Cover Story: In a Holy Mess

Children today learn about and experiment with sex much earlier. But at what cost?

The young couple walked in with an awkward shyness, looking as if they would rather be a million miles away. Not unusual -- considering almost everyone who steps into a sex clinic feels the same way. Seated in front of a sexologist, the boy studied the ceiling while the girl immediately started: "We've been having problems with sex." The sexologist nodded reassuringly. But the girl didn't need any prompting. She talked frankly about how in the past couple of months she and her partner had experimented with sex since mutual masturbation no longer satisfied them. Yes, they knew about safe sex and the necessity of a condom. "But," added the girl, "it isn't fulfilling. I think we have a problem with early ejaculation." To emphasise her point, she talked about how just last week both ducked school to try again ... Hold on. Did you say school? The sexologist asked them their ages. They were both 14, ninth graders in a north Mumbai school and more sexually active than most adults.

So, what happened to those days of idyllic adolescence? Of innocence? When the mysteries of sexuality hadn't been completely unravelled but kept leaving clues that made you clomp around in circles? When you'd heard sex was far out, but you also knew it was far away?

SCHOOLING THEM ON SEX

Schooling them on sex

They might be doing it, but do they know what they're doing? As cable TV, music videos and the Net casually toss erotica right into our homes, Indian schools are finally waking up to a necessity--sex education. "If I kiss my girlfriend, will she get pregnant?" asks 12-year-old Suresh Reddy, a Class VIII student, during one such lesson in a Hyderabad school. Najma Kazi, 14 and a student of Class X, is a shade more tentative. "What is the right age to have sex?" she inquires.

Kazi is lucky she has someone to turn to. But in schools across the country, the opposition is coming from many quarters -- from squeamish teachers who think sex education is the biology instructor's business, and parents fearing that knowledge will lead their children astray. Binaifer Bharucha, a counsellor with several Mumbai schools, recalls the first time she demonstrated the use of a condom in a class in 1992. "We got an amazingly positive feedback from students, but the principal and teachers were aghast."

They're obviously out of sync with the younger generation, for as Kalindi Majumdar, former vice-principal at the Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, points out: "We are not putting ideas into the minds of children. The ideas are already there."

Amused by their hesitant parents, many youngsters have formulated their own three-point programme: ask friends, read books, surf the Net. Fortunately, the aids scare of the '90s has shaken at least some schools out of their stupor. Mumbai was the pioneer, but other cities are joining in. Four years ago, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) began a programme with 51 schools. Today over 200 private and aided schools have been roped in, and sex-education classes are likely to be made mandatory for all BMC-controlled schools.

There are a great deal of questions children need to ask. Says H.N. Pal, principal, Sir J.J. Girl's School in Mumbai: "The students of the '90s are very mature, with a healthy attitude towards sexuality. They can discuss pre-marital sex, unwanted pregnancies and abortion quite openly in class." All they need then is a responsible adult who thinks it's okay they ask.

--Nandita Chowdhury

Not any more. "We are seeing a rapid sexual awakening among kids," says Dr Savita Malhotra, a child psychiatrist at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. Consider the evidence: in the middle of a basic sex education class with eighth graders in a Delhi school, a girl got up to ask: "What is multiple orgasm?" She was followed by a boy curious to know exactly where the G-spot was and how to find it. A teacher in a Pune school recalls how an upper kindergarten boy reacted when she scolded him in class. "He looked at me and said, 'Didn't you have sex with your husband last night?' I was so shocked." In Bombay International School, introductory sex education -- earlier started at Class VIII -- now starts at Class VI. "Children were asking about sex at much younger ages," explains Rashmi Briganza, the principal. In another Mumbai school, Sandra Ferguson, 14, says she regularly visits her gynaecologist ever since she started experimenting with sex. Her main grouse: "I haven't achieved an orgasm yet." A 15-year-old student of a Chandigarh school confesses: "It's natural to have sexual urges. If you have it there's only one thing to do."

Yes, a small but growing slice of urban early adolescent society, largely the 10 to 16-year-olds, is experimenting with sex: from kissing to intercourse. Last month, the United Nations Population Fund released a paper based on eight independent studies conducted across India. It indicated that one out of 10 boys below 16 years has had sexual experiences. The prevalence of premarital sex was higher in urban than in rural areas. The studies had no figures for girls of this age. But others did: a recent survey by a marketing and research group in 15 Mumbai schools found that out of 430 students, at least 13 per cent between the ages of 12 and 15 had experienced sex. Of these, 75 per cent had more than one partner. Up north in Chandigarh, the Commonwealth Youth Programme polled 100 teenagers between 14 and 16 years to find that 38 per cent boys and 27 per cent girls had experimented with sex. Close to 10 per cent of these had sexually transmitted diseases. In Thiruvananthapuram, of the 110 abortions done every month at the Government Medical College, almost 12 per cent are unmarried teenagers.

