Ripped From The Headlines

Unless you have succeeded in walling yourself off somewhere, you are probably aware that Britney Spears' younger sister is pregnant at 16. When I heard the news earlier in the week, I was in my car en route to work after dropping the youngest one off at day care. It followed on a news piece about the impact of sex education on when boys and girls became sexually active and whether or not they used contraception. The upshot of the latter piece was that the younger kids are when they learn the facts of the life, the more likely they are to defer sexual activity. Now that Lynne Spears has decided to put her book on hold, I guess it will be a while before we find out when or if she raised these issues with her daughters. But we all know people in similar situations, when you get right down to it.

A lot of people who aren't comfortable in their religious beliefs or who are co-parenting with someone from another religious tradition say that they're refraining from indoctrinating their kids in one faith or another until the kids are old enough to decide for themselves. The thing that gets lost in this approach, unless the parents actively expose the kids to religious practice and discuss the moral choices they make in light of their faith, is the connection of religious practice to day-to-day life choices and behavior. By the time a child is old enough to choose a religion, what will she do with it when so many of her habits and preferences have already been formed without it? This is why they teach us Church Ladies that the best predictor of whether a child will become a religiously active adult is the extent of his/her early childhood exposure to religious practice.

When I mention sex education to people with younger children, they sigh with relief that "all that" is years away. But if the kids don't begin making connections between what they see and hear in the realm of human sexuality, what the facts are, and what their parents expect of them, how will they be prepared to rise to the challenges of adolescence and young adults?

I read the section of the Focus On The Family website where they give parents advice on handling their teen daughter's pregnancy. I thought it was useful as far as it went. But starting early with the discussions of what makes a baby and how human bodies prepare to make them is a good long-term investment in your children's chastity.