Talk:Adolescent sexuality in the United States

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Adolescent sexuality in the United States was a good article candidate, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. Once the objections listed below are addressed, the article can be renominated. You may also seek a review of the decision if you feel there was a mistake.

Date of review: 2007-02-02

Contents

[edit] subject 'dealing with adolescent sexuality' makes it sound like a problem to be fixed

I'm uncomfortable with that phrasing for the 'education' or 'perspectives' section. How about we rename to say, 'Perspectives on educating adolescents about sexuality'? Sexperts 21:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Go for it. I am in support of anything you could do to rephrase the negative overtones in this essay. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 23:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] there is already a main article on this

See adolescent sexuality That article is mean't to have a GLOBAL COVERAGE of the subject so i think this article should be deleted and/or simply redirect to the main article as its creation along with adolescent sexuality in Britain and adolescent sexuality in the United States would put undue strain on the wiki servers if so many articles are created.

We have a main article, let's use it! We can easily integrate what is here into the main article once protection is removed and disputes have been resolved... then text can be mined for POV'S etc, and we can perhaps put major pov's into a seperate article on controversy over adolescent sexuality as has been proposed by myself in talk:adolescent sexuality —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nateland (talk • contribs) 21:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

This article is biased. It uses questionable research and quotations of sweeping breadth to support a specifc moral agenda on teen sexuality. Its point of view is Victorian Age Christianity which it tries to disguise in pseudo-scientific terms. It should be deleted unless Wikipedia allows pure propaganda as opposed to clearly identified opinions.

DialM4Mayhem 21:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)DialMrMayhem

[edit] Failed GA comments

I feel that this doesn't meet the GA criteria for two reasons, so I have failed it. In my opinion, although the article is very well sourced, it fails WP:WIAGA criteria numbers 1 and 4. Specifically, although the article does attempt to be thorough, it has a loose framework and mainly seems to have text in order to hold together citations and quotes that the authors wanted to include. I also really can't describe an article as "well written" when from start to finish, it does a significant portion of its exposition through direct quotes. It also, I think, fails criterion 4 (neutrality) as it seems to spend a lot of time on the viewpoint that adolescents view sex lightly. While there are lots of inline citations, the justification for all those claims strikes me as very anecdotal, and continually quoting the sources in the text seems overly deferential to the sources that have been selected. I'm not saying that the conclusions aren't justified, I just feel like this reads more like a research paper with a position than an attempt to present all viewpoints. Mangojuicetalk 16:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Responses section

I have removed the section, yet again. It was removed intentionally not by mistake. Besides it being uncited, unreferenced POV, it discusses the current U.S. government view, and not past views. With the recent change in congress, who knows what views the current government has or will espouse. I don't see how the text, even if supported by citation, is relevant or adds to the understanding of the topic of the article. Please try to develop something sunstantive, rather than throwing in a stub that doesn't stand on its own to ffer value to the article. And please cite.

"Official Federal government policy has been to emphasize sexual abstinence or pre-marital chastity, particularly in sex education with a focus on abstinence-only sex education addressing issues of sexual activity by adolescents rather than the harm reduction approach of the safer sex focus. "

Atom 00:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. However, I think the see also section should remain. The link under it is relevant to the topic of the article. I will be re-adding it. --Illuminato 00:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for talking about it first. I don't think the link is appropriate. The article discusses adolescent sexuality. The link you put in is an article on a christian abstinence group. Some would consider that to be very POV. Information that is pertinent should go into the article, not be referenced tangentially. Atom 00:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I didn't originally add the link, but I do think it is appropriate. It is an organization in the US dealing with adolescent sexuality. If there is an articles out there about groups encouraging US teens to have sex, or other abstinence groups, or other groups that simply offer information but don't take a position on whether teens should or shouldn't be having sex, then I would absolutely say include them as well. They are pertinent to the article and so I don't think we violate NPOV to include them. See also sections are designed to give readers easy access to related articles. Including this link does that, so I've put it back in. --Illuminato 04:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I added the original section - for the article to be improved something on official responses is required, it would certainly provide useful context for US adolescents who may access the article. As an Australian I am amazed at the US discussion at times, the latest reportage on HPV vaccination being an example. Paul foord 22:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] NPOV balance

