Attitudes of America's Youth

Value-Free in Ninety Three
In 1992 the National Center for Health Statistics commissioned a survey of the Nation's youth; the results of that survey were published in June 1995 as Health Risk Behaviors Among Our Nation's Youth: United States 1992. The attitudes toward drug usage and the incredibly high rate of sexual activity among those surveyed attests to the ineffectiveness of our current programs in producing responsible behavior. Since we are educating our children in a religion-free, amoral environment, we should not be surprised that a large percentage of our youth are growing up with unhealthy values.

Drug Usage
We have included a portion of the data on drug usage among various age groups. The graph shows that, in 1992, over a third of those between 18 and 21 years were smoking cigarettes on a regular basis. Cigarettes are not the only things they're smoking: at 35.7%, marijuana usage is even more prevalent than regular cigarette smoking among those between 18 and 21 years. The 35.7% includes only those who have used marijuana three or more times - the percentage of single-time users is even higher. Alcohol is at the top of the list with a whopping 40.2% admitting to drinking more than two times in the month preceding the survey. Binge drinking was also prevalent: "one in four adolescents interviewed said they had had five or more drinks in a row in the past month". The CDC in Health, United States, 1995 found that almost one-quarter of the eighth graders in our Nation had consumed alcohol within the two weeks preceding their 1995 survey.

Substance abuse is increasing among all age groups, but the rate of increase is highest for the young. This would indicate that our children are experimenting with drugs at increasingly earlier ages. Before 1991, the CDC did not bother to include eighth-graders in their data collection, but drug usage among the eighth-grade population in the United States has dramatically increased.

Using marijuana and under-age drinking are not only health risks, they are illegal activities. During the late eighties, drug arrests were on the decline, but total arrests in New Jersey have increased from 46,000 in 1991 to 59,000 in 1995. Marijuana/hashish use, possession, manufacture, and sale arrests in New Jersey have more than doubled between 1991 and 1995.

Pre-marital Sex
By the age of 21, 80% of our Nation's youth are sexually active. This means what it says - not "have had sex" but "sexually active". Over 60% of our youth have had multiple sex partners before the age of 21. Almost one-third of our 14 and 15 year olds are sexually active.

There are manifold ramifications to the sexual activity among 80% of our Nation's youth. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 25% of the college students in the United States are infected with some form of sexually transmitted disease. Since 1988, AIDS has been far and away the leading cause of death of those between the ages of 25 and 44.

AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are not the only result of pre-marital sex: it also results in pre-marital pregnancies. In New Jersey during 1993, the last year covered by published data, 27.2% of the mothers giving birth were unmarried. That's 31,996 babies born to unmarried women (New Jersey Health Statistics - 1993). Remember, these are just the live births. Unmarried women obtained 29,705 abortions which were reported to the State during 1993 and many more which were unreported.

Nationwide, births to unmarried mothers are on the increase in every age group. In the US during 1993, even though almost 80% of illegitimate pregnancies ended in abortion (Health, United States, 1995, Table 15, p.94), 31% of the mothers giving birth were unmarried (Health, United States, 1995). Furthermore, these abortions performed on unmarried women account for over 80% of all abortions (Family Planning Perspectives, Volume 28, No. 4, July/August 1996). To recap -- approximately 80% of illegitimate pregnancies ended in abortion and accounted for about 80% of all abortions in the United States.

The NJFPC Viewpoint

The best adjective to describe our public policy is "tolerant". Not many years ago, drug usage was reserved to the counter-cultural groups whose drug usage was as much a rebellion against mainstream society as it was an escape from that society. Today we find drugs tolerated in the mainstream. Once upon a time, the Surgeon General was bent upon having warning labels on cigarette packages, but a more recent Surgeon General recommended legalization of marijuana. When the President of the United States tells the MTV generation that he "tried to inhale", should we be surprised that drug usage is on the increase?

Our "tolerant" public policy has also made its impact in its acceptance of illegitimate pregnancy. In fact, it is no longer politically correct to call a pregnancy which occurs outside of wedlock "illegitimate". In New Jersey, prior to 1978, a mother was asked whether her baby was "legitimate" when the data was taken for the birth certificate. From 1979 through 1988 the mother was asked whether she was "married". Since 1988 the mother was asked whether she was married at the child's "birth, conception, or any time between". The question demonstrates our expectations. In our public efforts to remove the stigma of illegitimacy we have opened the door to a generation which will be raised without a real family.

Our most vigorous efforts to form attitudes in the public arena occur in the classrooms of our public schools. For decades we have subjected our children to various forms of "family life", "sex-education", "drug awareness", "AIDS education", and other non-academic programs. 81.5% of the youth surveyed in for this 1992 report had received HIV/AIDS education in school - almost the same percentage of the youth who were "sexually-active". (Adams PF, et. al., Health Risk Behaviors Among Our Nation's Youth: United States, 1992. ) Whenever a study indicates that things are not working according to plan, the education establishment is quick to claim the need for more of this kind of education. However, someone who takes an objective look at the data will decide that this non-academic education serves two purposes: 1) it reduces the amount of academic education, and 2) it does not reduce the subject behavior.

By and large, the attitudes of our Nation's youth are a simple reflection of our public policy over the most recent decades.