(238) Sat 23 Nov 96 17:28
By: Sean McCullough
To: Joe Shedlock
Re: Public Service Ads
> Is it true that many teenagers do not know how to say "no" to sex?
No.
It is as it always HAS been: Teenagers DON'T say "no" to sex.
> How can that be? Is the world so different today from what it was
> when I was a teen in the early 70s?
YES.
In the early 1970's, an American male graduating from high school was capable
of doing right by a family without further formal education. Thus, when people
had sex according to their biological drives (which are still set up based on
an estimated death age of 35-40), they were still in a position to "handle it"
in the event that an unwanted pregnancy occurred and abortion was still not an
option.
The major difference today is this: A man usually does NOT make enough to
support a child and a non-working spouse (the ONLY realistic way to provide for
a kid) until he IS 40 years old or so, on average. But our biological drives
are still expecting us to be DEAD by then, male and female alike.
In other words, in the early '70's, teenaged kids had sex all over the friggin'
place. Most were lucky enough to get to graduation day childless; they tended
to marry immediately thereafter. (My OWN high school graduating class in 1976
was over half married by December of that year; we graduated in June.)
Today, NO ONE can properly provide for a family without another four to six
years of formal education -- and then another 10 to 15 years thereafter paying
the gargantuan debts racked up GETTING said formal education. Thus, by the time
a typical modern highschooler CAN do right by a family, he's 40 years old OR
OLDER.
Look at the increase in the number of Down's Syndrome kids in the elementary
schools today. Back in the 1950's, most American cities didn't even have ONE
such child in its schools. Today, even SMALL towns have several.
Down's Syndrome occurrence increases as the mother's age of first pregnancy
increases. It is a disease of children with parents too fucking old to start
having kids (i.e., over 22-25 or so).
Other factors also mean you're more likely to see a Down's sufferer, granted
(they now have reasonable life expectancies, an innovation only one human
generation old); but us human critters are still machines. We start showing
wear at about 30-35 years or so, even with modern technologies.
Just like chimps and gorillas do -- again, beneficiaries of the SAME
technologies. Biology doesn't change just because society does.
In this specific case, Alas.
We're probably the ancestors, not of Eloi and Morlock, but of the white humans
dwelling on The Planet Of The Apes. Yucko.
slack -- s.
--- FMail 0.94
* Origin: Vox Anarchistica! (1:128/203.666)
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