Safe sex facts vital protector for teens

Safe sex facts vital protector for teens

Maria Endah Hulupi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Whether it's for reproductive or recreative purposes, safe sex
is always worth campaigning for, particularly for teenagers.

Take "Roni" for example. As a freshman at a local private
university, he tried to fit in with his five new colleagues:
going to places, eating, drinking and hanging out together.

Rony confessed to his gang, that he never had a girlfriend or
never watched porn movies, a fact that he perceived a normal
thing but surprisingly had sparked embarrassing comments from his
gang, and as words travel fast, from other students the next day.

First he got confused but the insult had encouraged his
curiosity to try what he hadn't done before.

Riana has another story. She fell in love with a "cool" boy
and after six months of going out together he asked her for a
kiss. Six months later, he then asked her to "prove" her love for
him. She knew what he meant and gently turned him down.

A week later, he came to her with the same demand, saying that
her refusal meant that she didn't really love him. Riana didn't
know what to do but she didn't want to lose the boy she loved.

Confusion, fear, and anxiety are common among teenagers living
in a more permissive society, with pressures from their peer
groups and other people close to them.

This condition often puts teenagers, which represent 45
million of Indonesia's population, in difficult positions and
trigger their curiosity to try without assessing the
consequences.

With prevailing negative influences, like drugs, free sex and
pornography among others, activists and researchers highlighted
an unhealthy upbringing in families and schools.

"We need to guide them to behave in a responsible manner and
this includes giving them proper information about reproductive
health," said the Planned Parenthood Association (PKBI)'s project
manager, Guntoro Utamadi.

However, he admitted that it is a challenging task because the
society and the authorities still think that teenagers should not
know too much about sex as it would only encourage them to do it.

"Many people and even government officials play down the
situation. They believe that if premarital sex exists the figure
is insignificant," he said.

Head of Atmajaya University's research center, Irwanto
explained that teenagers should be equipped with skills, besides
basic education or vocational ones, to help them survive in a
tough society.

He said that children who were not properly brought up could
either develop certain weaknesses, like being persuaded easily,
afraid of making mistakes, of being short tempered and though
this doesn't necessarily translate into ignorance, they often
prefer to remain silent, when they should be more critical about
what is happening in their surroundings.

Worse still, behind this somber portrait lurks potential life
threatening dangers. Reports stated that the number of children
and teenagers contracting HIV/AIDS due to permissive sex and drug
abuse is increasing.

It doesn't stop there. As sex-related issues are considered
taboo and very little information on reproductive health are
available, local teens are exposed to teen pregnancy, unsafe
abortion, early marriage, genital mutilation, infertility,
sexually transmitted diseases and even death.

No accurate data is available but the national data roughly
put abortion at two million cases per year, and many teenagers
resort to dangerous and painful methods to end their pregnancy by
taking oral medications, rigorous massage, and inserting herbs or
blunt objects into the uterus.

"The best protection teens can get from parents and teachers
is parental guidance to stimulate them to act responsible. Also,
parents and teachers need to improve their ways of approaching
their teenagers," Irwanto said.

What parents need to do, he added, is to encourage teenagers
to speak their mind, learn to say no, learn from mistakes, assess
and accept consequences or deal with failures, qualities that are
needed to sharpen teens life skills and make them more mature in
various aspects of life, not only in reproductive health alone.

"They may become critical and would not hesitate to confront
parents or teachers but these are nothing compared to the life-
threatening risks that teenagers will encounter in real life,"
Irwanto explained.

He also said that the prim teaching methods in classrooms has
failed to nurture teenagers' sense of responsibility because they
act more like "horse blinders" that limit their perspective and
only focus on obedience.

"Give them another tool to help them expand their perspective
and they will know when to say 'no'," said Irwanto.