The argument that teenage love interrupts their studies is glib, but hardly reasonable. The fact that our educational system makes demands on them at the same time as they are experiencing their first strong attachment is society's bad management, not their fault. Nature is no respecter of examinations, and they cannot be blamed for finding their minds are engaged in more important things than schoolwork or jobs.
We add to their load if we insist that they shouldn't be thinking about these matters. Instead of being able to shunt their romantic affairs aside, as we demand, the result is that they have to contend with your disapproval as well as their homework and their romance. Keeping feelings or even meetings a secret adds considerably to the time and effort spent on the boy or girlfriend.
Furthermore, a relationship conducted against the odds and in the face of your disapproval, acquires certain glamour. Many a young person has persisted with a boy or girlfriend of whom they have grown tired or who even makes them miserable, rather than admit that you were right. Opposition to a relationship and an insistence that they are too young is also more likely to result in early marriage. In such a situation, marriage is seen as the only way of establishing their right to be with the loved one, and of proving their maturity. How much better for all concerned if the couple had been left without pressures to see if the friendship would develop or peter out on its own?
Which brings us back to why we object to the thought of our offspring having sex, and what we can do about it? Studies on teenage sexual experience show that young people who have early sex are less likely to have talked to their parents or have had an easy relationship with them; are less likely to be well informed about sexual matters and more likely to have found out the facts of life from friends than from teachers or parents. We know that when young people can talk to adults and not only learn the facts but discuss their feelings, and when they have free access to counseling and birth control, the rates for pregnancies and abortion are far lower than when they are kept in the dark and in silence. If we would like to discourage our young people from early experimentation, it follow what we are more likely to be effective in this if we satisfy their normal curiosity that if we leave them to learn among themselves. We are also more likely to succeed if we don't make all sexual expression the enviable and expulsive preserve of adults. There is nothing quite as challenging to a young person starting to grow up than to be told 'This is not for you, because you are too young.' Hardly surprising that he or she will grasp at proving their maturity by smoking, blinking and making love, 'just like an adult'.
