Granted, this is linked to on the crazy ThinkProgress site, but this ad that your tax dollars paid for, encouraging parents to tell their kids to wait until they're married to have sex, is pretty funny.
Forget for a moment what you think on the subject (or that your first time will be terrible). If the research shows this message has no effect, why would you spend money on it? This isn't a health issue in this case, it's a moral issue, and therefore not worthy of tax dollars.
I hope to God that my kid(s) wait as long as they can, and do so in a responsible and safe manner, but I'm not naive enough to think that they are going to wait. A clear picture of the risks and consequences, and trust, I think is the best you can do as a parent.
I think a "Pillowpants" ad campaign would be more effective.
However, I think that talking to your kids about sex at an early age and make it out to be something like a normal bodily function like eating, peeing, or farting, wouldn't make kids so curious about it. Making it out to be some hellfire evil thing to do (which is how I was brought up in Catholic PSR classes) isn't the way to go about it.
Explaining to them what sex is, what it does, and what the appropriate time to do it is just as important as telling them when it's appropriate to take a dump. There's a time and a place for it, and having sex while when you're going to school and working a minimum wage job won't really help much to support the kid that you're responsible for should something happen.
Still I sure has heck don't expect Jacob and my future spawnings to wait. I tried to but I didn't. But I hope that I can teach them well enough that they will wait as long as they can and are able support the kid in the event that something should happen.
Hah. Ian (and Donna) both got the "speech" about not jumping into sex. But being a realist, they also got the speech about birth control and how even birth control can fail, so they'd better both be willing to deal with the consequences.
They waited until they were 17, but even then I reminded them about the risks and consequences, again as they were entering U of M, and again when they moved into their apartment together.
The one thing I made clear was how difficult it would be to continue their education when saddled with a kid.