fears...

Are Teen Oral Sex Fears Overblown?

by Benjamin Radford
  09 Sept 2012

It has been a topic of parental concern for years: the "steeply rising incidence of oral sex among teenagers, especially in today's sex-saturated society".

There is a long tradition of social concern over teen sexuality, and worrying about what “kids today” are secretly up to, is a time-honored pastime... among parents.

Where do parents get information about their teens' sex lives?

Not from the teens themselves -- heaven forbid! -- mostly from the news media.

[Teen Brain, Wired to Take Risks]

In July 1998 The Washington Post ran a front-page story, headlined, "Parents Are Alarmed by an Unsettling New Fad in Middle Schools: Oral Sex".

Publishers followed suit, eager to cash in on "the concern", with alarmist titles, like "Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids", and, "Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss".

WATCH VIDEO: See how thoughts are transferred in a teenage brain.

Given the "epidemic" levels of oral sex among teens, reported in the media, parents might be forgiven for thinking it's their sons' and daughters' main pastime, aside from posting on Facebook and playing video games.

Fact Check

Despite widespread alarmist headlines, suggesting oral sex is common among today's teens, studies show such behavior is actually in the minority.

Reported rates of oral sex among teens varies widely, depending for example on how the term is defined and what age group is studied.

Predictably, older teens are more likely than younger ones to have engaged in all sexual behaviors, including oral sex.

[Dealing with Your Teen: A Parent's Handbook]

A 2005 report by the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics found about 12 percent of males and 10 percent of females had engaged in opposite-sex oral sex contact -- thus, the vast majority, about 90 percent, had not.

Another study the same year found about 20 percent of ninth graders, in one sample, had engaged in oral sex -- again, well in the minority.

Of course, headlines like, "Most Teens Not Having Oral Sex", isn't quite as compelling or noteworthy as reports of an epidemic.

As the The New York Times reports, "The popular notion teenagers, not ready for intercourse, are experimenting with oral sex, en masse, is being challenged by new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Teenagers are about as likely to engage in oral sex before intercourse as they are to have intercourse first, according to the National Survey of Family Growth....

"There's been a perception for many years there's some kind of epidemic of oral sex among teens," says Leslie Kantor, vice president for education of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who was not involved in the study.

"If nothing else, this data provides a realistic sense of the numbers."

Indeed, the CDC report concludes, rates of oral sex among 15- to 19-year-olds have actually dropped, significantly.

A decade ago, about 55 percent had oral sex; by 2010 the number dropped to about 47 percent; so, once again (even among this late-teen group), those who engaged in the behavior are in the minority.

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The concern over teen oral sex is nothing new.

In the early-to-mid 2000s, there was great concern over "rainbow parties", in which teen girls were, allegedly, going to parties, each wearing a different shade of lipstick, and performing oral sex on a line of boys, in succession, creating a rainbow on the recipients' penises.

Hundreds of these parties were reportedly going on, across the country, unbeknownst to oblivious parents.

It all sounded terribly torrid; in 2005, The San Francisco Chronicle deemed it, "The new Spin the Bottle".

There's no evidence any such parties ever occurred; it is, essentially, a hoax or an urban legend.

Many experts consider the oral sex panic largely a media-created myth, spawned by anecdote and sensationalism, instead of data and hard facts.

Maia Szalavitz, a writer for the non-partisan fact-checking organization, stats.org, responding to an alarmist piece on Slate.com, concluded, "The national middle class teen oral sex epidemic remains a scientifically unsupported (but highly titillating) media creation."

Of course there is legitimate parental concern over risky teen behavior, but the "epidemic" of oral sex among teens is a problem whose scope has been greatly exaggerated.

Photo: iStockPhoto