Oral Sex at the Bar Mitzvah? Mostly An Adult Myth

I just completed two mornings of training with future Rabbis and Cantors.

One of the topics included adolescent sexuality education and what teens needed from their religious communities. I asked the group had they ever heard about concerns about middle school students and oral sex at Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations and all of them had.

I've long argued in my books (see side bar to order my book, Beyond the Big Talk) that oral sex in the middle school is largely NOT happening. I've said that I can remember the name of the girl in the eighth grade who was offering oral sex, and that perhaps today there might be a few more, but my sense from working with teens around the country is that most middle schoolers are still worrying about kissing and that oral sex scandals in middle schools is largely a media myth.

There's new national probability data from Indiana University that backs that up. The new IU study finds that only 13% of 14 and 15 year old boys had received oral sex, matching pretty closely the 12% of girls those ages who say they offer it. One in ten girls that age say that they have received oral sex, also challenging the myth that girls are always the ones performing, boys receiving.

The numbers jump once teens are juniors and seniors in high school, but still only a minority of teens ages 16 and 17 have had oral sex ever. One third of the boys and 23% of the girls had received oral sex; one quarter of the girls and 20% of the boys had offered it. Few had had same sex partners. Teenagers are just not as sexually experienced as most adults believe.

Surely we need to be concerned about the youngest teens engaging in intimate sexual behaviors with a partner, and these studies do not look at the context of the relationships. Young people need our guidance and support to make healthy sexually decisions and set sexual limits. Parents, schools, and faith based organizations all play an important role. But, these numbers indicate that we need to be much more cautious in accepting media stories or rumors designed to alarm us that don't reflect actual young people's lives.