Is Sarah Jessica Parker To Blame For Teen Pregnancy?

Damn that Carrie. All that cavorting around she and Samantha did on Sex and The City may have had an unexpected effect on teenagers – pregnancy.

A new study has claimed that teenage girls who watch a lot of TV shows with a high sexual content are twice as likely to become pregnant, while boys watching similar shows are also much more likely to impregnate someone.

The study warned that shows such as SATC and Friends “glamourise sex while hardly mentioning its downsides, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”

Lead researcher Dr Anita Chandra said: “Sexual content on television has doubled in the last few years, especially during the period of our research. We found a strong association.”

Other experts said parents and schools must share the blame.

Psychologist David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, said only about 19 per cent of U.S. teenagers say they can talk openly with a trusted adult about sex.

With many schools not offering sex education, that left the media to act as a sex educator. Dr Walsh said: “If you have a kid who no-one’s talking to about sex, and who then watches sitcoms on TV where sex is presented as “this is what cool people do”, the outcome is obvious.”

I guess the outtake for parents is to talk to their kids about sex long before they become teenagers, be willing to talk about sex and contraception and for goodness sake, ban the TV from their bedrooms!

[Source]