Self-control?

I was thinking today about a series of books I read by an author aimed at young teenagers, and there is something that one of the characters does that really bothers me. Each series eventually leads to illicit sex on the part of the main characters (which in my opinion disqualifies it from being classified as teen fiction) and one of the characters does something I find disturbing.  She is debating whether or not she wants to sleep with her young man and they have an episode where he shows up unexpectedly and they are making out in the tent on the verge of going farther when someone shows up, interrupting them before they take that step. Later she is thinking about the episode and goes out to buy a charm to prevent pregnancy and thinking that she would decide some things for herself.

Ok, so basically this implies that she feels that she doesn't have control over her hormones and her body and she will eventually end up having sex with this young man, but at least she can decide not to get pregnant.  There are two major problems with this I can see. The first is the idea that you can't control yourself and you might as well accept that you will end up having sex.  That is an insult to our freedom of choice. You can choose to be chaste and wait until marriage, and there are a whole host of reasons to do so, starting with spiritual health and ending with unplanned pregnancy and STD's.

Second, no matter how reliable those magical charms are in the magical book world, there is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed form of birth control. . . apart from abstinence. Many women can testify to that. I know a woman who told me that 4 of her 6 children were born when she was on some form of birth control. So this book is suggesting that birth control will allow you to at least choose not to have kids, which is just not true. This idea leads to teen pregnancy and abortions, neither of which are happy situations for the people involved.

I married my husband when I was 28 and he was 25 and neither of us had slept with anyone until our wedding night. We aren't paragons by any means, we just decided when we were young, largely for religious reasons, that it was more important for us to wait until marriage. I'm not trying to force my religion on anyone, but our youth need to understand what sex is and what it isn't. It is not a way to "prove you love me." It is procreation, not just recreation.

Studies have been done that indicate that during sex, the "Love hormone"oxytocin is released in to the bloodstream, causing people to bond, the same thing which happens with breastfeeding mothers.   Dating is hard enough for teenagers without adding that kind of emotional bond to a relationship that probably won't last.

I know that many will dismiss all this as "old-fashioned" and say I'm behind on the times.  But just because things were always done a certain way doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong. There are time tested methods of living that are being thrown out the window for experimentation. Well fine, people have the right to make their own choices. But let's stop experimenting with our children's lives by making this kind of behavior seem appropriate for them.