These studies themselves admit limitations in their design, methodology and population polled. They may not be conclusive proof but are indicators of a disturbing trend. Realising the need for a large multi-centric study on sexual behaviour of adolescents, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) this year sanctioned a six-state survey where 5,000 children (between 10 and 14 years) were interviewed. The data is still being analysed, but in Maharashtra early trends are troubling. Says Dr M.C. Watsa, the principal investigator of the survey: "They do seem to start experimenting with sex very early."

In these steamy times, kids seem to be caught in their own sexual revolution -- leaving most adults confused, apprehensive and powerless. And, as always, television is being squarely blamed for increasing sexual awareness. Newspapers and magazines too have been found to be major influences. In a Delhi school, kids asked to read the newspaper as part of their curriculum suddenly discovered the graphic reporting of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky case. They lapped it up -- especially the jokes. To one of them (Why doesn't Monika open her mouth? Because -- ha ha -- she harbours the evidence there), a perplexed 12-year-old girl asked a teacher: "Does that mean the semen is still there?" As a school principal puts it, "Sex has become as banal as shaking hands -- it is much more in-your-face than ever before."

It's evident in the school yard during break, on the bus with friends and at home when parents are out working. A generation of latchkey children find themselves and their hormones at home alone. Adolescence is the age of curiosity. Teenagers are naturally inquisitive -- about their own bodies and about the world around them. Today as their bodies mature faster -- scientific studies prove the age of starting menstruation has come down to age nine or 10 -- they also find information on sex is widely available. Talk shows on adultery, seductive soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful, titillating pictures on the Net. Even Indian TV serials are spiked with sexual metaphors. Says Asha Das, secretary, Women and Child Development in the HRD Ministry: "I've seen TV even in the West. But ours is much more suggestive with far more innuendoes." A 15-month study conducted on 100 adolescents found they took most of their pointers on sex from cinema. Admits Deepak, a 12-year-old boy who thinks about girls all the time: "It's all there on TV -- that's where I learnt how to patao (hook) girls."

If television gives you the inclination, friends fill you in with details. In a study carried out by the department of community medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in seven Delhi schools, one question was: Whom would you ask if you wanted to know something about sex? "Friends," replied the majority. Many school counsellors believe that peer group leads to intense pressure for a young boy to "score". Says Dr Achal Bhagat, a psychiatrist at Apollo Hospitals: "Sex becomes an important way of being with the group." He adds that more than any other generation in this century, children today experiment with sex, drugs, alcohol, "the good things in life", at a much earlier age. And parents just seem to add to the problem.

New Age parenting is about dumping conservative values and wearing a more liberal, uninhibited face. In urban areas, girls are allowed out more easily, dating isn't altogether taboo and there is much less adult supervision. Says Sushma Sharma, child therapist: "This too has contributed to sexual permissiveness." Look at how a modern father deals with his son. "Don't tell me you still have the same girlfriend?" What signals could he be picking up? "Probably that it's okay to have a new girlfriend every week," says Sharma. Recently in an elite Delhi school, a teacher caught a seventh- grade boy kissing and petting a classmate. When his parents were summoned, the mother, described as a "high society" woman, admonished the school for being old-fashioned. "Just leave my son alone -- what he's doing is only natural," she told the authorities.

But permissiveness seems to bring about a presumption that sex is an entitlement. In a Thiruvananthapuram school recently, authorities banned boys who had just passed out of school from attending the annual function. The reason: they blatantly kissed and fondled the girls. Says a 14-year-old girl of a Delhi school, "Every boy wants to get physical. They're always asking us to stay back after school."

Counsellors and parents worry about the desecration of values like love and the subversion of mature relationships. They feel many adolescents have reached a point where they think a courtship should lead to sex. As a result, there is some precocious role-playing. In another Delhi school, counsellor Bhavdeep Bhalla found eight 12-year-old couples "going steady". Many of these girls were already plucking their eyebrows and waxing their legs. It was as if they had suddenly metamorphosed into instant adults. "They felt a societal need to pair up -- and do the usual things like kissing and fondling," she adds.

