| Abstract: | Adolescent love in its approach to human sexuality emphasizes freedom, to the exclusion of responsibility. Less than twenty percent of the adolescent couples who engage in sexual relations use any type of contraception, and three-quarters of all pregnancies occur prior to marriage. Further, children born out of wedlock from such unions suffer frequently from social, economic, health, and educational handicaps. In addition, there are the problems of increasing abortions and venereal disease for the young parents, along with child abuse and a suicide rate among teenage mothers ten times that of the general population. Four possible ways to aid in the solution of these problems are suggested.The Rev. John A. Clippinger, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of the Psychology Department of Baker University, is a minister of the United Church of Christ, a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and a certified clinical psychologist. He is the author of eighteen articles in books and periodicals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, religion, and sexual research. He is also listed in theInternational Directory of Sex Research and Related Fields and is associate editor ofCorrective Psychiatry and Journal of Social Therapy.This paper was originally presented at the Fall Conference, 1977, of the Central Region of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and the 1978 national meeting in Chicago of the A.A.P.C. |
