estrecho fernandez chap 2

1. “Sex is everywhere”, (place comma inside quotation)
2. from “the Starr Report, watched thong-clad teens gyrate on Spring Break cable specials, or read the cover of nearly any women’s magazine in the grocery check-out line”. (refer to comment no. 1)
3. Freeman and Gardner were only a very small proportion of the many other studies (they are people not studies) and articles made regarding the topic teenagers and sex.
4. “less of a man”, Stamouli added. (refer to comment no.1)
5. Friends being the number one ranking cause for gaining such information resulted to (in) a
6. an article by Irish health online (year)
7. stated that it’s (spell out)
8. both parties don’t (spell out) show much
9. going through, that’s why (rephrase)
10. Fogart and Wyatt (year, since this is in another para) also
11. Our goal is to see whether gender, sources of information and purpose of learning really does (subject verb agreement)

Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

The focus of our study, our main problem is to determine if gender plays a role in how much this generation’s teenagers know about sex. Contributing to gender are other external factors, our sub problems, which we think, might have a huge effect on the teen’s degree of knowledge on the topic such as purpose for gaining such information and their source of facts and data on the said topic. For our Review of Related Literature, we tried to find articles, books and research papers, which might be able to connect to our main problem and our sub problems. We first tried to prove through our sources that sex has become a common topic among young adults. Following this, we cited different articles, books and research papers indicating the differences genders have when it comes to their attitude and thinking towards sex. After this, we tried to see where teenagers usually get their information about sex and how this can possibly affect the accuracy of the youth’s knowledge about the topic.

“Sex is everywhere”, Maslan (n.d) stated in his online article. According to him, teenagers at present talk about it all the time. Maslan explained how American teenagers of this generation are very much exposed to so much sexual content that “sexual imagery” has become something common to their eyes. These American adolescents have seen images from “the Starr Report, watched thong-clad teens gyrate on Spring Break cable specials, or read the cover of nearly any women’s magazine in the grocery check-out line”. Sex has become a familiar topic to most American teenagers. It has become so common that it can be seen in everyday encounters of teens such as television programs and flyers.

Gardner (2010) quoted Strasburger saying, "The media represents arguably the leading sex educator in America today." Gardner explained in his article that the teens of the U.S.A. are very much exposed to media at present. They spend an average of seven hours a day listening to music, watching movies and television. Unfortunately, almost seventy percent of what is presented in teen shows has sexual content. Researchers then jumped to a conclusion that teens of this generation, due to their wide exposure to media, are very much exposed to sex as well.

Even on the internet, teens have been repeatedly exposed to sexual images. With just a few clicks, teens can get access to the most pleasurable vice on the internet – pornography. Pornography started about 2,000 years ago. However, unlike before, its sources have become more and more accessible at present. Freeman (2009) stated that during her days, “porn magazines were kept on top shelves” and boys would secretly sneak a peek at them. At present, a teenager can easily get a magazine from most stores. Freeman also found out that young adults access porn on the internet for an average of 87 hours a year. He said in his research that the more a person is exposed to something, the more he or she finds it normal. Pornography has become like this, now normal to this generation’s teenager’s life.

With these evidences, researchers have concluded that most American adolescents these days are completely different from teenagers ages ago. Researchers implied that a majority of teenagers today are now more open to sex, which, according to them, has become such a great issue to many people.

Freeman and Gardner were only a very small proportion of the many other studies and articles made regarding the topic teenagers and sex. Researches aimed to see how different factors could affect a teenager’s view on sex. A possible example would be Ibaya (1994), who sought to know “the respondents’ level of exposure to film, their attitude towards casual sex, their religion and their economic status” (pp 28- 29). Surveys were handed out to 210 third year students from the Marine Transportation Department of University of Cebu. The survey had three parts: the first part asked the students’ religion and economic status, the second part determined the students’ exposure to film and the last part focused on the view of the students on casual sex. The study’s findings revealed that the students’ exposure to film, religion, and economic status had no influence over their attitude towards casual sex.