It is alarming. Children today get a surfeit of sexual information -- unfortunately most of it titillating. Which leads to natural desires. Given a chance, many of these kids experiment with sex -- probably without understanding concepts like safe sex, contraception and other health issues. "These are boys and girls who don't know much about their own bodies, let alone somebody else's," points out Dr Wasim Zaman, India representative of the UNFPA. Because of this, say experts, there is a considerable rise in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among adolescents. Similarly, teenage pregnancies are reaching an all-time high. Ministry of Health figures for Maharashtra in 1997 show that girls younger than 15 accounted for 21.7 per cent of all abortions -- more than 41,000 -- conducted in the state. About 70 per cent of the 2,765 clinics surveyed are in urban areas. Says Sanjay Chugh, a psychiatrist who also writes an agony uncle column in newspapers: "I know so many kids who are having sex but develop warped ideas of contraception and infection."

Children today, as never before, get conflicting signals on sex and sexual ethics. And they start depending on myths. Radhika Chandiramani, who runs a helpline called tarshi, points out that boys often refuse to use condoms saying, "Oh, she comes from a very good family. She can't have any disease." Another dangerous myth is that you don't conceive the first few times you have intercourse. Besides questions on masturbation or the size of the penis, there are also queries like: Is anal and oral sex safe without condoms? Can lesbians spread aids? How long does the sperm stay alive after ejaculation? Dr Alka Dhal, a gynaecologist who frequently runs sex-education programmes, says a study she conducted on adolescent girls as far back as 1981 revealed that 90 per cent were desperate for sexual information. "That was then -- imagine how much that need would have grown."

Young people today crave knowledge. But they rarely get precise information on sex and its consequences. Parents and teachers are the main conduits, and they fail miserably. Though children would ideally like their parents to teach them, most, even with their New Age vision, are queasy when it comes to details. The children themselves view sex as a natural activity. The problem is parents introduce feelings of guilt. In the end, youngsters are torn between living up to a moral code espoused by their parents and trying to stay true to their own swinging laissez faire. "The only way to minimise sexual experimentation is for parents to sit down and openly discuss sex," says Dr Rajesh Parikh, psychiatrist at Jaslok Hospital. But look at the incredible theories kids have to deal with: babies come into the world -- delivered by storks; when parents hold hands and pray; from a shopping mall. Daman Sodhi, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, recalls how her mother simply refused to help her out. "Once my periods started, she told me I could get pregnant if a boy hugged me."

Teachers are even worse. In a recent AIIMS study on senior schoolteachers in Delhi schools, the majority said they were uneasy about imparting sex education and washed their hand of the responsibility. According to them, it was the duty of the "biology teacher" to teach children the facts of life. Worse, very few believed their students were having physical relationships. Common refrains: "It doesn't happen in our school." "Our kids come from good families." Better still,"children brought up in Indian culture don't do this".

This kind of denial has frightening repercussions. Ask Dr Shankar Chowdhury, coordinator of the NGO-aids cell in AIIMS, who many feel was the first to point out that sex and sexual awareness was rising among school-going children. In 1993, Chowdhury helped conduct a study in seven Delhi schools on their knowledge about aids, STDs and sexuality. The findings created a furore. To the question, "Do you think students of your age have sex?" -- 63.3 per cent among boys and 37.4 per cent among girls said, "Yes". Suddenly, Chowdhury was engulfed by a spate of protests -- the echoes even reverberated in Parliament. But for Chowdhury, the worst part was how the schools reacted. "All seven schools just closed the door on us. They would have nothing to do with sex education."

Today Chowdhury is more cautious -- he approaches schools saying he would like to talk about "how abstinence is a part of Indian culture". "They lap it up. It's one way to handle this denial," he says. Trouble is, despite evidence to the contrary, there is a strong lobby that feels children get further desensitised with sex education; learning the facts early leads to early experimentation. Numerous moves to incorporate sex education in the school curriculum, even by the NCERT, have met with strong opposition. Says Sagri Singh at the Population Council: "All this happens despite studies that conclusively prove sex education delays the first sexual encounter."

The other area where everybody treads lightly is the morality of sexual intimacy. The desire to have sex is normal and healthy. But what is the permissable age? It's easy to preach the ethics of abstinence and the virtues of virginity with an aids brush; "That's why you shouldn't be doing it." But it is difficult to enforce, especially when an adolescent is picking up alluring signals that say "go ahead, have a great time". The only way to deal with the problem, Dhal advises, is for parents to try and give a "value reference" to sex. To counsel their children about contraception and disease, to give them an understanding of their developing sexuality. Sex is not the sin, silence is.