Yours truly is falling down on the blog job. So in the absence of my own content, can I ask you a couple of questions?
First of all, can you recommend anything good for me to read on my chosen topic?
Second, how am I supposed to feel about abstinence-only education? I wouldn't feel like I was being intellectually honest with my kids if I didn't include the parts where people choose to limit the size of their families, but I don't know that I want the little rats being offered condoms by the guidance counselor at high school, either. Someone please tell me there's a middle ground in there somewhere.
About Me
- Mrs. Y
- Helping parents embarrass themselves for the greater good. Making sure your kids don't learn about it in the gutter without dragging them through the gutter.
3 comments:
Okay, I'll bite. Abstinence-only education is at best useless and at worst sends the message that it pleases the authorities for you to be in denial about the sex you see around you all the time. This plays into madonna-whore and other unhealthy psychological baggage.
Oh, they'll do it, but only in situations of plausible deniability, like when they're drunk. Which is a hideous result, not just for their psyches, but because kids who have to pretend to be "surprised" by sex can't carry protection in their jeans pockets.
The best and only proven abstinence program is busy girls. Girls who have to be up early for hockey practice are not out partying the night before.
As much as busy girls might be more likely to not be out partying, one can't make a sweeping generalization on this. A few years ago, there was a 14-year-old honors student track star who was sneaking out of her parents' home at night to have sex with illegal immigrants at a nearby Motel 6. The parents had no clue for ages as the girl was an A student with a good, cough, track record, and only happened to learn of her many sexual escapades when they found her journal that had names and specific sex ads detailed, and at that time the parents called the police and last I read, most of the guys had disappeared, likely back to Mexico, but others had hired an attorney to represent the bunch and were using a defense of "She must have made it up as no girl could be out having sex at night and still getting A grades and running well in races.
All that said, I do suspect teens who have a busy schedule are more likely to not kill time getting drunk and having sex, though I could be wrong as all the scheduling (if not their own choosing) could have them wanting to escape via alcohol or other drugs (or into someone's arms or pants) due to being stressed or feeling controlled by parents.
I like to think there is a middle ground between abstinence-only education on one hand, and putting condoms in the hands of minors on the other hand. However, I think having kids go to a guidance counselor for condoms at the high school might actually be the best "middle ground" we are going to get as if we make children have to go to the doctors or general store to get birth control (as I decades ago thought should be the case as I felt anyone not mature enough to get their own BC has no business having sex), many will just go ahead and have it unprotected if they don't have BC easily available to them, and then society has to deal with a bunch of teens having babies).
If the student has to go to someone to get the condom, even that might make them so uncomfortable as to have unprotected sex instead, so even that might not be the best middle ground. But I also am not wild about them just being handed out without any request (as happens at a local state U) as that seems to me to be sending a message that if you aren't using them, something is wrong with you, which to me isn't the kind of message society should be giving unmarried people, especially young teens.
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