When it comes to the talking about sex, most of us believe that boys are the masters of this topic. We wanted to discover whether the principle that guys do know more than girls (when it comes to sex) is true or false. Coleman (1961) agreed with this theory by stating that boys are more open to sexual exploits than girls, because for men, it’s a “conquest and thus actions that gain him status rather than lose it” and the “boys’ sexual behavior is not threatening to culture” (p 22).

In the meantime, the United Nations Population Fund Association and the Remedios AIDS Foundation, Inc. (2005) conducted a study about “Cebu City out of school youth residents” and their awareness about sex and its risks. The study’s findings indicated that females think more of the negative effects of sex than the satisfaction from the experience, compared to the guys who think more of the enjoyment. Does this imply that females know more?

Urquiaga (1997) answers yes by stating that girls store more information about sex between the two genders. He discovered in his study that girls are actually more exposed to sex; they are the ones who read more fashion magazines. These magazines have a lot of sexual content, thus the conclusion that girls know more about sex than guys. However, Urquiaga’s study was quite erroneous in one aspect. He might have concluded that girls know more due to the fact that he had a larger number of girls answering the surveys. Nevertheless, his conclusion of saying that girls store more information about sex can still be possibly correct.

Can we conclude then that because girls know more about sex, they now have more sexual encounters compared to guys? Sreeraman (2010) and Women’s Healthcare online say yes. Both sources explained that in modern times, the frequency of girls having sex is greater compared to that of the guys. While Sreeraman focused on the safety of having sex, Women’s Healthcare was all about proving the all time saying that guys are more active when it comes to sex compared to girls. This article insisted that girls are slowly becoming the “aggressors” of this generation. Females are slowly showing that they too can do whatever guys can do- including having sex with a lot of guys.

Proving both sides wrong and remaining undecided, Stamoulis (2010) made some few possible answers to our questions. After conducting a sex-education workshop on a freshman class, Stamoulis discovered that men don’t really ask questions about sex unlike the girls. One boy actually said that he didn’t really need to ask questions about sex because he believed that he knew everything about it. Stamouli stated that guys actually lack information about sex, but they tend to act like they know everything about the topic. They’re embarrassed to ask questions regarding sex because they think it would make them “less of a man”, Stamouli added.

Even in their thinking towards sex, young males and females vary. Armstrong and Sarafino (1986) stated that adolescents believe that sex is a personal matter and they’ll only have sex with the person they like. Many American girls believe that in sexual relations, there has to be love. American boys are more “permissive” towards sexuality than girls. Armstrong and Sarafino also said that 85% of males and 60% of females do masturbate. Fifty six percent of teenagers who are still virgin are females and 44% are males. The book showed the top reactions of female and male teenagers when they had their first sexual intercourse. The top five reactions of females were “afraid, guilty, worried, embarrassed and curious”. As for the case of males, their reactions were “excited, thrilled, satisfied, happy and joyful”. This leaves us to another question: Is it possible that the way teens react to sex affects how much they know about it?

We encountered a book entitled “Youth, the years from ten to sixteen” where Ames, Ilg and Gesell (1956) stated that at the age of 10, boys start to question a little about sex. Most guys have already heard about sex by this age. By the age of 11, boys learn more about sex through friends. By the age 14, most of them have already tried masturbating, and they are more interested in girls. Their masturbation increases, and they prefer to be alone in their homes come the age of 15. Finally, petting and kissing are common among boys at the age of 16. They also have a hard time controlling sexual impulses thus resulting in more masturbation. For females, they become more knowledgeable on sex only at the older years. Their main concerns at the start are things like menstruation and contraceptives. Girls are more concerned about the moral side of sex and when relationship comes, they can be very selective.

Lahey (2007), in his book Psychology: An Introduction, enumerated a few differences between mature males and females when it comes to having sex. He said that men, in general, compared to women, want more sex than females do. He also found differences in the preferences of males and females in finding their mating partners. With this knowledge, Lahey declares that males and females view sex in very different perspectives.

