Not only does the author not have teenaged sons, she clearly doesn't even know any. No-one who knows anything about teenaged boys would pretend that marriage is an institution that suits them. Society needs to stop positioning girls as victims based on such flimsy arguments.

Fatherless children certainly would be a huge problem associated with adolescent sexuality and early marriage, plus, the danger of sexually transmitted disease is certainly always present.

Given that many older couples can't handle marriage and the rearing of children how would younger kids still wet behind the ears cope.

I don't know what you do about the issue of male adolescent sexuality.
Certainly it is a powerful force programmed that way by nature. It may have served some kind of a survival need back when a heck of a lot of babies and children never survived until adult hood.

Maybe it could be openly ackowledged by society and boys be allowed to stop classes, jobs, whatever they are doing and have time out to masturbate. Like the muslim men do when they pray several times a day.
Certainly the women and children in muslim society would beneifit more from that then they seem to do from all that praying.

Maybe they could have nicely outfitted cubicles all over the place with porno movies playing rather like toilet cubicles. I won't hold my breath waiting for these measures to be put into effect although I myself would have no objection to it.

I really don't have any problem with the idea of teenage sex if there were no downsides like unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and emotional breakdowns involved but those are very big obstacles.

Likewise I would take up smoking if the smoke didn't stink and it didn't kill you. What would be the harm? The same with adolescent sex. But there is harm.

I agree with Desmond. I would not like to see the age of consent for any youths lowered from 16 because it is probably the only slight barrier left to encourage kids to wait until they are mature enough to deal with sexual relationships. If they wear condoms then they can lower the risk of STDs and pregnancy, but if they think they will break the law then surely some of them may wait a little longer for their first sexual experience?

I don't agree with partimeparents usual view that single mothers are the sole perpetrators of all our societies woes.

When so many of our brave men and boys died in the world wars, leaving many single parent households in their wake, was there mass early teenage sex and teenage pregnancies as a result of the absent fathers?

No, of course not.

Therefore there must be other reasons why there appears to be more underage sex these days. I think possibly the more readily available sexual images on T.V. and computers these days certainly doesn't help.

I also think the demise of the extended family is partly to blame .
If mum or dad or both aren't around enough these days, it's a pity we haven't got grandparents to step in as readily as they used to.

This is a really good article. I've often said it's ridiculous to pick and choose which parts of other cultures to preserve, based on the values of our own supposedly superior culture. And boys actually got a look in with this article, without that stamp of abusive predator on their foreheads. Nice one!

The age of consent is a funny one. Obviously hard and fast rules will never fit everyone, but if you're trying to emulate our society's values, you would put the age of consent of girls to 25, and for boys to 12. That's really what people want. Nobody seems to accept even a 25 year old woman who is sexually assertive as ever being in a position of power, and nobody seems to imagine any 12 year old boy not really being 'nudge nudge wink wink' a lucky guy if he manages to have sex with a woman of any age (With a man, well that's a different matter entirely). I don't think this will change for a long time.

As well as the lover, which testosterone might help to perpetuate throughout the lifespan of the afflicted, the warrior might be causal to the perceived invincibility that young blokes tend to imagine, but as we mature beyond the 20s, it would seem to gradually take a back seat to the old man mentality as we head through the 30's and into the 40s IMHO. I have no idea on what it's like to be 50.

The evolutionary purpose of the warrior might be that which climbs out of the trenches on command to charge enemy lines under fire. There's a possible phylogenic reason for it, and it's still standard equipment for young blokes in peacetime. Survival of the tribe of the bravest. Apart from madness, that's one possible reason for risk-taking attitudes that still manifest in our youth in peacetime.

That generally unknown paradox between the lover and warrior is perhaps complicated by sensationalist media as mentioned in the article: magazines, pop songs, tv ads, even the weather girl sometimes - sexy-sexy-skinny-skin-skin - the sexual revolution of the 60s still comin' at ya everywhere! Guns'a'blazin! Sirens soundin'! Sexy babes! Visual persuasion! Advertising genius! Pure fantasy ...

... Back in reality, men and women have always been attracted to each other through the ages. No need to flaunt it except that it sells copy by playing on the natural instincts. Moreover it's an obscenity for a culture that condones silicon breast implants to offer sexually conditional funding to another society that doesn't. Apart from encouraging that sexy-sexy abberration on an impressionable young bloke, what good did Miss USA achieve from it? Win a beauty contest?

For all the do-gooder aspirations, it's not as if we can cast the first stone, and we only have ourselves to blame for the temptations we feed to young people, particularly the young lovers and warriors.