sex. I suspect that many teens
also feel guilty about masturbation but who would want to say—the usual
lunatics aside—that masturbation is a bad thing. What is bad is guilt about
sexual pleasure. These lies the real harm. Of course, not all guilt about sex
is a bad thing. Sometimes guilt is based on true beliefs about what one ought
and ought not to do. For example, suppose I feel guilty because I coerced
someone into doing something beyond her comfort zone. Then my guilt feelings
serve a purpose and they remind me of how to better live my sexual life. But my
view is that teenagers shouldn’t feel guilty about being sexually active. That
they do feel guilty means we have to engage with them to find the basis of the
guilt. Especially in the case of girls, or in the case of teens with deviant
desires, we need to find ways to help them become resilient, to develop a sense
of sexual self-esteem that can withstand all of the anti-sex messages around
us.
REFERENCES
Adolescents’ Reported Consequences of Having Oral Sex Versus Vaginal Sex
Sonya S. Brady, PhDa and
Bonnie L. Halpern-Felsher, PhDb
a Departments of Psychiatry
b Pediatrics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California
OBJECTIVE. The present study examined whether adolescents’ initial consequences of sexual activity differ according to type of sexual activity and gender.
METHODS. Surveys were administered to 618 adolescents recruited from 2 public high schools in the autumn of ninth grade (2002) and at 6-month intervals until the spring of tenth grade (2004). Analyses were limited to the 275 adolescents (44%) who reported engaging in oral sex and/or vaginal sex at any assessment. Participants were 14 years of age at study entry, 56% female, and of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
RESULTS. In comparison with adolescents who engaged in oral sex and/or vaginal sex, adolescents who engaged only in oral sex were less likely to report experiencing a pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection, feeling guilty or used, having their relationship become worse, and getting into trouble with their parents as a result of sex. Adolescents who engaged only in oral sex were also less likely to report experiencing pleasure, feeling good about themselves, and having their relationship become better as a result of sex. Boys were more likely than girls to report feeling good about themselves, experiencing popularity, and experiencing a pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection as a result of sex, whereas girls were more likely than boys to report feeling bad about themselves and feeling used.
CONCLUSIONS. Adolescents experience a range of social and emotional consequences after having sex. Our findings have implications for clinical practice and public health campaigns targeted toward youth.
Key Words: adolescence • gender • sexual behavior • risk-taking • decision-making
Abbreviations: NSFG—National Survey of Family Growth • STI—sexually transmitted infection
Accepted Oct 12, 2006.
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