How informed is their consent?
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/society/article3451611.ece
How informed is their consent?
Awareness and maturity, not so much the age, play a significant role in helping a teenager decide what's good for him/ her.
Although, we have evolved in many ways as a nation, when
it comes to sex and sexuality, we rarely fail to get our knickers in a
twist. In the last fortnight or so, much controversy has been generated
around the age of consent for sexual activity and whether consensual
sexual exploratory activity between teenagers should be considered
acceptable or not. At the heart of the debate is the issue of “informed”
consent. Put differently, if they say “yes” to sex, do adolescents
really understand what this would imply? And even if they did understand
the implications, are they consenting because they really want to, or
because they feel compelled to, in view of changing social mores and
peer-pressure?
In our country, up until the middle of
the 20th century, by the time a girl celebrated her 16th birthday, she
was likely married and probably had at least one child. Obviously the
belief was that rather than letting teenage hormones take them down
forbidden paths, marriage would be the more appropriate soil for their
oats to be sowed.
Although teenage marriages do take
place even now in some parts of the country, by and large, the age at
marriage has progressively increased, (by law it's 18 for women and 21
for men), leaving teenagers to deal with their oats in other ways. And
herein lies the fundamental issue. Is a teenager less than 18 years of
age (the age until which one is still considered a child as defined by
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) in a position to give
informed consent to sexual activity?
Perhaps a good
starting point to explore this issue is the age at onset of puberty,
when a girl or a boy attains reproductive age. There is little
disagreement that pubertal age has progressively decreased over the
years. Since it's more difficult to date the precise onset of puberty
for boys, the age at which a girl has her first menstrual period is
generally more frequently studied.
Age effects
While
a study in 1980 in Punjab showed that the average pubertal age for
girls (the age at which a girl has her first menstrual period) was
14.31, a more recent one in Uttarakhand in 2010, revealed that girls
were attaining puberty at an average age of 13.6. Interestingly, girls
from the plains were doing so much earlier (13.2) than those from the
hills (14.2).
Another study from Midnapore in 2007
found that more than half of the girls who were studied had their first
period between the ages of 11 and 13.
However,
knowledge of puberty, sex and reproduction was very poor in this group,
which raises the frightening possibility of young bodies that are
reproductively mature, but minds that are not necessarily emotionally or
intellectually mature enough to understand the implications of sex and
sexuality, thereby leaving them extremely vulnerable to sexual predators
and certainly rendering them incapable of making an “informed” decision
on sexual matters.
However, older teenagers (those
between 16 and 18) are certainly more “informed” about the implications
and consequences of sexual activity, for their levels of exposure are
sometimes frighteningly high. But the question is, is this enough? Most
parents would think not, for in our country we still do believe that sex
and marriage are inextricably inter-linked. That said, it also needs to
be understood that marriage doesn't ensure that sex is responsible and
mature. The most common issues during the first years of marriage,
centre around — as any couple therapist will tell you — anxiety, concern
and discomfiture related to sex. So, it's not as if marital sex is
necessarily more “mature” than pre-marital sex, and although no hard
data exists, non-consensual marital sex is also a significant issue in
many marriages.
To me it appears, that the age of
consent debate has less to do with sex, but more with awareness and
maturity that makes an “informed” decision possible. While post-pubertal
children often have some knowledge about sex and sexuality, sometimes
more than many married couples, what they don't quite full understand is
the concept of sexual dignity. They need to be provided with the tools
to understand that saying “no” to sex, if they are not yet ready or
comfortable, is not merely acceptable, but desirable. And this learning
can only happen when the parents are comfortable enough to talk about
sexuality and sexual choices with them. Merely saying that they are too
young for it, is simply not going to cut it. Nor is saying that it's
against the law.
Define it
We
do need to get our heads around the fact that some form of sexual
exploration is inevitable during the post-pubertal period, whether we
set the age of consent at 16, 18 or any other number. I do appreciate
that for a variety of reasons, both legal and social, we do need to
define an age of consent. And, I am pragmatic enough to realise that
whatever age is chosen, it will always be an arbitrary number. For, it's
not as if on one's 16th or 18th birthday one is possessed of a sudden
maturity to take decisions that one was incapable of the previous day.
However, if we teach our adolescents how to respect their sexual dignity
as well as that of others, then consent can be much more informed than
it currently is.
vijay.nagaswami@gmail.com
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