homeless teens

Elizabeth — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:24:53 -0800

Thanks Gracie! That sounds like an interesting study and when it's finally posted on the sciencedirect.com site I'd love to read the whole thing. The problems facing homeless teens need to be taken seriously and it's great that researchers are paying careful attention to them. (I'd especially love to see legislation like the proposed but still unpassed Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth ac-- an imperfect act, as I wrote here, but a better start to be sure than continuing to criminalize teens attempts at survival.)

Meanwhile I'd encourage a word of caution about interpreting the results of this study to indicate that parental involvement is best.

In the case of runaways it is important to acknowledge that the parents may be a big part of the problem, indeed part of why the kid has run away. I'm wondering if "family situation" as used in the study means crashing with an older sibling, an aunt or uncle, or a grandparent.

Also, even based on the summary linked above, it appears that a large majority (more than 3/4ths) of the study participants were sexually active before becoming homeless. Their additional risky behavior is characterized this way: "Males were found to be more likely to have multiple sex partners if they lived in settings without family members and abused drugs. For females, drug abuse was the primary predictor of risky sexual behavior." So it seems like drug use was more influential than the presence of family members for girls, and at least very important for boys in combination with the absence of family members."The summary goes on to say that neither drug use nor family were predictors of condom use in boys, leaving one to wonder what did predict condom use in boys.)

Lets keep an eye on this study and see what it says when the full text is released. (When it is, it will be available here.) One of my goals for this site has been to develop a pool of folks who can comment on recently-released sex research, because so often that research gets accepted by the mainstream media at face value without much critique.

Well, to begin with,

JanieBelle — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:42:50 -0800

we're not going to get anywhere until we can begin to change the general attitude that sex and sexuality are somehow bad or dirty (in a negative sense) or activities and attributes that should be hidden from view.

Until we (the royal we, the general public) acknowledge that teenagers have sex, that people have sex, that it's a good thing, to be celebrated in the open, we're going to continue to have insane, medieval laws like the one that put Genarlow Wilson in prison pushed on us by the self hating, reality denying snake charmers that occupy the pulpits of America.

How do we get there from here? We start at home. "Hey Sue, did you hear they finally let that Genarlow Wilson kid out of prison? Geez, what a mess they made of that. It still burns me that teenagers having sex is a crime though. Can you believe that? Why, right here in North Carolina, just the other day..."

Beyond that, I'm torn. As much as I despise the tactics of the repressive right, I'm not sure that waiting around until the Enlightenment arrives in fundy America is a viable plan. Whatever their ideological and mental failings, I have to admit that denigration, ridicule, and marginalization are effective tools in their toolbox. I admit to occasionally borrowing from their playbook in frustration. Then I shower.

Sex In The Public Square - youth - Comments

homeless teens

Well, to begin with,