CLOSE TO HOME: Free to Be meets some teens' needs

<p>As the daughter of a sex therapist, raised in free-wheeling 1970s Los Angeles by lefty parents, I am one of the least likely people to be standing up for sexual abstinence education in the post-Bush era.</p><p>I have no history with or fondness for the movement, I am not religious and, personally, I find some of the federal guidelines for abstinence grantees disturbing.</p><p>But I am also a social worker and an independent program evaluator, and I have been charged with measuring the effectiveness of Free to Be in Sonoma County high schools for the past four years. </p><p>During this time, I have spoken directly to hundreds of ninth-grade students about the impact Free to Be has had on their lives. What many students have told me is that Free to Be has helped them realize that choosing to be sexually abstinent during high school does not mean that they are undesirable or that they are condemning themselves to the life of a social outcast. </p><p>In a letter to the Free to Be teen panel that visited her school, one ninth-grade girl put it this way:</p><p>“I had always thought that sex was just a part of high school that everyone with a social life would go through. .<TH>.<TH>. You’ve made me realize abstinence wouldn’t make me a friendless loser. Rather, it would make me a healthy smart person.” </p><p>Results from pre- and post-program surveys corroborate this sentiment and reveal up to a 25 percent increase in students’ positive associations with sexual abstinence and sexually abstinent peers following exposure to Free to Be’s curriculum modules. </p><p>While the perception of federally funded abstinence programs is that they send a harsh black-and-white message that leaves no room for individual differences, this is not the message that Free to Be participants seem to be walking away with. When I ask students in my focus groups how Free to Be speakers react to those students who are sexually active or who don’t agree with them, they tell me that the message is, “It’s up to you.” </p><p>I’ve also noticed a new trend among some students in which they are taking Free to Be’s “until marriage” message and filtering it to a more individual “until I am ready” message. For many students “being ready” does not necessarily mean waiting “until marriage” but rather waiting for the physical and psychological signposts of maturity.</p><p>Another ninth-grade student put it this way:</p><p>“I’m gonna wait until I’m mature enough to think about what could happen, about what could go wrong. Until I am with the kind of person I can trust.”</p><p>The fact that Free to Be has been invited to speak at so many Sonoma County schools over the years (including in the traditionally “liberal” west county school districts) speaks to the fact that the program is viewed by teachers and administrators alike as both beneficial and sufficiently non-ideological. </p><p>Free to Be is currently in its first year of an 18-month independent, third-party evaluation designed to measure the program’s level of effectiveness in delaying and reducing sexual activity among ninth and 10th-graders over time.</p><p>In the meantime, early outcomes suggest that focusing on the benefits of sexual abstinence helps remove the stigma of virginity and makes abstinence a more attractive and viable option to ninth- and 10th-graders.</p><p>I am sure this is a concept few if any parents, teachers and community members would want to see driven out of the public schools.</p><p><i>Selena Polston of Sebastopol is a social worker who is evaluating the Free to Be program in Sonoma County schools.</i></p>