I am concerned about the balance of the article. It looks as if it was originally written as an article against adolescent sexuality, rather than to present a balanced view of ther facts related to the topic. The viewpoint that learning about sexuality during adolescence is normal and healthy should be the predominant message. Discussing the many difficulties, pitfalls and problems with going to quickly certainly should be discussed. It should be the goal of the article to present the topic in a realistic light. The key to building healthy long-term relationships is in learning about sexuality and relationships while in adolescence, and avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in the article. Avoiding learning about these issues is what is responsible for the many difficulties adults in their 20's and sometimes 30's have. If they had been exposed to learning about intimacy appropriately when they were developing emotionally, they would have less problems later. Atom 17:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with what you said. This article appears to be simply anti-sexuality, but I'm not sure how we could improve it without rewriting the entire article.
'"Casual teen attitudes toward sex — particularly oral sex — reflect their confusion about what is normal behavior... [T]eens are facing an intimacy crisis that could haunt them in future relationships. 'When teenagers fool around before they're ready or have a very casual attitude toward sex, they proceed toward adulthood with a lack of understanding about intimacy.'"[20]'
I'd just like to point out that that could be considered false. The article says that most teens that have any form of sexual intercourse participate in oral sex, yet this quote is saying that oral sex is completely abnormal. One of many examples of such. Zelandonia 01:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm a wikinoob so i'm not sure if this is appropriate, but you hold a vote or something and delete this article? It's some laughable minority religious/prude viewpoints from beginning to end and i'm not sure it'd be worth the effort to extract anything usable for a new, decent article 86.147.9.135 23:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
You can propose the article for deletion if you like (WP:PROD and WP:AFD), but to be quite honest I doubt it would be deleted. Deletion only occurs if the topic could never be made into a proper encyclopedia article, not just if it's not now. What you can do, though, is edit the article! If you think there are problems with it, you're very welcome to go write changes that you believe address the problems. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 23:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It is definitely biased, and should be balanced out. I don't want to delete large bodies of information. I don't have the knowledge to write about the opposite point of view in the detail that the argument against adolescent sexuality was written. I mean, I suppose we could delete it, but I'd really hate to delete something on this scale. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 02:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree both this article and the article Adolescent sexuality are hugely biased toward sexual conservatism and very poorly written, being essentially a collection of cherry-picked quotes. These articles are so bad, if fact, that I think most of the content should simply be deleted. (See my proposal Talk:Adolescent sexuality.) My only disagreement is your statement "The viewpoint that learning about sexuality during adolescence is normal and healthy should be the predominant message." That's also POV. The article should be NPOV and give all points of view on the issue. Iamcuriousblue 21:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Perspectives for and against

Atomaton, as I have said on your talk page, I really think it does a disservice to the experts quoted here, not to mention the article itself, to pigeon hole the information presented on adolescent sexuality as either being for or against. Having read many of their works I know they hold much more nuanced positions then "yes its a good thing" or "no its a bad thing." Further, much of the information you keep putting under "perspectives against" is really just opposed to casual sex among teens, not sexuality in general. I've removed the sections again, but before it turns into an edit war I will be asking for a Wikipedia:Third opinion. --Illuminato 22:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third opinion

Please hold on for a moment-providing an informed opinion here is going to mean having a quick look at the cited sources, and there are quite a few here. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I see a lot of problems here. The article seems to be written with a mostly "against" tone, but many cited sources (especially the USA Today report, which is comprehensive and probably the most neutral one) is, well, pretty neutral. A few examples (but by no means an exhaustive list):

Article text: "The "early initiation [of] sexual behaviors [takes] a toll on teens' mental health. The result... can be 'dependency on boyfriends and girlfriends, serious depression around breakups and cheating, [and a] lack of goals.'"[9] When teens engage in sexual activities that are not part of intimate relationship then "they're not then developing all of the really important skills like trust and communication and all those things that are the key ingredients for a healthy, long-lasting relationship."[16] When having causal sex teens are "pretending to say it's just sexual and nothing else. That's an arbitrary slicing up of the intimacy pie. It's not healthy."[17]

USA Today:

"All of us in the field are still trying to get a handle on how much of this is going on and trying to understand it from a young person's point of view," says Stephanie Sanders, associate director of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, which investigates sexual behavior and sexual health."

""If we are indeed headed as a culture to have a total disconnect between intimate sexual behavior and emotional connection, we're not forming the basis for healthy adult relationships," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a reproductive-health organization in Washington."

