Your teen is having sex. Get over it.

Mums of teen girls in America are likely going a bit ballistic this week.

First came the recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that all people between the ages of 15 and 65 should be routinely tested for HIV. A few days later, a federal judge has ordered the FDA to make the morning after pill available to all women, regardless of age within 30 days. (Currently, girls 16 and under need a doctor’s prescription to get it.)

Meanwhile, in Australia, the age teenagers are first having sex is getting younger. A national survey by La Trobe University shows the percentage of teens having sexual intercouse in year 10 is 27.4% and in year 12 it's 56.1%. And there's genuine concern that sex education is falling way behind.

In other words, it's time we admitted something: Kids are having sex. And since we can’t stop them, we might as well help sexually active teens stay safe.

Think of your first time. You were likely in high school. It probably sucked. You got over it and eventually learned how to have sex that was meaningful and enjoyable. Chances are, you weren’t irrevocably scarred. If you were, having a supportive parent by your side to help you through it probably would have helped. But that’s not the society we live in, since parents prefer to be in denial about their kids’ burgeoning sexuality.

Because it’s forbidden and bad and shameful, we believe the only teens who are getting laid must be from broken homes or have low self-esteem. So of course they’re being irresponsible about sex. With such a hefty stigma attached to sex, we certainly don’t make it easy for them to feel comfortable buying condoms or talking to their doctor about STD prevention.

According to an article in the Washington Post, most leading doctors and researchers believe this decidedly Western attitude is doing our kids more harm than good. For example, while teen sex is just as prevalent in America as it is abroad, “US rates of teen pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases are among the highest of all industrialized nations.”

I know –  since I don’t have kids, it’s so easy for me to say this. And I admit, when I saw a picture on Instagram of my 17-year-old niece wrapped in the arms of her much-older boyfriend, I got upset, because I wanted to protect her. These ingrained notions that we have about sex run deep and they’re going to be hard to change. But I do believe that we have to trust that our teenagers are both stronger and smarter than we give them credit for, and do what we can to help them make healthy decisions about sex. If that means teaching them why they should wait until marriage, so be it. But we also need to let them know that we’ve got their back if that’s not the path they choose to take.

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