Can these evident differences between boys and girls be a possible contributor to a teen’s amount of knowledge about sex? With this research, we hope to find out if there really is a relationship between the two.

Aside from gender, we also want to see if a teenager’s source of knowledge has an effect towards the amount of information they have about sex. The sources we found sent us a message that teenagers have a wide variation of “teachers” when it comes to sex.

Bell (1938) stated that the youth obtain their information on sex from different sources. Friends being the number one ranking cause for gaining such information resulted to a probability of weak knowledge on the topic. Bell further stated that “the amount and accuracy of information were influenced by the relative immaturity of the youth’s friend” (p 40). As for learning about sex in a home, only three out of ten youths admitted that their parents were their source of information on the topic. The book showed a lot of surveys made between “white people” and “negroes”. It was revealed that the number of youth who achieve their knowledge on sex at home is twice as large among “white youth” than that of the “negroe youth”. Bringing religion to the study, the kind of religion practiced by a family also influenced the number of youth who considered their homes as their source: 32% youth from protestant home, 29% from Catholic homes and 17% from Jewish homes. School was also considered a source, but only 8% of young people got the knowledge from it. Only 4% obtained their knowledge from books and a small amount of less than 1% got it from movies and their churches. The book concluded by saying “the great variety of sources varies in degrees of accuracy and completeness of information” (pp. 40- 42).

Because of the wide selection for sources, it is inevitable that teenagers encounter a lot of erroneous information along the way. An example would be an article by Irish health online. It stated that teenagers have very poor accurate knowledge on sex, contraception and conception. Based on a survey the authors have found, doctors discovered that a majority of British teenagers obtain a lot of false theories and myths about sex. Some of these were: not conceiving unless one has sex every night, drinks such as “rum and coke” being contraceptives, and the “use of crisp bags as condoms”. It is, indeed, evident that most teenagers in Britain have false knowledge on sex and can be misled due to this incorrect information.

Capuno (2008) revealed in his online article that Teenagers really have weak and incorrect information when it comes to sex. Ninety four percent of the students who were asked to answer questionnaires in this particular study revealed that they “didn’t have a previous sexual education”. These students would choose to discuss sex with their friends, and the internet ranked number one as their foundation for such knowledge. We can thus conclude that the source affects the accuracy of a teenager’s awareness on sex.

June Reinisan, as quoted by Santrock (1996), agreed with Capuno when he reported that US citizens are not that knowledgeable on their sexual functions unlike that on their knowledge on automobiles function. Santrock confirmed that a lot of people have the wrong information about sex. A lot of teens say that they find it hard to communicate to their parents about sex. Most of them get their information from friends. Fisher, as cited by Santrock stated that it’s important for parents to talk to their children about sex for it lessens the chances of their kids to be sexually active or it helps avoid unwanted pregnancies through contraceptives. However, as stated, teenagers are not fed by their parents with information on sex, which would most likely end up to them learning false knowledge.

Studies have shown that a lot of teenagers find it hard to go near their parents whenever they are in need of valuable facts about sex, as proven by Del Rosario and Mahinay (2010). In a study they conducted to see if parents’ way of disciplining their teenagers can affect the frequency of pregnant young adults in Cebu City, Del Rosario and Mahinay tried to find out if “open- communication” between parents and their children about sex affects the teenager’s outlook on the said topic. After a survey was conducted among teenagers of age 15- 18 years old, Del Rosario and Mahinay concluded that most parents and their children talk about many topics freely, but with the topic sex, both parties don’t show much confidence towards discussing about it. The teenagers expressed how most of their parents hardly give information to them about sex. It was also stated that most teenagers are hesitant when it comes to talking about sex.

