Condoms for Elementary School Students?

When it comes to teens, pre-teens and even younger children and sex, policies and ideologies just keep getting stranger and stranger. I reported a few posts back about small condoms targeted at the under-14 set. These Hot Shot condoms are designed to discourage adolescents from unprotected sex while giving them an alternative to adult condoms which may not fit properly.

Now a Massachusetts High School is giving out condoms to elementary school kids on request. The students need to receive counseling from the school nurse or other authorized counselor before receiving the condoms. According to an article in the Provincetown Banner, which was shared at the website WickedLocal.com, some school committee members opposed the policy — but not for the reasons you might think. These members felt kids shouldn’t have to speak with an adult before receiving condoms. One member, Shannon Patrick, was quoted in the article saying, “I don’t like that students can’t be discreet about this….I’d rather them not have the conversation [with counselors] and have the condom than not have the condom.”

The Importance of Sex Ed
I really believe it is important for kids to have a place to turn and an adult to speak with if they are thinking about having sex — especially in elementary school. Even if it’s just a discussion on how to use a condom properly and what a condom can and cannot do to protect students, it’s better than no conversation at all. I would hope the conversation would also include a conversation about the benefits of abstinence, the potential ramifications if the condom should break, and a discussion about the emotional aspects of having sex at such a young age. But, even if the counselors are just explaining how to use the condoms correctly, that’s better than nothing at all.

Sex as Bad as Heroin for Minors?
I’m not a proponent of “abstinence-only” sex ed, and if handing out condoms really does help reduce the numbers of teen pregnancies, I won’t complain. But there’s another part of this rule I do have a serious problem with: the school district will not honor requests from parents that students not be allowed to receive condoms, according to the article.

As a parent, if my child is thinking about having sex — again, especially in elementary school — I want to be the one having the conversation with them. I want to make the determination of whether or not my kid should have access to condoms or not.

One person who commented on the article pondered, “Why not just give the kids free needles while we’re at it…”

I wouldn’t compare drug paraphernalia to condoms, by any stretch. But I do understand the point that the school is taking responsibility for something that should be the parents’ responsibility: education about things that really don’t belong in the hands of minors — or at least not elementary school children.

I don’t want to turn this into another rant-y “What-is-this-world-coming-to,-elementary-school-kids- should-be-playing-with-Hot-Wheels-and-Barbie-dolls” post. But I am very curious to see if the rates of teen pregnancy in the Provincetown school district as a whole drop over the next ten years or so, due to this form of “early intervention.”

Do you think handing out condoms to elementary school students will help decrease the rates of teen pregnancy? Or could it actually increase the numbers of kids having sex?