Pinoy Youth Sexuality

Nowadays, it's not surprising to find unplanned pregnancies among teens, rampant promiscuity among the young peeps, and flavored condoms in your son's wallets (thanks to the ad). I think we've got the perfect recipe for such condition to fluorish - sex-crazed media, porn DVDs and mags sold like candy along sidewalks, unrestricted internet access (download K9 Web Filter please - it's for free), lousy values formation in schools, and the worst of all - parental neglect.

Take for example our neighbor here. This girl is only in her teens and sadly a product of a broken and disordered family. She is rebelling against her parents. One day we learned that she's already pregnant - much to the chagrin of her mom who also had the same experience in her youth (like mother like daughter?). As if that wasn't enough, her much younger sister followed suit, so both of them got pregnant at an age where they should still be attending school. Pitiful. I personally think that the parents are blameworthy in this case. Their parents are often at odds with each other and the fighting can sometimes get physical. Result? - a broken home and children rebelling against their parents. Even up to now, I would still hear this poor young lass having verbal confrontations with her mother - for all the people to hear. Sad, very sad.

The Filipino youths are indeed fast catching up with their counterparts in the western world when it comes to sexual permissiveness and promiscuity. Just take a look at these not-so surprising facts from a 2003 study involving 15-24 years old Filipinos which I happened to dig up from a mag I was reading the other night. These figures may have changed by now but nevertheless still quite alarming:

* Four out of ten (38%) young adults are in a live-in arrangement.
* Premarital sex was engaged in by 26% of those surveyed, statistically representing 3.8 M sexually active people.
* Young men showed higher prevalence of premarital sex (35%) than women (19%).
* Eleven percent have had homosexual experiences, of these, 87% are men.
* Rate of same sex relationships in women is 4%.
* Almost half of those who have had same-sex encounters also had commercial sex.
* Nineteen percent paid for sex; 11% were paid to do favors.
* Pinoy males are now willing to marry non-virgins.

(Source: Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study conducted by the U.P. Population Institute and Demography Research and Development Foundation)