The idea makes adults so uncomfortable that it's hardly been studied. But it's happening: Oral sex and intercourse among middle schoolers, and children even younger.
Parents are shocked. Peers are not.
It's been the talk of York Haven, Pa., these last few weeks: the revelation that 17 children, ages 7 to 16, in this quiet Susquehanna River town had been teaching one another how to have sex.
Two things rattled Newberry Township Police Chief William Myers, who handled the case: the ages of the children - many were in the sixth to eighth grades - and their "so-what" attitude.
"They didn't comprehend the seriousness, or possible ramifications," Myers said. "I was caught off guard."
He shouldn't have been. People who deal with adolescents are beginning to realize what some teenagers take for granted: that younger children are engaged in more sexual activity than most adults know.
"In middle school, parents are still thinking milk and cookies," said Zandile Bley, 16, of Jersey City, N.J., who writes for Sex, Etc., a national newsletter for teens published by Rutgers University. But, she said, even in grammar school, she heard about students having oral sex.
By the time they get to high school, "it's really not such a big deal" - nearly as casual as kissing, she said.
In York Haven, a town of bait shops and frame houses strung along the bluffs above the river, teenagers were likewise unfazed. "Are kids having sex in middle school?" asked Jessica McCartney, 14, who was among a group of teenagers hanging around recently outside a pizza shop.
She glanced around at her friends, who nodded assent. "Oh, yeah. It's disgusting, but they are."
The good news for parents is that fewer youths in high school are having sex. Federal statistics released last year showed that the portion of high school students who had had sex fell to 48 percent in 1997 from 54 percent in 1990. The drop is attributed to a growing emphasis on delaying sex and increased fear of disease, according to researchers at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, in New York.
Even so, more than a third of ninth graders have had sexual intercourse, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control.
Logic would then suggest that a significant number of younger children also have, said Mark A. Schuster, a Rand Corp. researcher and University of California at Los Angeles pediatrician who tracks sexual behavior in high school students.
"Most people have no idea" how much sexual activity goes on among younger children, he said.
"Parents aren't shocked that kids are having sex before they graduate from high school. . . . But the idea that middle-school students are engaging in vaginal intercourse never occurs to them."
Because the subject is so sensitive, there are few studies on how many children are having sex, and at what ages. Most surveys don't include anyone younger than high school age, and they don't ask about activities other than intercourse.
"We know that middle-school students are having vaginal intercourse," Schuster said, "and there is every reason to believe that they are having oral sex as well."
Most of the activities in the York Haven case involved things other than intercourse, said Myers, the police chief. Seven children, ages 10 to 16, were arrested last winter on charges ranging from indecent assault to statutory rape. The youngest children didn't really understand what was going on, he said.
Among the older ones the acts were consensual, something Myers called "very alarming and disconcerting."
Likewise, parents in an Arlington, Va., middle school were stunned last year when counselors called to tell them that about 15 children, ages 13 and 14, were having oral sex at parties through much of the school year.
As in the York Haven case, that incident was publicized only last month. "We are very uncomfortable as a society with adolescent sexuality," said Debora Haffner, president of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council, based in New York. "But most seventh and eighth graders are discovering hand-holding, kissing and French-kissing, which is normal behavior. . . . A minority move beyond that."
In a study of high school-age youths published in 1996 in the American Journal of Public Health, Schuster found that 47 percent of the 2,206 students he questioned had never had intercourse.
[ which, of course, means that a majority (53%) DID have intercourse.]
However, nearly a third of the virgins had masturbated a partner, and about 10 percent had performed oral sex on a partner. In each case, the numbers were nearly equal for boys and girls.
Students stop short of intercourse for two reasons, Schuster said, "partly to prevent pregnancy and partly because of fear of AIDS. They seem unaware that some practices, especially oral sex, carry the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases."
There also seems to be little focus on the psychological effects of sex at such a young age, said Schuster, who co-authored a book to be published by Random House in 2001, Beyond the Facts of Life: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents.
Focusing solely on the risk of pregnancy and disease, Schuster wrote in his report, "may be misinterpreted by adolescents as indicating that risk should be the only factor considered in making sexual decisions."
Many adults can't get past the reflexive cringe that occurs when somebody applies a phrase like "sexual decisions" to youths in middle school.
"The idea of seeing these children with immature bodies and certainly immature emotions, mucking around with stuff that adults are cowed by, is really threatening to adults," said sociologist Pepper Schwartz of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Like Haffner and Schuster, Schwartz also is writing a book, with Dominic Capello, Ten Talks That Parents Must Have With Children About Sex and Character. Hers is aimed specifically at parents with younger children, fourth to eighth graders.
What parents need to realize, she said, "is that sex just means something different to them than to us. . . . We can get nostalgic about it, but the fact is that they don't. There is a kind of crudeness that is unsettling to an older person."
Likewise, Schuster noted that the youths he talked to were pretty nonchalant.
"There is a coolness about oral sex" among young people, he said.
"In and of itself, it's emerging as a cool thing to do. They don't think it's sex." Neither, apparently, does President Clinton, as a skeptical nation learned last year. Clinton maintained that oral sex with Monica Lewinsky did not constitute sexual relations. "Monica Lewinsky made that concept famous," Schuster said. But as any technical virgin knows, you can have a lot of sex without having sex.
If the National Coalition for Abstinence Education had its way, there would be no confusion on that particular point. Its definition of sex leaves no wiggle room: "Any contact with genitalia, buttocks or breasts that causes arousal, or any activity which stimulates or causes the exchange or release of body fluids."
The Colorado Springs, Colo., group's message about such activities is equally straightforward: Don't. "You don't send kids down this road and pretend this is where you're going to stop," said Peter Brandt, who runs the coalition, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian group.
"I look back to my own youth - you may have gotten to second base, but the goal was to get to home base," he said.
Other groups, such as Planned Parenthood and SIECUS, say children need lots of frank, accurate information to enable them to make informed choices. "Unfortunately, abstinence-only programs do little more than say, 'Do nothing more than social kiss,' which is not realistic. I don't think we can stop the nation's children from French- kissing."
Nick Bosso, principal of Northeastern Middle School, which serves York Haven, said its existing programs dealt with "good-touch, bad-touch" issues.
[ needless to say, these kids have figured out that the sex they are enjoying is 'good touch' - a point that has been missed by the goodtouch/badtouch adults for a decade... ]
He has already spoken to counselors about how to address the question of consensual sex when students return in the fall.
[ hah hah... we all know how THAT will be handled - 'children of your age CANNOT consent to sex'... and the kids will laugh and go back in the woods... ]
"We need to be prepared when the kids come back to school," Bosso said. "I can't imagine that there won't be discussion."
The York Haven teenagers said that discussion had already started. "My mom couldn't believe that their parents didn't know," said Stefanie Stern, 14, who was one of the group of youths outside Michael's Pizza - all of whom squirmed as they recalled the conversations their parents insisted upon after hearing of the incidents.
But the group seemed relieved, too, to see their own instincts reinforced. Don't do this, they were told in no uncertain terms. And don't hang around with kids who do. Which was just fine with Jessica McCartney. Again, her friends nodded confirmation as she spoke: "Kids in middle school are too young."
[ naturally they didn't quote any of the 13 yr olds who were doing it... ]
By Gwen Florio, Inquirer Staff Writer