Research Introduction
Age of consent is the age that you're allowed to have sexual activities. According to The Sexual Offence Act 2003, a person commit an offence if he touches sexually a girl under 16. Recently the Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, had called for a lowering of the age of consent to make it easier for teenagers before age 16 years to seek sexual health service such as contraception from the NHS. While Downing Street reject the reduction in the age of consent. A spokesman said the current age is in place protect children and there are no plans to change it (Watt, 19). There is a public concern that lowering age of consent may guide juveniles’ attitudes towards sex negatively; it may encourage the premature sexual activities; and it may be furtherance of teenage pregnancy or even sexual crime. The concern is not groundless, and a valid social research evidence is needed for the debating and to proof or dispel doubts. The principal objective of this research is to find young people’s views of age of consent law with its changing.
Literature Review
In terms of young people’s sexual attitudes, the 3nd National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles shows that up to 30% of teenagers have the first heterosexual intercourse before age 16 years (Mercer, et al., 2013). The finding has also been proved by many other surveys, and another consensus is people have sex at an earlier age than before (Mercer, et al., 2013). In Miranda Sawyer’s survey ‘Sex before 16’, the Bliss magazine shows a shocking data—83% of Bliss readers who’ve already had sex experience were under 16 the first time and of those, 12% were 12 or younger (Sawyer, 2003). However, the empirical research evidence is relati...
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Works Cited
Babbie, E., 2007. The practice of social research. 11th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
May, T., 2011. Social research : issues, methods and process. 4th ed. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press.
Mercer, C. H. et al., 2013. Changes in sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain through , London: Lancet.
Sawyer, M., 2003. Sex before 16 : how the law is failing, London: Channel 4.
Thomson, R. & Holland, J., 2002. Young People, Social Change and the Negotiation of Moral Authority. Children & Society, 16(2), pp. p103-115.
Waites, M., 2005. The Age of Consent-Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship. 1 ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watt, N., 19. No 10 rejects call to lower age of consent. [Online]
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/17/no-10-rejects-lower-age-consent-sex
[Accessed 2013 12 28].
Young, Alan. "The state is still in the bedrooms of the nation: the control and regulation of sexuality in Canadian criminal law." The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 17.4 (2008).
Today’s young Americans face strong peer pressure to be sexually active and engage themselves in risky behaviors (Merino 100-109). Anyone deciding to have sex must first think about all the risks involved. Kekla Magoon, author of Sex Education in Schools, says that “half of all teens aged 15 to 19 years old in the United States have had sex” (Magoon 64-65). It is currently not required by federal law for schools to teach Sex education and those few schools that do teach Sex education have the decision to determine how much information is allowed. Advocates from both sides of the Sex education debate agree that teens need positive influences in order to make practical decisions (Magoon 88-89). Opponents of Abstinence-only education believe it fails because it does not prepare teens for all the risks of sex (Magoon 64-65).
Statutory rape laws and child marriage laws greatly clash. According to Cocca, “of all brides in 1970, 13% were under 18; in 1980, 8.2%, and in 1990 3.7%. Of all grooms 1970 2.1 were under 18; in 1980 1.3% and in 1990 0.6” (Cocca, 2004). Yes over time the percentage of adults and minors getting married has dwindled, but it was not right to go along with in the first place. In some states...
Available at http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/the-sage-dictionary-of-social-research-methods/n134.xml. Retrieved on 31/03/2014.
One of the most controlled aspects of sexuality is the regulation of who can have sex with who. Most of these regulations are laws protecting people that cannot give consent, like minors and some people with disabilities, from being exploited by others. The age of consent is a highly debatable subject. In Elizabeth Cavalier and Elisabeth O. Burgess article Too Young to Consent? the authors point out that ‘the fifteen year gap between a 55- year old man and his 40- year old wife is less significant than the three year age difference between a 18- and 15- year old’ (Cavalier and Burgess 401). The minimal age in the United State is 16, but other states have the age at 18. The origins of these Unfortunately, like most aspects pertaining to sexuality,
Within the past thirty years, the courts have extended the legal parameters of rape to include the withdrawal of consent after penetration. Courts and state legislatures around the country should seek to modernize rape statutes to protect all victims of nonconsensual intercourse, regardless of when those victims manifest their lack of consent. Within English common law, a conviction of rape required evidence that the perpetrator used force or threats of force against the victim. There is much contradiction between states regarding consent. In an effort to eliminate moral ambiguity or the question of consent, an affirmative consent standard should be set into place that refines the classification of consent from “not saying no to sex” to saying yes to the sex with words or obvious enthusiastic actions.
