Monday, 23rd June 2008
Children are heavy drinkers, but no drunks
Spirits are extremely popular among young Maltese schoolchildren.
Maltese 13- and 15-year-olds drink their European and North American counterparts under the table with the exception of Ukraine, which holds the title for top guzzlers, an international report reveals.
Just over a quarter of boys (28 per cent) and 21 per cent of girls aged 13 drink alcohol at least once a week, a habit that nearly doubles among 15-year-olds, where 51 per cent of boys and 39 per cent girls indulge in weekly consumption.
Maltese 11-year-olds trail behind in sixth place among the 41 countries surveyed - though their behaviour promises to keep up the pace - with 17 per cent of boys and seven per cent of girls admitting to this practice. These figures emerge from the latest Health Behaviour of School-Aged Children Study (HBSC), which is carried out in Europe and North America every four years and looks into the social background, body image, health, and risk behaviours of schoolchildren aged 11, 13 and 15.
A sample of 1,500 students was taken from each age group for the study that was conducted in 2006.
It reveals a picture of underage drinking, which the new law, introduced last summer to outlaw the sale and consumption in public of alcohol by under-16s, attempts to address.
Marianne Massa, principal investigator of the HBSC survey in Malta, hoped the new law would push the figures down by the time the next survey is carried out.
The study says Europe has the highest alcohol consumption rates in the world and alcohol use is imbedded in the cultures of most of the countries and regions that participated.
Malta's culture must nurture a relaxed attitude towards alcohol because when asked to specify what they drank, Maltese boys and girls in all the three age groups topped the table for knocking back wine and spirits. Ukrainian youngsters preferred beer and alcopops as their alcohol of choice. Despite the high rate of alcohol consumption, Malta did not have a high level of drunkenness - one per cent of 11-year-olds reported being drunk at least twice, compared to nine per cent of boys and four per cent of girls aged 13.
Comparatively, Malta has the second lowest rate of 15-year-olds who have been drunk on two or more occasions (18 per cent boys and 15 per cent girls).
The report's chapter on risk behaviour also studies regular cannabis use among 15-year-olds and, though Malta's rate is low (placing 17th among 41 countries) there are still nine per cent of girls and six per cent of boys who have admitted to using this drug over the 30 days before the survey was carried out.
Malta's data on sexual behaviour is missing after Church schools were instructed by the Curia not to fill in the questions related to intercourse, the contraceptive pill and condom use.
Violence was another area which the study looked into and Malta emerged with the fourth highest rate of 13- (13 per cent girls, 26 per cent boys) and 15-year-olds (10 per cent girls, 20 per cent boys) who have been involved in a physical fight at least three times in the previous 12 months.
When the survey then asked students if they had been in a fight at least once in the previous year, Maltese 13- and 15-year-olds surpassed all the other countries.
Violence among adolescents has emerged as a major concern in most countries, the report said.
Meanwhile, Malta had a low rate of children who admitted they were bullied at school at least twice in the previous couple of months. Being a victim of bullying declines between 11 and 15 and in general boys are more likely to report being bullied.
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Comments
Ignorance is bliss so they say, but it's a pity the church shuns reality and teaches such tosh.
If a small number of participants (the Church school students) didn't fill the survey, wouldn't those surveys simply count as invalid and uncounted? But the results go as far as saying that the information is missing.
Why? Do Maltese teens have no sexual drives at all? Is there the need to hinder the accumulation of data that will aid us in knowing where we are failing our kids? And yet, as always, the Church seeks to stifle the truths that it finds offensive to its divine ear.
Let me spell it out for you once and for all: kids, of all ages, creed and size have sex and do so regularly, regardless of their parents', spiritual leaders' or gods' consent. Its my guess that maybe, just maybe, we should know how many of them are using condoms and in what state they are when they do have sex, if anything to avoid unwanted pregnancies and the spread of AIDS and all other unpleasantries that sex has been known to bring about. But no, we must bury our head in the sand. Otherwise, when in 10 years time there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases we won't be able to say that it's our fault this pestilence is on us, and that god is only punishing us for what we failed to do.
Before two or three decades:
- It used to take a boy and a girl big deal of time to have a date, let alone to have sex or a baby out of marriage.
- You hardly see a man or a woman publicly proud to have
beside-marriage relation.
- We used to only have one definition of a family .etc.
- Discussing other forms of families was a taboo.
Today:
- Drinking, drugs and sex s among children has become the fashion.
- Parents to have partners or to have sex at homes is fashionable- leading an example for kids has become irrelevant.
- Tthrough a computer chat-line or SMS or in the street you can have a date. Within minutes you can have a sort of sex. Within a couple of months a baby is born. And still we wonder!!! Why we are having too many single parents and the age of young mother has increased?? Why does it talk so long from us to realize?
We are getting backward. If we think that we are moving a head or being modern, we should think again.
The number of teenage mothers has been increasing. It is only wise to have the questionnaires filled, related to their sexual behaviour and contraception practices and other related social problems.
The data is also good for the Curia for reference, so that extra help may be rendered to the young teens, especially in the Catechism classes.
While the Curia hides it's head in the sand and pretends that Malta's teens are all church and prayer, we read about the alarming increase in teenage pregnancies...hardly surprising considering that information about sexual behaviour and basic contraception is banned from Church schools. What does the Curia think? That by refusing to give information, kids are going to stay off sex?! About time the Church wakes up to reality.
I think it is quite true.
Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. May your white little socks be blessed, dear Curia.
And while you are busy blocking scientific research that may help us better identify and deal with social problems, let me cheer loudly three times for hypocrisy. Hip hip....
The above quote ticked me off. How do we expect to get a clear picture of our society, if an institution such as the Church (and still quite an important one on this island) refuses to let its members take part in such a survey (or selected parts of it)? How do they expect to be able to tackle the issue of sexuality, if they continue hiding their head under the sand and refuse to face the fact that our teenagers, even those who attend church schools, do have sex or engage in some sort of sexual activity?
Maybe the time has come for the Church to come to terms with reality, and gather as much information as possible to be able to grab the bull by its horns, instead of avoiding certain issues!