Boys need to be educated about sex much earlier, according to the authors of new research which has examined men's experiences of sex, crisis pregnancy and abortion.
The study, published yesterday by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, says all boys and men must be given detailed functional information about sex and how pregnancy occurs as well as support to encourage them to adopt a safe pattern of sexual behaviour from the earliest age.
Furthermore, it recommends that condom use be promoted from first sexual activity, and that condoms be made widely available, preferably from dispensing machines, as some men find it embarrassing to ask for them in shops.
The report, Men, sexuality and crisis pregnancy: A study of men's experiences, is based on in-depth interviews with 45 men between the ages of 18 and 57 years across the State, both in urban and rural areas.
The researchers sought out men who had experience of a crisis pregnancy and therefore stressed the study would not be representative of all men.
The report found significant shifts in sexual attitudes and practices over recent times. "Men under 35 years of age demonstrated a growing liberalisation of sexual attitudes and behaviour."
Of the 45 men interviewed, 30 had experienced an unplanned pregnancy and 19 had experienced 22 crisis pregnancies between them.
"For some marginal young men unplanned fatherhood was experienced as an opportunity to have a meaningful life and role, in the context of social exclusion through disappointments in education, employment and so on.
"For some middle class men unplanned pregnancies were experienced as a crisis because of the threat a child represented to the successful fulfilment of their professional education, career ambitions and life plans," the report said.
Some 10 of the crisis pregnancies were brought to full term, 10 ended in abortion and two crisis pregnancies ended in a miscarriage. Where the pregnancies went to full term the couple usually shared some sense of a future together.
Eight men fathered 10 of the children who were aborted. Two of the men knew about the abortion only after it happened and some of them hadn't spoken about the abortion since it took place. "For all of them it was a highly significant experience in their lives and had impacted on their relationships, attitudes and behaviour.
"The most common pattern was for the impact to lessen as time passed. One man felt the abortion experience had ruined his life," the report said.
Men of all ages in the study spoke of the lack of clear and open sex education to prepare them when they were growing up, and even to some extent as adults.
"A striking finding of the research concerns men's general lack of procreative knowledge and the absolute poverty of efforts that are made to give boys and young men good quality attention and information," the report says. "The dominant message from school and home contained a moral that sex was meant to happen only within marriage. But the idea of waiting until marriage to have sex meant little or nothing to this sample of men, only 14 of whom were actually ever married," it said.
The research found that young men growing up feel under pressure to prove they are heterosexual and some became sexually active just to prove this. It also found some men don't change their sexual risk-taking even following a pregnancy scare or unplanned pregnancy.
One fifth of the men never worried about using contraception. There was also very little awareness of sexually transmitted infections among them.
The authors, Prof Harry Ferguson and Fergus Hoban, say the invisibility of men in public debate about crisis pregnancy situations needs to change to reflect the fact that some men play a key role in negotiating how crisis pregnancies are managed.
In addition, they say services that respond to crisis pregnancies need to be promoted as open to and inclusive of men.
The Crisis Pregnancy Agency stressed its positive options counselling services are available to men as well as women.