After-school time not a prime time for teen sex

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Though parents may worry about
what their kids are doing after school, a new study suggests
that teenagers do not often use their unsupervised afternoons
to have sex.

In a study that followed 106 teenage girls for more than
two years, researchers found that the teens were more than
twice as likely to report having sex in the evening compared
with afternoons. And girls were less likely to have sex on
school-day afternoons than on weekends.

Anyway, in general, personal and relationship factors were
more important than mere opportunity in teenagers’ decisions to
have sex, according to findings published in the Journal of
Adolescent Health.

It’s been argued that unsupervised after-school hours were
largely responsible for the increases in teen sex, pregnancy
and sexually transmitted diseases seen in recent decades,
according to Dr. J. Dennis Fortenberry, the lead author of the
new study.

But this is the first study to follow teenagers over time
and look specifically at the correlation between time of day
and sexual activity, said Fortenberry, a professor of
adolescent medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in
Indianapolis.

The study included girls 14 to 18 years of age who
completed periodic questionnaires and kept daily diaries on
their relationships, mood, sexual interest and other issues.

Overall, Fortenberry and his colleagues found, less than
one-third of the sexual encounters the girls reported happened
on weekday afternoons. Unmonitored after-school time appeared
not to be a major contributor to teens’ sexual behavior,
Fortenberry told Reuters Health.

Instead, girls tended to have sex or not have sex based on
the ups and downs of their relationship with their boyfriend,
or based on whether they “had a good day or a bad day
emotionally,” he said.

Parents’ supervision did matter, the study found. Teens who
said their parents monitored them closely were even less likely
than their peers to have sex during after-school hours.

However, a parent’s watchful eye did not seem to keep girls
from having sex in the evenings.

The findings, according to Fortenberry, point to the
complexity of teenagers’ sexual behavior — and suggest that no
single action, such as keeping kids in after-school activities,
will prevent them from having sex.

Public health efforts that “hit one thing” in order to
alter teenagers’ sexual behavior, he said, are unlikely to be
enough – nor is a single “birds-and-bees talk” with a parent.

SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, March 2006.