George,

Guess what? Adoloscents have sex, and the more you tell them not to, they more they want to. Natch.

L'Education Nationale put this ad campaign in the schools as well. When I was working at the lycée technique last year, they had several posters around the infirmary and even a day when they had a trained university students come to the school and talk to the kids. There were only a few very ultra-conservative Muslims in my school whose parents refused to let them attend the meetings, but for the most part, the meetings went over well. The nurse at the school claims that she's seen fewer and fewer cases of teenage pregnancy in the lycée.

It takes a culture as romantic as the French to be realistic about contraception. According to Francoscopie (the 2001 version, at least), the annual almanac of the French people and their habits, claims that the average French man has sex more than any other man of any other nationality - at least that's what Francoscopie's survey claims. If you championed abstainance only in France, they'd laugh in your visage.

Joseph Cheek (electronic mail, August 2, 2003)