A Different Kind of Sex Talk With Teens - NYTimes.com

The age at which Europeans and Americans first have sex is the same — 17, on average, on both sides of the Atlantic. The percentage who use birth control from the start? In Holland it's 64 percent and in the United States it's 26 percent. The percentage who have regrets about their first time, wishing they had waited: 63 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls in the United States, and only 5 percent of boys and 12 percent of girls in the Netherlands. Teen pregnancy rates: three to six times higher here than in Western Europe. S.T.D. rates: 20 to 30 times higher here than Holland. H.I.V. rate? Theirs is six times lower.

Those are some of the contrasts presented in a slideshow on Slate.com, which looks at the different ways Europeans and Americans talk, in public and private, about sex. Rachel Phelps (who works at Planned Parenthood in the United States) concludes that while American parents, advertisers and public-service announcements aim to scare teens, those in Europe are matter of fact and humorous.

By way of example, take a look at this American condom ad. "The idea is that sex is like a big industrial fire — dangerous, scary and bad," Phelps writes. "And having sex without a condom is like fighting a big industrial fire naked — very bad. But does that mean that having sex with a condom is like fighting a big industrial fire in a spacesuit? Not very appealing. Why would this image motivate teenagers to use condoms?"

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http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/a-different-kind-of-sex-talk-with-teens/?ref=magazine