The film "kids" is a raw account of an urban adolescence focusing on experimentation with sex, drugs, liquor, and violence. The account examines these issues at their absolute worst. One of the issues that the film focuses on is adolescent sexuality. The opening scene depicts a thirteen year old girl losing her virginity to a sixteen year old boy, without any protection or any significant relationship. Adolescent sexuality is a truth that society has a tendency to avoid. Many questions arise in regards to adolescent sexuality. The question of sexual education stimulates an opinionated debate of whether abstinence should be promoted or whether an education on safe sexual practices should be utilized.
[...] There has recently been a plateau of the upward trend of adolescent sexual activity (Crooks and Baur). There has also been a decline of teen pregnancies and the spread of STI's (Daria and Campbell). Although the previously mentioned statistics indicate that adolescent promiscuity is not a rising problem, it is still important to maintain sufficient sexual education programs in schools. Safe sexual education would include various methods for birth control and how to correctly use them, as well as, information on STI's a description of them and methods for prevention and treatment. [...]
[...] “Each adolescent must determine his or her own definition of sex and values related to engaging in various behaviors with different partners (Wolf, Jaffe, and Crooks, 2006)”. Adolescence is a difficult journey that everyone must travel; it is when a child defines the person that he wishes to grow up to be. The values that he has possessed as a child, family, friends, puberty and sexual experimentation are what bring a child into adulthood. In order to ease the transition adolescent sexuality should not be as awkward to discuss as it has been described separately by many authors including Healy and Steele. [...]
[...] Our Sexuality 9th Edition. Southbank, Victoria: Thomson Learning. Daria, Marsha Prophet PhD. and Campbell, Kathryn J. Ph.D. Schools Need Sexuality Education Programs. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 10/10/2004. Healy, Justin (2000). Young People and Sexual Health. Sexual Health, Volume 137, 27-38. Healy, Justin (2000). Sexuality in Young People: The Importance of Social Health, Adolescent Health, Volume 160 Ostovich, [...]
[...] There also have been a few studies relating an early puberty to specific sociosexual behaviors, such as the ability to have casual sex without feelings of love or commitment (Ostovich and Sabini, 2005). Based on this notion, it can be assumed that in the film many of the adolescents have reached puberty at an earlier age. It is also reasonable to assume that when adolescents develop earlier, they have a stronger sex drive. While the film does not give evidence of early physical development, it is evident that the adolescents have developed at a quicker rate. [...]
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