I had the opportunity to attend ISIS's terrific Annual Youth, Technology & Sexual Health (aka. Sex::Tech) Conference for the first time this year.  It was a great opportunity for me to continue my edification in the field of reproductive health, but not just as an attendee; The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy was a sponsor of this year's conference and I was asked to participate in a panel entitled "National Prevention Programs: Effective Tools for Local Communities."



During my presentation I spoke about our work on the SexReally.com website and showed a video that became a hot topic of conversation during and after the conference. The video shows guys hanging out "in their natural environment" talking about sex.  Later in the video, we cut to one of their girlfriends who says that it might not be so bad if she got pregnant and that her boyfriend would make a good father.  Cut back to him and he's talking about ogling some unknown woman (not his girlfriend) and we can conclude that he might not be as ready as she thinks.  The point?  Be careful, have a plan, make sure your partner's plan is compatible with yours, and use contraception until you are both really ready.



I was excited when Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution approached me to develop a "family planning" module for low-income couples participating in healthy relationship and marriage education programs. After all, my first job out of social work school was with Planned Parenthood, I have a specialty in sexuality education, and I've spent the last 20 years or so developing programs to support low-income parents and families. It was a perfect assignment for me, bringing together several of my professional worlds.

Okay, I was excited, but I also knew it wasn't going to be easy. The rates of unplanned pregnancy are so very high among unmarried, low-income, African American couples -- the focus of this module -- and the reasons for these high rates are complicated. It helped when our advisory committee decided that the module alone could not be expected to change behaviors and that participating couples would need case management support to reach their goals related to pregnancy planning.

As we noted here earlier in the month, February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. For anyone who's interested in this topic (and anyone who's interested in teen and unplanned pregnancy prevention probably should be), I wanted to draw your attention to some content on the subject on our sister sites, stayteen.org and sexreally.com.

StayTeen's dating violence section has facts about dating violence, a quiz, and tips for what to do if you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship. Additionally, Youth Leadership Team member Maritza has a new post in StayTeen's Stay Out Loud section called "No Excuse For Abuse," in which she discusses the high profile case of dating violence perpetrated by pop singer Chris Brown against fellow singer and then girlfriend Rihanna and how it relates to young people who aren't famous but who may be dealing with similar issues.

With Tiger Woods' recent mea culpa, it's easy to feel rather cynical and pessimistic about this institution we call marriage. Results in the just-released State of Our Unions report also give us reason to wonder whether marriage is on its way out, with the percentage of kids born outside of marriage rising from 18% to 40% just since 1980 and the number of kids whose parents are "just living together" rising from just under half a million to over 2.5 million during that same period. But this report also tells us not to count marriage out just yet--not only because marriage is still the most beneficial environment for families (that's old news), but because the upcoming generation is counting on it. For high school seniors, 71% of boys and 82% of girls said "having a good marriage and family life is extremely important" to them.

In data collected by The National Campaign, 47% of 18 to 24 year olds say they expect to marry and have a baby with their current partner. Here's the problem. They don't know how to get there. While most high school seniors are telling us how important a good marriage is to them, over half also said "Having a child without being married is experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle or not affecting anyone else." (What?) And, of those 18 to 24 year olds who expect to walk down the aisle and then have a baby, we know a lot of them will have the baby first, and then never walk down the aisle. This doesn't mean we should give up on marriage. Quite the opposite--it means we need to talk to teens and young adults in a way that says--yeah, we get that you want love, and marriage, and the baby carriage...someday--let's talk about how (and when) to get there.

An interesting new study from researchers at Ohio State University and UC Santa Barbara looks at the ways in which a TV drama and a news series -- both of which deal with teen pregnancy -- affect viewers' intentions to prevent pregnancy. The study's goal was to figure out not whether media has an influence, but rather how it influences viewers. Can it help them overcome resistance to helpful information and messages? Can it help break through their wall of denial, chipping away at the idea that "it won't happen to me"?

Just over 350 undergraduate men and women (ages 18-25) either watched episodes of The OC, Fox's beloved but long-ago canceled teen soap, or watched a portion of Channel One's "Mothers Too Soon" / "Fathers Too Soon," an award-winning news series for teens about the realities of teen motherhood. (Which, for the record, our Campaign worked on in partnership with Channel One, but did not develop, as the paper and press release assert. Also for the record: we provided the same set of messages and expertise to The OC for the teen pregnancy storyline used in this study).