The article reports one side of this as true, while many others say the jury is still out or that there is insufficient data. We must not take sides this way, reporting all views in a debate or contested issue is a critical part of neutrality. The article must mention the expert disagreement.

Article text: "Increasingly, teenage sexual encounters in the United States do not occur in the context of a romantic relationship, but in an impersonal, merely sexual "hook up."

USA Today: "Researchers cannot conclude that the percentage of teens having oral sex is greater than in the past. There is no comparison data for girls, and numbers for boys are about the same as they were a decade ago in the National Survey of Adolescent Males: Currently, 38.8% have given oral sex vs. 38.6% in 1995; 51.5% have received it vs. 49.4% in 1995."

Again, looks like the jury's out here.

Those are only a couple of examples, but to respond to the third opinion-the whole article has glaring POV problems like this. I see some researchers saying "This is bad", some saying "This is fine", and yet others saying "The data is insufficient, and we can't know what effect this will have on the kids until they actually do grow up." The article, in contrast, approaches the subject with overwhelming negativity. While those who take a negative view should certainly be reported, this article gives those voices a significant amount of undue weight.

Oh, as to what the third opinion asked about, I agree that "for" and "against" sections would be highly counterproductive here-most of the experts cited have a much more nuanced view, and we would do our readers a far greater service in properly paraphrasing those views, providing countervailing ones, and having a good neutral article, then trying to pigeonhole nuanced expert views (which may contain elements of neither or both) into arbitrary categories. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

One other issue I see, is that the flow of prose into quote in the same sentence is confusing and blurs the line between "the source's voice" (which might have a point of view) and "Wikipedia's voice" (which should take no side). The quotes should be placed in greater context and not interlaced with our words, rather, they should be paraphrased or cited as full sentences along with the rest of the reference. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 06:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Collection of quotes needs more fluidity. I removed seveal indpenedent fact tags in favor of article global tag. Infividual tags were placed because of disagreement with one POV, but not placed for unreferenced for another POV. Global unreferenced tags asks for work on whole article, not a specific POV. Unreferenced can stay fo now, but needs to be resolved eventually.
For or against sections are needed because there are two very different viewpoints. Article requires both views presented for NPOV. Trying to combine two disparate views is not possible, and trying to do so creates a fractured article, besides not meeting NPOV policy. Presenting both sides well is what makes for a neutral article. Please see WP:NPOV.
The article does need to be more than a collection of quotes, however everything should be sourced, particularly in such a controversial article. Claims like "no abstinence-only program has ever been shown to reduce teen sexual activity, pregnancy, or STDs" needs a citation. I was willing to let them stay up there, with the tags, until you came up with the source for the claim, but you didn't, you jusrt deleted the tags and put a global on it. Its better to be specific, so people know exactly which claims are not sourced and can go out and find sources for them. As Jimmy Wales has said: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."[1] I removed the unsourced claims.
As the neutral third party has said above "I agree that "for" and "against" sections would be highly counterproductive here-most of the experts cited have a much more nuanced view, and we would do our readers a far greater service in properly paraphrasing those views, providing countervailing ones, and having a good neutral article, then trying to pigeonhole nuanced expert views (which may contain elements of neither or both) into arbitrary categories." This isn't an issue that can easily be placed in for and against categories.