...young girls from sexually abused relationships. According to one study stated in Taking Sides (Issue 17), “seventy-four percent of women who had intercourse before age fourteen and sixty percent of women who had sex before fifteen report having had a forced sexual experience.“ Another hope is that with statutory rape laws, society will decrease the teen pregnancy rate and the number of young families who are fatherless.
A study conducted on teens in Sweden and the Netherlands showed that teens in those countries were just as sexually active, but the teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rate was much lower. Researchers say this is due to sex education that begins in elementary school and continues on(Bender p.13). Only ten percent of American school-age youth participate in a comprehensive program lasting at least forty hours(deMauro p.89). Teens in America also score low on questionnaires based on sexual knowledge(Gordon p.
This case study is evident that young girls are much more aware of their sexuality and their consent. Many young girls participate in weekend socialising, drinking and using drugs with men, who consequently believe these girls are at the legal age of consenting to both sexual intercourse and drinking alcohol, only when these young girls go too far is when rape is cried.
Teenagers are definitely a great concern when speaking of premarital sex. I would like to believe that society's concern for these teens is out of a moral and religious attitude. Yet politicians as well as society seem to care more about the problems after the fact, like health and welfare costs. Ten percent of all 15 to 19 year-old females become pregnant each year. More than 80 percent of pregnant girls under age 17 who give birth and keep their babies end up on welfare, costing society a staggering $21 billion a year. Three million new cases of STDs among teens are reported each year. Every 10 seconds a teenage becomes sexually active for the first time. All the concern over pregnancy and STDs doesn't seem to be deterring sexual activity. With out a focus on religious ...
Paedophilia is a concept which has changed throughout the eras the beliefs and attitudes towards paedophilia is something that is seen as a very difficult subject. Social standards are extremely influential when it comes to deciding what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour for a society and over time especially within the western world this is one of the things that have crossed boundaries and become a topic of debate for a variety of cultures. Paedophilia is considered to be an abnormal or unnatural attraction towards children. Throughout this essay there will be an attempt to discuss the constructions that surround the notion of paedophilia with focus on the social and psychological aspects. Firstly it is important to understand the history of paedophilia to be able to fully explore the explanations which we will be presented later on in this essay. Dating back to as far as the Roman and Greek eras where relationships between children and adults were accepted and portrayed as forms of mentorship. Up until the age of enlightenment, there was little more known than the naturalistic approach to maturity and sexuality. La Fontaine, (1990) states a paedophile is generally defined as a person who gains sexual gratification from contact with pre-pubescent children, this is a supported definition from various academics. According to the ICD-10 manual, Paedophilia is ‘a sexual preference for children, boys, girls or both usually of pre-pubertal or early pubertal age’. A person 16 years of age or older meets the definition if they have a persistent or predominant sexual preference for prepubescent children at least five years younger than themselves. Alter...
"Passes And Plays: The Truth About Safe Sex." The Truth for Youth. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
... decades ago. This book is one that will allow the reader to view many aspects of sexuality from a social standpoint, and apply it to certain social attitudes in our society today, these attitudes can range from the acceptance of lesbian and gays, and the common sight of sex before marriage and women equality. The new era of sexuality has taken a definite "transformation" as Giddens puts it, and as a society we are living in the world of change in which we must adapt, by accepting our society as a changing society, and not be naive and think all the rules of sexuality from our parents time our still in existence now.
As a matter of fact, one of the most alarming social issues of the 21st century is teenage pregnancy. Teenage pregnancy is commonly known as conception among younger women of the age 13-19 years. In 2008, the media made a lot of story about a 12-year-old boy who impregnated a girl in UK. Astonishingly, the case was not as seldom as many thought. Evidently, in 2008, there where four births with fathers at the age of 13 years (ONS, 2008).
“The media may be especially important for young people as they are developing their own sexual beliefs and patterns of behavior and as parents and schools remain reluctant to discuss sexual topics (p.26)”.