Op-Ed Contributors

Let's accept facts and guide the youth

By Eric Sommer (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-04 09:27

Changing the attitudes and polices of the older generation is the best way to protect the young from unwanted pregnancies and abortions in China.

Recent years have seen an increase in sexual activities, unwanted pregnancies and abortions among the youth. These developments present China's policymakers, parents and educators with a novel set of issues which call for fresh thinking.

Registered medical institutions in China perform about 13 million abortions every year, according to health officials. The actual number may be higher if we consider abortions performed in unregistered medical clinics, or the fact that about 10 million abortion-inducing pills are sold every year.

The main cause of the massive rise in the number of abortions is deceptively simple: People lack the basic sex education needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies. As professor Li Ying of Peking University has said, young people need to acquire better knowledge about sex.

A recent government report says nearly two-thirds of the abortions in the country's hospitals are performed on single women aged between 20 and 29. A government official familiar with this area quoted almost 50 percent of the women who underwent abortions as having said they did not use contraceptives.

As early as 2002, a survey conducted by Peking University's Children and Youth Health Research Center showed that about 49 percent of high school students considered premarital sex "perfectly okay", and 10 percent believed that sex on a first date was acceptable. Moreover, 70 percent of Beijing residents reportedly have had sex before marriage.

Older officials, educators and parents may detest the behavior of the younger generation which experiments with or engages in pre-marital sex that may result in unwanted pregnancies - and thus abortions. The basic problem is not young people's desire to have boyfriends or girlfriends to satisfy their sexual needs instead it is the older generation's outmoded thinking and attitude, formed in different social conditions. It is this outmoded thinking that prevents the older generation from imparting the necessary knowledge to the younger generation on safe sex.

The rapid change in sexual practices has, in fact, created a kind of "disconnect" between the older and younger generations. Young people are sexually more active today but parents, teachers and other elders, because of their social prejudices, are reluctant to discuss sex or provide the necessary guidance to youngsters on the use of contraceptives. They tend to believe, and falsely so, that just "setting moral rules" can stop today's youth from having sex.

As a teacher in China, I have seen some school authorities and parents trying to "forbid" young people from having boyfriends or girlfriends. In one memorable instance, a high-ranking official of a "model high school" in Beijing "confided" in me that the school did not allow students to have boyfriends or girlfriends. But in a McDonalds' restaurant just a block or two away from the school, I used to see dozens of students every day - still in their school uniforms - huddled in a corner, kissing and hugging each other.