The article, “For Young South Africans, Community Opportunities May Have Unexpected Links to Sexual Behavior,” by the International Family Planning Perspectives was a very interesting article and it has what you would not have expected to actually be related. In this article, this program did a survey from 2,992 respondents that are living in 109 communities. In the survey these respondents were asked about their sexual behaviors, their education and work experience. From these respondents, fifty-six percent were blacks living in urban areas while there were 24 percent from rural areas, 14 percent were Indians and 6 percent were whites and from all of these people, and about half of them were female. From these surveys, the researchers analyzed that South African adolescents sexual behavior were associated with the availability of educational, employment and recreational opportunities, although not exactly the same way with males and females. They discovered that for the African women adolescent, the higher the average wages of adolescents in the schooling or sports, the less likely they were to have had sex in the past year. Also, the adolescent women’s likelihood of condom use with during their last sex was positively associated with average wages in the community. Men is not the same way with this and instead, actually, the more adolescent men who participate in the community levels of participation in schooling, work or sports, the lower the use odds of use of condoms. From the article, the odds of recent sex were higher for urban- and rural dwelling blacks than whites, for men who were working than for those who were not and for men who participated in sports than for those who were not. Overall, with condom use among adolescent men, it is negatively associated with the proportion of adolescents in a community who were in school or had a secondary education, were working or were participating in sports.
What the researchers found out about how young South Africans community opportunities may link to sexual behavior makes sense to me. I have actually answered some of my own questions about why and how sexual behaviors or use of condoms can be positively or negativity associated with community opportunities for these adolescents. First for the South African adolescent women, a few reasons why I think adolescent women would be less likely to engage in sexual act if they receive a higher wage or their level of participation in schooling or sports is might be because from getting a role in one of these activities, they might get too busy doing other things in their life that they did not have the time for sex or to even think about it. A reason why higher wage would lead for these women to engage less in sex and to be more likely to use condoms is that they might be more aware of the sex issues than the others. Why I say this is because in Africa, there are that many jobs and if you do get a job, they probably would not pay you that much unless you have proven yourself worthy to them, like being a hard worker and a good worker so if they are a good worker, it is more likely that they might have been aware about having sex. Like for example, they might be have re thought having it already like, “I might get pregnant and disgrace my parents,” or “I don’t want to catch any diseases so I will try to reduce the amount of sex as much as possible.”
For the adolescent men, I get the idea that the reason why condom use among adolescent men is negatively associated with the proportion of adolescents in a community that are in school or had a secondary education, were working or were participating in sports is because of these reasons. These adolescent men might use fewer condoms while in school because they might think that they are already educated enough and know all the things there is to know about sex so they can handle it without condoms and it will be all right. As for the working and participating in sports part, maybe working and participating in sports have worn them out and they could have been more aggressive and do not want to use condoms with the women, just for their own pleasure. I would also say that the reason why the odds of recent sex is more likely to occur for blacks in both urban and rural areas than whites is because like the article had already mentioned, the survey consisted of 80 percent blacks from both rural and urban areas while there was only 6 percent whites who did the survey, which is very low when compared to the percent of blacks. Obviously we can see that since there was more black people to start off with than the whiles, it would make perfect sense why the performance of recent sex act was more in percentage for the blacks than the whites. Although the percentage of blacks were more than whites to start off with in the surveys, I think that even though if the amount was the same at first, the African adolescent men would still have a higher or slightly higher percentage of recent sex than the whites. Why I say this is because it is more likely that the blacks and white would be racially segregated by housing like in that movie we saw earlier in class, “Excerpt from Race: The Power of an Illusion (PBS, 2003),” so if this were the case instead, then more of the blacks would live in the poorer housing or area and the whites would live in the richer or nicer area. This would make the blacks more prone to violence due the poor living conditions they are in so they would more likely engage in sexual activity than the whites. These are just my guesses and how I understand them so I may be way off so if anybody has anything to say, feel free to reply to my blog. I would appreciate any comments from you.
I agree with the what the researchers were saying on page 41 that the prospects for education and employment, “ shape young people’s future plans and expectations (International Family Planning Perspectives, 2005).” Like what the researchers were saying, I think that this article is important and that it is a good research is because this could potentially lead the researchers to create something that might be able to promote safer sex for all the adolescents, since this research on young South Africans may be link to their sexual behavior. Also, if these researchers are able to promote safer sex among these adolescents by using what they found out, this could prevent the increase population of AIDS.
Reference
International Family Planning Perspectives. 2005. “ For Young South Africans, Community Opportunities May Have Unexpected Links to Sexual Behavior.” Vol. 31 Issue 2, p41.
Here is the link for the file if anyone wants to read it, it has more details and statistics that you just might find useful!
Posted by leex1663 at August 5, 2005 1:04 AM