We disagree. Sorry, but there are clearyl distinct views on the subject. Most of the content here is a POV oriented around suggesting that they are against adolescent sexuality. I am fine with that view being presented. But, trying to make a "neutral" article isn;t possible. The "nuanced" views as you call it, can be expressed to support the different viewpoints. I respect that you would like it to be different. I hope that you respect that these issues happen all of the time on Wikipedia, which is why we have a firm WP:NPOV policy to help deal with that. Atom 21:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that there are NOT two "clearly distinct views on the subject." For instance, many of the quotes in there are just talking about 'hooking up' and not all adolescent sexual encounters. Some of the authors that you insist on putting in the against section are not opposed to teenagers having sex, if they are ready for it. Its not fair to them for you to place their views in a section that they wouldn't agree with. Trying to claim that one of these authors is for or against the broad topic of adolescent sexuality when they hold much more nuanced views is equally POV. There is also a dispute resolution policy that begins with getting a third opinion. I requested one, and an opinion was given, but that doesn't seem to be good enough for you. I don't want this to escalate even further up the dispute resolution chain. --Illuminato 22:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I apprecizte you taking an effort to discuss it in more detail. I was not aware that you had asked for a third opinion, although I did see the third opinion title. It is good to have more opinions, but that is just one opinion, and many of the things he said had merit. I understand what you are saying when you say that their views are "nuanced", but the whole section are from people who are not neutral on the matter, but in fact have said that they feel that adolescent sexuality is negative. Of course there are aspects of adolescent sexuality that is negative, just as there is for adult sexuality. But, we need to hgave a more well rounded perspective in the article than a just a list of quotes that someone dug up that suggest the negative aspects. The fact is that adolescents have always explored their sexuality, and will continue to do so. The article can discuss some of the negative aspects, but needs to discuss issues that help teens explore their sexuality more safely. There is a large faction that has some skewed concept that trying to prevent teens from lerning about sexuality is somehow a positive thing. We need to work to present the facts on that matter, rather than letting the article be skewed by unrealistic abstinence based viewpoints.

I don't wish to escalate anything, but I don't see how you continuing to remove section headings that show the broad differences on the issue is productive in preventing that. If/when the article is better written, and more than a collection of quotes on one side of the fence (regardless of the broader views of those individual authors, not completely expressed in the quotes) I can see it being necessary to express that their are firm viewpoints on both sides of the issue. Why not start developing that now? Atom 23:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "less sustained, often not monogamous and with lower levels of satisfaction."

Atom, you keep removing the line about such relationships being "less sustained, often not monogamous and with lower levels of satisfaction" because you think it just someones opinion, and not fact. However, if you check the source, you will see it comes from a 28-year study, where Collins and his colleagues followed 180 individuals from birth. I've reinstated that sentence, again. --Illuminato 22:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I did not remove it because I felt that the quote was not accurate. I removed it because the comment, from a basic editorial perspective, does not have a place there. How is that opinion (even if made by a psychologist who has done research) support what is being said in the article? Showing a bias for monogamy doesn't help the quote either. Monogampy versue polyamory doesn;t have any relevance in that section. Many people fine polyamory to be more satisfying and more sustained than monogamy, but that also doesn't have relevance in the section in the article. I was being balanced in trying to remove the quote, as the other alternative is to drag more of that authors study into the article. We can do that if you prefer, but I am not sure that will improve the quality of the article. Atom 23:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

It is relevant to the article in that it discusses an aspect of teen's sexual relationships. Its not giving a value judgment about monogamy vs polygamy, its just saying that purely sexual relationships are A, B & C. This is an example of how its not a good idea to peg these things into for and against sections. --Illuminato 00:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biased study?

  • 51 percent surveyed said when they had sexual intercourse for the first time it was because they had "met the right person,"
  • 45 percent surveyed said it was because "the other person wanted to,"
  • 32 percent of those surveyed said it was because they were "just curious,"
  • 28 percent surveyed said it was because they "hoped it would make the relationship closer," and
  • 16 percent surveyed said it was because "many of their friends already had sex" [10]

What about the option, "I wanted to have sex very badly"? It seems to me that this option has been overlooked by this study and thus is biased. This option seems to me to be a main reason why someone would want to have sex: because they wanted to!. For example, if I were faced with this poll, my answer in essay form would be "Because I was horny," but in this multiple-choice poll it might be any of these reasons simply because the main reason for wanting to have sex, which is wanting to have sex, was overlooked. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 23:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, that wasn't included in the survey. (Believe me, at this time I was DESPERATE to find something to counterbalance the bias of this article and this is all that I could find that Illuminato and his IP adress 'side kick' didn't delete. Although yes, it IS limited in that respect.

[edit] Half of boys but a third of girls

"Almost half of boys (47%) believe that oral sex is "not a big deal" but only slightly more than a third of girls (38%) feel the same way."

That's only 9 percent less - the phrasing makes it sound like a larger discrepancy than it is. Slightly more than a third is 38%? It would be different if they were both slightly more or both slightly less, but this phrasing doesn't let the facts stand on their own ground. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 00:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I see the point there-I would see nothing wrong with simply saying "47% of boys and 38% of girls...". Still keeps the factual information without any question of spin. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 00:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal/state of article

Discuss at Talk:Adolescent sexuality. Iamcuriousblue 21:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

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