In a study that abstinence-only education advocates say proves their point, researchers have found that sexually active teens are more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins, according to the Washington Post.

"There's a popular perception that teens are engaging in serial oral sex as a strategy to avoid vaginal intercourse," said Rachel Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a private, nonprofit research organization based in New York, who helped do the study. "Our research suggests that's a misperception."

Instead, the study found that teens tend to become sexually active in many ways at about the same time. For example, although only one in four teenage virgins had engaged in oral sex, within six months after their first intercourse more than four out of five adolescents reported having oral sex.

"That suggests that oral and vaginal sex are closely linked," said Jones, whose findings will be published in the July issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. "Most teens don't have oral sex until they have had vaginal sex."

Valerie Huber, the executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, held up the study as proof we need to discourage teens from engaging in all sex. Hey, I am for encouraging teens to wait, but withholding all information on sex, including condom use, is not the way to go. I wholeheartedly agree with this guy:

"More than half of our teens are having sex -- vaginal and oral," said James Wagoner, president of the group Advocates for Youth. "We can't afford the luxury of denial. Abstinence-only programs are the embodiment of denial. They have been proven not to work, and it's time to invest in real sex education, including condoms."

Still, as other experts in the story pointed out, it is important to collect as much information in this area possible.  Researchers welcomed the news.

I was just about to blog this! It is a good story. Thank you, Katherine! -Elisa

This past Sunday's New York Times magazine had a profile of a pro-virginity group at Harvard University called True Love Revolution.  Their website states:

TLR is a new, non-sectarian student-run organization at Harvard College dedicated to the promotion of premarital sexual abstinence. We strive to present another option to our peers regarding sex-related issues, endorsing ideas of abstinence and chastity as a positive alternative for ethical and health reasons.

The website suggests that premarital sexual activity can result in a wealth of negative outcomes.

Saving sex for marriage, we believe, can contribute positively to your physical and emotional health and improve the quality of your current and future relationships.

Early sexual activity and having multiple sexual partners is strongly associated with increased depression, greater likelihood of maternal poverty, and higher rates of marital infidelity and divorce in future marriages.

Editor's note: I apologize in advance if this post is TMI for anyone! I just thought with Valentine's Day coming up, it might be interesting to, in the words of Salt 'N Pepa, "talk about sex." -Erika

I love those goofy surveys that always seem to come out around Christmas or Valentine's Day and unearth some surprising information.

This survey, from a British electronics retailer, claims that almost half of men in the U.K. would give up sex for 6 months in exchange for a 50-inch plasma TV. Interestingly, just a third of women surveyed said they would forgo the nookie.

This, to me, proves just one thing: men are WAY more into fancy TVs than women are.

I asked my husband if he would give up 6 months of sex for a TV. "No way," he said without hesitation. Then again, he already has a 46-inch HDTV, so that wouldn't be much of an upgrade.

So I decided to raise the stakes: would he do it for a cool $1 million?

After a moment of consideration, his first question: "Could I masturbate?"

Then another: "While you lie naked next to me?"

For argument's sake I said no. No orgasms for 6 months. He grudgingly said yes, while admitting that we would probably be on the brink of divorce by the end of the experiment.

That may seem drastic, but I believe him.

We've been married 10 years and together for 11, but my husband's libido hasn't waned one bit. If a week goes by without some form of intimacy, he feels rejected and goes from mild-mannered to short-tempered. For him, sex is a deep expression of love, and I have learned to accept and respect that as best I can.

Believe me, I'm no Ayelet Waldman. It can be challenging to find the time and energy for sex when you work full-time and are raising a young child, but we do our best. We drop the kid off at Grandma's for the night and occasionally spend a night or two away. We arrange sitters so we can go watch a movie and occasionally, I will play hooky on a day when Maya is in preschool so me and the hubby can spend a quiet day together.

This article listed some tips on how to keep sex alive after kids. They won't work for everyone but I thought this would be an interesting discussion here on MotherTalkers:

How important are romance and sex after parenthood? How often are you getting busy? And what would YOU want in exchange for giving up 6 months of sex?

I'll go first: we probably average 2 to 3 times per week. And $1 million is about the only thing that would inspire me to go without...mostly because I believe the financial security will make me more relaxed, and will mean more sex in the long run. :-)

As for that survey, here's a funny tidbit: just 25 percent of respondents would give up cigarettes or chocolate for a plasma set.

Which means for Brits at least, Marlboros and Milky Ways beat out makin' whoopee.

In 1997, Congress authorized a study on "abstinence only" sex ed--the kind the federal guv currently funds to the tune of $176 million tax dollars a year. The study followed 2000 kids from elementary school or middle school to high school. They were a mix of urban and rural-dwellers. The results were a bummer for the chastity hawks:

...abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent. The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15. Less than a quarter of them, in both groups, reported using a condom every time they had sex. More than a third of both groups had two or more partners.

Other articles I read pegged the loss of virginity at 14.9 years old. Geez that seems young. And the condom rates are pretty pitiful. Makes me wish for something more potent in the way of sex ed, ya know?

Of course, the abstinence brigade is scrambling to find the silver lining of this report. They say that the study doesn't prove diddly because it focused on the first generation of abstinence-only programs. They say that they've become a lot more sophisticated since then. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps this is just a clever way to buy more time for their lame experiment.