If a new survey is right about the ignorance of today's teenage lads about contraception, then society has taken several steps backwards in a couple of decades.

How can they not know, given that information about sex is so freely available, in schools and elsewhere?

Back in the late 1950s, when I was a teenage lad myself, there was very little sex education in schools and no agencies like Brook spreading the word.

We were given no information at all at Belle Vue. My elder sister Kay, at Bingley Grammar, one afternoon was treated to a class explanation about the "birds and bees" from a local clergyman who was universally known among the pupils as "The Dirty Vicar" because of the subject matter of his talk. And that was about as far as it went.

But while we might have known little enough about sex, we spotty youths knew all about contraception - which in those days meant condoms. We knew that you could buy them at the barber's, where you would be asked "Will there be anything else, sir?" as the hair was being brushed off your shoulders when your trim was over.

We knew, too, that they were available at the chemists for those who had enough courage to deal with the likelihood of a female assistant. And we knew that you could buy them at specialist "surgical appliance" shops like Kirk's and Blake's in the centre of Bradford (both long gone) where, the word was, the assistant was always a man. So we knew where you bought them and we knew what you were supposed to do with them, if the opportunity ever arose.

Nobody told us, but we told each other. Everyone knew. It was all rather hypothetical, but that knowledge was basic and vital if you were ever to do "it" and not foul up your life.

Because what we also knew was that if you had sex without a condom, the girl would probably get pregnant, and then you would be in disgrace and have to marry her whether you wanted to or not.

It was fear which motivated this self-taught sex education. Fear of the disapproval of society. Fear of the consequences of one's actions in terms of freedom lost and dreams abandoned to domestic routine in a tiny house full of steaming nappies and a baby's cries. That fear is what's missing nowadays.

It isn't because of a lack of sex education and advice that the teenage boys of today get teenage girls pregnant. It's because of a lack of the sort of social pressures which used to enforce responsibility. It's not that they don't know but that they don't care.

The real reason teenage boys don't use condoms is because they don't need to any more, because nothing will happen to them if they do make a girl pregnant. It's the teenage girl (who could, of course, always say no!) and, most of all, her child who will pay the price.

Suggesting, as this report does, that teenage lads aren't to blame for failing to use contraception because they aren't given enough sex advice only offers them another excuse for continuing to be boys behaving badly.

l While we're on the subject...When she first left school my elder sister, Kay, mentioned in the piece above, worked as an assistant at a chemist's shop in Shipley.

Late one quiet afternoon she and the woman pharmacist were having a cup of tea in the back room when a man came in and asked the other young assistant for "Rubber goods" - then a euphemism for condoms. He had a heavy foreign accent and the girl misheard him. She thought he asked for rubber gloves.

While Kay and the pharmacist eavesdropped, spluttering, she first asked him what size he wanted. And when he looked totally perplexed, she helpfully suggested: "You could try one on if you like". That was just before he ran from the shop.

That's a true story. I kid you not.

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