Pinoy Karma

Home is where the heart is

Even the dogs know

Transgenders

Savages and barbarians

Schooling and family planning

M. L. Tan

"The main problem is not drugs or prostitution. It’s early marriage." That observation came from Dennis Villamar, a youth leader and newly elected municipal councilor from Maddela, Quirino. He was describing the problems that young people face in his town, during a recent consultation on adolescent health organized by the Foundation for Adolescent Development (FAD).

I’ve written about that workshop in an earlier column, pointing out the need for sex education but the consultation also inspired me to do another column on the broader social context that affects young people’s sexual health.

Dennis was describing a remote town in northern Luzon, but his observation about early marriages resonated throughout the workshop as other participants from different parts of the Philippines spoke of similar problems. While they spoke I kept thinking of the statistics from the last National Demographic Survey, which found that by the age of 20, one fifth of our females would have started bearing children, a few already into their second or third pregnancy. The problem is not premarital sex – most of these pregnancies occur within marriage.

Al-Trekee Dayan of the Mindanao State University in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, talked about early marriages among the Muslim youth, including the culture of silence around matters of sex and sexuality that force the young to have "secret" relationships, eventually ending up in elopement.

It was not, as people like to think, a matter of "loose morals" among the young, but of the lack of options. As Al-Trekee spoke, I thought too about the political problems in Muslim areas, and how these affect the young. I could imagine how early marriage may actually become the only sensible option for young Muslims, giving them a sense of stability in a strife-ridden world.

Research conducted among young adults by the Health Action Information Network (HAIN) shows that Filipino youth will get married soon after they believe they’re "ready" (handa na). Readiness is of course subjective – for upper-class young Filipinos, this could mean a postgraduate degree, a job that pays at least P100,000 a month, a house and lot, a hefty bank account. For most young Filipinos, readiness is determined by much more modest indicators, for example a job that pays the minimum wage. It’s not surprising then that for many low-income Filipino youth, marriage occur soon after they start working, no matter how meager the income might be.

Poverty affects the young’s sexual lives in many ways. Low-income parents are more reluctant to speak about sex and sexuality with their children, or when they do talk about sex, they may pass on many misconceptions and myths. This leaves the schools to fill the vacuum but only 60% of Filipino youth are able to finish high school. This means almost half of our young people will not be able to get some form of sex education.

As I mentioned in the last column, sex education is not just a matter of anatomy and physiology. Our public high schools have finally began to expand the curriculum to include other important information that young people need to develop a healthy sexuality. This includes "life skills", being able to talk with your partner and to negotiate the confusing world of macho values. Such life skills are especially important for young girls who, one hand, are expected to remain chaste and to resist their boyfriend’s sexual advances; yet, they are also being told that their virginity is the most precious gift they have to offer their boyfriends and that having sex is a way of proving their love for the boyfriend. Young males and females need to be able to talk about they can deal with these conflicting demands. This needs to be done in schools, where young people feel more comfortable and free to talk about these sensitive topics.

Life skills education are, as the term implies, for the long-term. Without these skills, young girls are not just more vulnerable to getting pregnant but may be defenseless meeting other future problems such as domestic violence. Life skills education, with its emphasis on gender equity, is also important if we are to change the next generation of males, away from their notions of sexual domination and possession toward a sexuality based on responsibility and mutual consent.

Villamar was right when he pointed out that a strategy to tackle adolescent reproductive health should address the problem of school drop-outs. It may sound strange but more support for the young to stay in school may yet be the most effective family planning measure. When the young see education as an option, they will postpone sex and later, when they do become sexually active, they will be more likely to plan their families.

What we have today is a completely different situation. The lack of information on sexuality and family planning means a high population growth rate, which strains our tiny budgets for education and which leads to many young people dropping out before they get education on sexuality and life skills. They then start new families too early, and are less likely to plan the families, bringing on another generation that will suffer from the lack of social services that will again produce more drop-outs. The worst is yet to come.