It may come as a surprise to some of the readers of this article that morality is nothing more than a set of standards of what is right or wrong used by societal members. Common sense would have it that societal functions are enhanced by the imposition of moral values. The word and the idea of being moral connotes righteousness, proper decorum and all that is good. It almost reaches out in a spiritual mightier than human's could attain way at times.

Societal functions have revolved around moralistic values pretty much as long as man has been involved in communal activities and that's most of our time on this planet. Different cultures decree different moral values, in other words societal rules can differ from society to society. This is of course one of the biggest problems facing humankind in that many of these moralists instead of realizing that everybody's system is similar and just following a live and let live philosophy many feel it imperative to have everyone follows their particular morals and standards. Societal functions such as these have led to all the great ravaging wars and much of the overabundance of cruelty perpetrated by humankind on each other.

Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to moral issues as they develop sexually. So much emphasis is put on 'proper' as each societal group sees it, behavior revolving around sex and the expressions thereof. Those societal groups that lean towards strict moral standards when it comes to sexual interactions sometimes find that such a regiment can backfire on them. Oftentimes young people released from the constraints placed on them by the well meaning adults in their lives express that freedom in a sexual way that can result in unwanted pregnancies, the perpetration of disease and other negative issues.

In the United States there are two main societal schools of thought when it comes to the moral issues of sexual interactions between young people, most particularly those in the adolescent years. There is the school of thought that advocates abstinence until married and the school of thought that realizes that probably won't work as well as one would hope-even those who have signed documents pledging their avowal of abstinence have admitted not holding to their promises-and deals with the realities of the situation.

Societal functions hold great sway over whether or if a young person should or should not engage in sexual interactions. There are multitudinous programs that any parent or guardian can avail themselves of to try and decide what to encourage their youngster to do. Perhaps the bottom line should be to teach that sexual expressions are normal and natural. That sexuality shouldn't be viewed within a societal fog of myth and misperceptions, and to pass along ones personal ethics regarding responsibility as well as what to do to engage in safe sex.

The moralistic values of many a societal group have created not only the desired control factors which to be fair have been efficacious for certain groups, but adversely have also created an atmosphere of frustration and sometimes even an atmosphere of fear. The young children and adolescents growing up find that societal functions can provide with both a welcome frame work by which to judge desirable behavior but can also be hard to live up to in a changing world if those values don't change with the times. Many adolescents in trying to adhere to the societal values taught to them by their parents find themselves the brunt of adverse peer pressure tactics and therefore undergo much anxiety and stress.

In a world getting 'smaller' by the minute there are more and more different societal groups rubbing elbows, living and working side by side. It helps to think of morals as simply standards that have their origins within the human psyche and that different groups purvey different slants on the same idea but that that doesn't make them 'wrong' or reprehensible, just a little different.