Tom Inglis held a number of focus group interviews with parents, teachers and young people in a co-educational community school in a small Irish town to try to get a snapshot of current beliefs about sexuality and young people.
He found parents who were "caught in a rapidly changing culture, unable to say or do very much to help their children". They recognised that the young people were inundated with messages from the media which encouraged sexual expression, experimentation and adventurism. They recognised their children were much further down that road than they had been when young.
They wanted sexuality education to be taught within a moral framework, but felt the Catholic Church could no longer provide such a meaningful framework. There was a general recognition that teaching RSE was going to be "a very difficulttask".
They found the English teenage magazines from which girls in particular receive much of their information about sex "shocking" and "very explicit". They were concerned that sex is rampant in the films and TV programmes which are deemed fit for 12-year-olds. However, when it came to sexual behaviour, most of them still felt that their 17- and 18-yearolds did not go much beyond deep French kissing ("shifting") at discos.
Inglis found there was no "sense of frank, open and honest dialogue between parents and their children. Parents did not have the willingness or competence to develop and engage in open discussion with their children about relationships and sexuality. There was an acceptance that the school and teachers had an important role to play."
The teachers were more "in tune" with what was going on with young people. Most of them felt RSE was a good, "well thought out" programme. Its importance lay in its concentration on helping young people "to develop a strong, independent sense of self which becomes the basis of forming good relationships".
Several felt Leaving Certificate students were much more sexually active than in the relatively recent past. One guessed that by 17 seven out of 10 of them are sexually active with somebody they are having a long-term relationship with.
The group of 15- to 16-year-old transition year students inhabited a very different world from the one experienced by their parents and teachers when young. One of their problems was that teachers "regardless of their age, became awkward and embarrassed talking about sex". They wanted a teacher who was young enough to be seen as in the same generation as the pupils, and who understood the real issues in their lives, things such as relationships, being drunk and having unprotected sex. They estimated that four out of 10 young people of their age were having sexual intercourse. What Inglis found striking was that much of this seemed to be taking place outside long-term relationships. One girl said: "It's not really a relationship. It's just sex."
One thing they were almost unanimous about was that they did not know enough about sex and sexuality to be so sexually active.
Most young people learn to practise sex - in the first place "shifting" - in the discos. In some cases this can be done even without knowing the partner's name. One girl described how someone points out a friend across a disco floor goes up and asks the boy or girl concerned if they would like to "shift their friend", pointing him or her out. The shifting then takes place without knowing each other's name. Another girl tells of a stranger approaching her in a night club - "he would hand you a condom and say `are you coming for a walk outside?' "
Inglis says: "Engaging in sex - not necessarily sexual intercourse - is a central feature of teenage life. It is seen as a positive, pleasurable thing to do. There is the freedom and the confidence to be sexually expressive."
Being sexually active has become the norm for Irish teenagers. What fear there is may centre on not being accepted and not doing what everyone else is doing. Once they become sexually active, girls in particular fear unwanted pregnancy, not being loved and a loss of respect.
The "double standard" of girls getting a reputation if they sleep around, whereas boys can do what they like, is alive and well. However, Inglis got "the distinct impression that despite drink, awkwardness and embarrassment, sex was a negotiated activity over which girls had ultimate control . . . if girls say stop, boys stop'."
Inglis says it would be wrong to see what these young people are talking about as promiscuity. "They operate within a different ethical system of who can do what, with whom, when and where."