SAME AS IT EVER WAS?

Photography by Dan Habib
Story by Rebecca Blumenstein

It's an old debate: Are today's teens confronted with more difficult choices than previous generations? Arguing the "Yea" is Susan Bordo, a professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky and author of Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Bordo has studied the influence of popular culture upon society and is serving as a consultant to Habib's national project. She argues that there is a big difference between today's teens and those of yesteryear.

"Previous generations were taught by parents and teachers how to become men and women; today, young people learn these lessons from the sensorially and emotionally compelling-and utterly fabricated-images provided in magazines, movies and music videos," Bordo writes. "So pervasive and powerful are these images in contemporary culture that some philosophers have argued that we are rapidly losing our ability to distinguish between what is a created illusion and what is 'real.'"

But other scholars disagree that the reality--and dilemmas--of sexuality differ significantly from what they have been since the beginning of time. Lawrence Stone, professor emeritus at Princeton University, examined the history of sexuality in England from the Middle Ages to the early modern era in Family, Sex and Marriage: England 1500-1800 (Harper and Row, New York, 1977) and later works.

Stone, a visiting fellow at the U-M Institute for the Humanities this semester, says that Puritanism kept a lid on sexuality in England and America throughout the 17th century. But marriage and birth certificates, divorce cases and other records complied during the 18th and 19th centuries show that 40 to 50 percent of Englishwomen were pregnant when they married.

Neither premarital sex nor births to unwed mothers are recent phenomena, Stone told Michigan Today; the only thing that changed in the 20th century is that they moved out of the lower classes of society and permeated its highest reaches.

"There's nothing new about sexuality; I don't think we talk about much else" Stone continued. "But there has been a tremendous change in habits." Because of pregnancy, he said, sex was never "free" until contraception became widely available in the 1960s. "There were 10 to 15 years of free sex--you were safe. That has now come to a grinding halt with AIDS."

Yet as educators and parents argue over what to teach their children in the classroom, public health experts appear to be reaching a consensus on one point: if teens do not learn about sexuality in the classroom, they will most likely learn about it on much more stark and often dangerous terms outside the classroom.

Upon being named head of the White House AIDS policy office in November, Patricia S. Fleming reported, "One in four new infections is among people who are younger than 20. That's really appalling ... I think kids today have to delay having sex as long as possible to protect themselves."

Prof. June E. Osborn, former dean of the U-M School of Public Health, served as chairman of the National Commission on AIDS for four years. Before the commission was disbanded in 1992, it urgently called for more education to prevent further HIV infection among adolescents. "Pushing boundaries, testing limits and questioning adult authority are ways for young people to move into adulthood," the commission wrote in its 1993 report, Preventing HIV/AIDS in Adolescents, "[but] the presence of HIV makes sexual and drug-taking behavior particularly dangerous today."

The commission found that only 48.2 percent of the nation's high schools in 1990 were advising sexually active students to use condoms. The panel emphasized that researchers have found no evidence that sexuality education promotes sexual activity and expressed alarm about spiraling rates of HIV infection among 20- to 29-year-olds who were probably infected in their teens. There are more than 55,000 AIDS sufferers in that age group, representing about 20 percent of AIDS victims.

Osborn fears the commission's recommendations, which now are available at a national clearing house for the asking, have not been heard. It is "very distressing to see the findings just lying there."--RB.

Rebecca Blumenstein '89 is a reporter for Newsday in Long Island, New York. She says of her days as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Daily, 'I doubt I'll ever have to work as hard again.'

Dan Habid '87 has published his photos in Life, Newsweek, The New York Times, People, Fortune and Esquire. He and writer Blumenstein were colleagues on the Michigan Daily. He can be e-mailed at: dhabib@cmonitor.com.