Unintended consequences of the sexual revolution
Troubled American teen girls mar women’s progress
COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL
It seems that while American women are making great strides in public life, our daughters are enduring agonizing struggles in private.
…Yet even as headlines about shattered ceilings have become ubiquitous, so have reports about the dangerous and self-destructive tendencies of the next generation of women. It seems that while American women are making great strides in public life, our daughters are enduring agonizing struggles in private.
Those struggles center mainly on sex and self-image. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last spring that one in four American girls aged 14 to 19 has a sexually transmitted disease. That estimate arrived on the heels of a groundbreaking American Psychological Association report that chronicled in devastating detail how our porn-saturated, hyper-sexualized society pressures girls to market themselves as sexual objects and engage in behavior that leaves them feeling ugly, worthless and depressed.
The despair of many girls today exceeds the bounds of the typical teenage blues. A 2007 CDC report found that the suicide rate among pre-teen and teenage girls has risen to its highest level in 15 years, with a 76 percent jump in the suicide rate for girls ages 10 to 14. Although the vast majority of teenage girls do not attempt suicide, many struggle with eating disorders, self-mutilation, substance abuse, anxiety and depression.
In its report, the APA blamed these problems largely on a media culture that assaults girls with sexually explicit TV shows, movies, music videos, ads and magazines. That diagnosis drew fire from defenders of our oversexed entertainment industry who reject causal links between teen entertainment and teen behavior.
But a new study published this month in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics reports more evidence of connections between the two. Researchers from the RAND Corporation studied some 2,000 teenagers over three years and found that teens who watched the most sexual content on TV — defined as flirting, kissing, sexual innuendo and sex scenes — were twice as likely to become pregnant or cause a pregnancy as those who watched the least sexual-themed TV, even after accounting for other factors that influence teen behavior.
Read it all here: http://catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0177.htm
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