FPJ - This debate has gone very quickly, but harking back to your response to my answer, if a fifteen year old cannot handle the side-effects of pregnancy and sex, then why in a lot of countries in Europe is the age of consent at 14?
And how does a single year until you get to 16 suddenly make all of the difference?
It really varies person by person. Some people will never really mature (I have friends who act like eight-year old children who are really fifteen) and some people grow up very quickly. It is also varies on a person's personal experiences. Somebody who has never had a partner before and wants to see what sex is like is obviously more likely to have (or try to have, their partner may say no) sex with them. On the other hand some people become jaded very quickly to all kinds of pleasure and will not have sex as often.
I also believe that teaching abstinence is the reason why these people have sex early on. In a documentry on the Bible belt, in one town where the Christian schools taught that sex was, essentially, going to kill you even if it seems fun at the time almost half of the girls over the age of 14 were pregnant and there were only two members of the twelve-member cheerleading team who weren't pregnant.
The reason for this is that the only place that advised teenagers on sex and handed out contraception was burned down by over-zealous parents who firmly believed that no births should be stopped. Since there was no other entertainment in the whole area, people just had sex for fun.
Telling people, especially teenagers, that something is wrong, even if it's fun, just leads them on to see what the fuss is about. I've personally never smoked in my life, yet I've always wondered what it's like. I'll never do solvents, they kill a lot of people, but I'll always wonder why people do it. It's the same with drugs, sex, smoking and solvents. People are told that they shouldn't let peer pressure or their urges get the better of them, but to be honest it's more their own curiosity that drives them towards this.
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