New CDC report shows importance of keeping families intact

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Boys from single-parent homes have sex earlier
New CDC report shows importance of keeping families intact
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June 3, 2006


A Centers for Disease Control report this week shows boys from single-parent
households are much more likely to have sex by age 15 than boys who live in
two-parent families.

The CDC study, which interviewed nearly 5,000 males aged 15-44, focused on
their sexual attitudes and behavior.

It found that one-in-four boys from single-parent households were likely to
have sex, compared to one-in-seven in two-parent households.

Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America says the latest report
"confirms what we already know."

"While most single parents work hard to meet their children's needs and many
are able to beat the odds, single-parent households put children from babies
through teens at risk for a broad spectrum of problems," she said.

Crouse -- author of CWA's Data Digests, a quarterly publication that report
on social science data and its impact on children, women and families --
pointed out, however, the authors of the study downplayed the basic finding
of the report.

That is, she said, that boys of single-parents are more likely to have sex
even though they are uncertain or don't want to.

"But the truth is that children need a father's presence and influence," she
said. "Father-absence is a major contributing factor to many of the social
problems afflicting the nation's children."

Other findings include:

a.. More than a quarter of the white males and over 40 percent of the black
males were either uncertain or did not want to have intercourse the first
time they had sex.

b.. About half of the men who did not graduate from high school have had an
out-of-wedlock child, compared to only 6 percent of college graduates.

c.. About a quarter of black men had a child before age 20 compared to
slightly more than 10 percent of the white men.

The report by lead author Gladys Martinez, "Fertility, Contraception, and
Fatherhood: Data on Men and Women from Cycle 6 of the 2002 National Survey
of Family Growth" was published in Vital and Health Statistics.