There are many factors that go into individual trajectories, including the individual child’s physical and emotional development the home environment and parental supervision practices and the local culture and standards in the child’s community, school and circle of friends.īut kids who start having sex early are kids we should be worrying about, kids at risk. These are associations, not cause-and-effect explanations. In those terms, what is called early sexual initiation - that is, intercourse before the age of 13 - is well-known as a marker for other kinds of risk, in both girls and boys, including binge drinking and having multiple sexual partners.
If students are sexually active, it asks for the age of first sexual intercourse, which is an important milestone.įrom a public health point of view, sexual intercourse initiates young people into certain kinds of risk, notably pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection. Every couple of years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asks middle and high school students to fill out surveys in class for the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.
