In my day a daisy chain was something we made sitting on the lawn in summer, linking daisies by making a wee slit in one stem and linking another daisy through it. We made necklaces and bracelets and shared them with friends.
A daisy chain in this part of the world today is something altogether different and altogether more dangerous. Hundreds of very young teenagers, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds are playing daisy chains. Hundreds of teenagers are playing, and playing Russian roulette with their sexual health. Yes you got it; a daisy chain is where teenagers have multiple sexual partners and that usually in the same evening. The innocent huddles round the bike sheds for a fly smoke are apparently now sexual free-for-alls. Peer pressure gone mad.
Visiting several sexual health clinics I have been stunned to listen to both boys and girls describing having 6 or 7 partners PER EVENING and most admit to disliking and therefore refusing to use condoms. Many of these teenagers are attending clinics either to be tested or treated for sexually transmitted diseases. Most of the teenagers I talked to were unaware of the long term effects on their health and fertility that sexually transmitted diseases were likely to have, even when treated.
Call me an old fuddy duddy if you like but there is something wrong when our children see both a pregnancy and a sexually transmitted disease as being something "normal" and something that can be dealt with without too much hassle. We are failing these kids and society in general when we fail to get the message across that random sex has risks and those risks are more than just a momentary embarrassment at a sexual health clinic.
