- The average age at which teenagers first have sex has
dropped to 16, its lowest recorded level, according to a comprehensive
government-funded study of sexual habits in Britain.
- Final analysis of the data is expected to indicate that
at least a third of teenagers are having sex before their 16th birthday
- the legal age of consent.
- Despite millions of pounds spent on tackling the problem,
the downward trend has continued, bringing with it large numbers of
pregnancies and increasing rates of sexually transmitted disease.
- Critics believe the emphasis on sex education in schools
has fuelled the trend, while charities providing advice for teenagers argue
that many young people still lack even basic knowledge about sex.
- Others point to increasing levels of alcohol consumption
as a factor contributing to children as young as 12 or 13 losing their
inhibitions and indulging in unprotected sex.
- "Many young teenagers regard getting drunk at
as a completely normal part of life," said Ann Furedi of the British
Pregnancy Advisory Service.
- The £1.4m National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and
Lifestyles took three years to complete and was commissioned from Kaye
Wellings, Britain's leading expert on trends in sexual behaviour.
- Wellings, director of sexual health at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, led a team of social scientists who will
publish their findings in The Lancet next month.
- The study is a repeat of her team's 1990 report on the
nation's sexual mores, which almost foundered when Margaret Thatcher
it was prurient and unnecessary. It was subsequently funded by the Wellcome
- The latest inquiry, which was supervised by the Medical
Research Council, asked intimate questions of 12,000 randomly selected
16 to 44-year-olds. It has particularly focused on emerging patterns of
sexual behaviour at the younger end of the age spectrum.
- The average age for people to lose their virginity has
dropped from over 20 in the 1950s, while the number of pregnancies among
single teenage girls has risen steadily.
- About 8,000 girls aged 15 or younger become pregnant
in England and Wales every year, one of the highest rates in Europe.
- Three years ago the government committed £60m to
a Teenage Pregnancy Unit to co-ordinate local efforts to provide sex
contraception and sexual health services.
- It has been set a target of halving by 2010 the number
of pregnancies in girls aged 17 or younger from the current level of more
than 40,000 a year. An interim target of reducing the rate by 15% within
three years now looks unlikely to be met.
- Leigh Daynes, a spokesman for Brook Centres, a charity
providing advice for teenagers, blamed inconsistencies in sex education,
increasing use of alcohol and the "overtly sexualised nature of modern
culture" for giving teenagers mixed messages about how to
- "Sex is used to sell everything from yoghurt to
furniture. It is all around us," he said. "It is vital that
are provided with impartial advice to protect themselves from unwanted
pregnancy and disease."
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