WHO DECIDES WHEN WE HAVE SEX??
The question of who is elligible to have sex, when, where and with whom has long been a ticklish subject occupying our brightest minds. As a child until age 8, I had no comprehension of what sex was, like most kids those days in Antigua, in our spare time we were preoccupied with TV shows like the Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, Hawaii Five O and Sesame Street. Additionally, we boys built rollers made from Milo or Ovaltine tins or played cricket in the street with coconut branches as bats and mom's oranges and limes as balls while our sisters played doll house, crocheted or simply did house chores.

At high school some of us boys caught a glimse of a Hustler or Playboy Magazine for images that changed the way we saw our sisters, aunties and even our mothers forever! That revelation brought with it a distraction that would indirectly characterise our academic career and later performance in life. In the seventies, though teachers knew of the plight of young boys and girls in the Caribbean as it related to our sexual health and education they were powerless and the fact that our parents were so silent on the issue, we were lead to believe sex didn't really exist and most certainly was NEVER practiced by our parents.

This situation in a strange way gave a whole generation of youngsters licence to experiment. The net result was many unwanted pregnancies, abortions, the creation of extended families and of course the problem of sexually transmitted disease (STD's). I'm sure many of you reading this are silently saying to yourselves our generation was the last to enjoy safe casual unprotected sex.

It's 'All Change' now (a phrase borrowed from the London Underground) with the advent of HIV/AIDS in the 80's, as they say in Guyana, 'Tearing tale' across the Caribbean. With the Caribbean ranked as the second most affected region in the world in 2008, 240,000 people living with the virus and 12,000 deaths a year, these statistics make me shiver when I think of the things my generation got away with in the good old days.

So how does all of this translate to our kids reality today? Very gloomy!! They certainly are better advised to be less adventurous than we were; We parents should be conscious about the need to speak with them at pubity or before depending on the child's curious nature; and lastly, in my view be open about topics that relate to sex such as contraceptives, dating rules, and the tricks both boys and girls employ to get sex.

Of course there are those who will advocate abstenance thereby living the illusion that these kids nowadays will be obedient to the notion of not having intercourse when their best friends are rolling in it. I'm of the view that the abundance of information on the internet and elsewhere on an infinite number of topics relating to sex makes censuring kids' reading and embibing this sort of material to impress their peers or simply learn the ways of the popular kids, virtually impossible.

What do you think? Do we leave them to their own devices and hope for the best? Do we groom them to become nuns and priests thereby guaranteeing them some longevity? Or do we speak to them in terms they understand and deliver the message that might just save their lives?