Fogart and Wyatt (2011) stated possible reasons why teens don’t talk to their parents about sex. A whopping number of 50-60% teenagers find it hard to talk to their parents about sex. A possible cause for this is embarrassment. Parents also have the misconception that their children know more about sex than they do, which is wrong. When tested, most teenagers have a low knowledge on the topic. Teenagers also want to be treated as grown-ups. When they talk to their parents about sex, they “feel talked down”. Teens view their parents as “close-minded and uncompassionate”. Teenagers believe that parents have no idea about what their children are going through, that’s why they avoid talking to their parents about sex. Teens tend to stop listening to their parents when they start feeling “overpowered” which can cause lack of information on “critical sexual health issues”. Fogart and Wyatt cited ways on how to improve sexual conversations between parents and teens. Some were “having two-way conversation”, “using open-ended questions”, understanding each other to avoid judgments and many more.

Fogart and Wyatt also mentioned that only a few number of 13-18 year olds talk about sex with their parents. Only 50% of American teens openly communicate to their parents on topics such as “contraception, sexual behaviour, sexually transmitted infections and sexually transmitted disease”. The authors noted that some parents lived during the “sexual revolution” which occurred around 1960’s through 1970’s. This was a time when teens were more open to the thought of sexual intercourse. These parents usually are ones who have teens who converse with their children about sex. Parents believe that they should teach their children about sex.

On the other side of the story, a study conducted by Billings, Hartie, Jenkins and Macvarish (2007) shared some interesting facts contradicting other studies which concluded than teenagers don’t go near their parents when they want to know about sex. Their survey, having a big number of 4053 respondents from Canterbury in Kent, considered the teens’ age (ranging from 15 to 16 years old) and ethnic group (White, Black, Asian). The study revealed that teens considered school as one of the major contributors to their knowledge about sex. Like most studies, the survey proved that teens really do get their information from friends, but, unlike the other studies, most teens stated that they considered their mothers as a major contributor as well. Media played a huge role on educating teens with sexual content. The study showed some distinctions between the two genders. It stated that teenage girls get their information from their “mothers, sisters, friends, magazines, books, pamphlets, and family planning/ young person’s clinics”. Guys, in the meantime, obtain their information only from their fathers, friends, and of course, websites. A conclusion was made that females have more sources when it comes to their learning about sex.

The same goes for this study done by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2003) which was conducted to understand the well-being of the youth of Australia. It tackled a lot of chapters, one of which included Australian teenagers’ sexual knowledge. Chapter 9 of the study stated that the youth should be fed with correct information on sex and sexuality so that they can handle sexual relationships in a safe and responsible manner. The study stated that the teenagers obtain most of their information either from “school programs” or their “discussion with mothers”. The young teens were also aware of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

Silverberg (2006) proved that teenagers in Canada think their parents are great sources for knowledge about sex. Canadian Parents think that their young adults don’t consider them a source of information when it comes to sex, Silverberg stated. What these parents don’t know is that they’re mistaken. After conducting a national survey, the Canadian Association for Adolescent Health found out that teenagers actually trust their parents when it comes to sexual knowledge. These Canadian teens are actually willing to ask their parents about sex. Silverberg believed that if only parents knew about this, open discussion among families about sex can be a more comfortable thing to do.

We can say that parents are a reliable source when it comes to teenagers’ knowledge on sex. Most researchers have concluded that sex should be taught at home, for it is where all basic information is discussed and explained. The more teenagers don’t get information from their parents, the more they are likely to end up knowing the wrong ideas about sex.

Based on the findings we have studied, the effects of the different sources on the teenagers’ knowledge on sex vary. Some studies were contradicting, while some were agreeing with each other. The sources we found related to gender differences also showed that these dissimilar characteristics between young males and females could also affect how much they know about sex. For our study, we hope to see whether these sources we have gathered are true or not.

The researches we have found were not based in the Philippines. In our study, we may be able to see whether our fellow Filipino teenagers have the same attitude and views towards sex as those stated in the researches done in other countries. Our goal is to see whether gender, sources of information and purpose of learning really does affect the degree of knowledge the adolescents have about sex. We aim to conduct the research with no biases, making sure that there would be equality in terms of the gender.