Posted on 07/30/2011 8:01:41 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
I wish I was kidding:
Would Americans increase peace in family life and strengthen family bonds if they adopted more accepting attitudes about sex and what’s allowable under the family roof? I’ve interviewed 130 people, all white, middle class and not particularly religious, as part of a study of teenage sex and family life here and in the Netherlands. My look into cultural differences suggests family life might be much improved, for all, if Americans had more open ideas about teenage sex.
Amy Schalet is a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, via an education at Berkeley and Harvard and a postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco. So it’s safe to say that I’m not surprised that she’s staked out some ground somewhere on the far left of left in her new book. As the father of a newly minted (one week ago) teenage daughter, however, this one has my head spinning around. And not in the fun head spinning around kind of way.
While I haven’t read the book, I am using some of the points that Dr. Schalet chose to illustrate her conclusions. Some of these conclusions seem more like generalizations based on what she picked out from her own book to make her case.
Kimberly and Natalie dramatize the cultural differences in the way young women experience their sexuality. (I have changed their names to protect confidentiality.) Kimberly, a 16-year-old American, never received sex education at home. “God, no! No, no! That’s not going to happen,” she told me. She’d like to tell her parents that she and her boyfriend are having sex, but she believes it is easier for her parents not to know because the truth would “shatter” their image of her as their “little princess.”
Natalie, who is also 16 but Dutch, didn’t tell her parents immediately when she first had intercourse with her boyfriend of three months. But, soon after, she says, she was so happy, she wanted to share the good news. Initially her father was upset and worried about his daughter and his honor. “Talk to him,” his wife advised Natalie; after she did, her father made peace with the change. Essentially Natalie and her family negotiated a life change together and figured out, as a family, how to adjust to changed circumstance.
It is quite unfortunate that “Kimberly” didn’t receive any sex education at home. As this article is laid out, she is supposed to be indicative of the American teenage experience. And she may very well have been if this was written in 1965. It’s true that I haven’t conducted any research on this subject. I am, however, fully immersed in the child-rearing experience, which, at the very least, gives me a legitimate frame of reference from which to form a somewhat informed opinion about this subject.
I’m comfortable responding with anecdotal experiences as there isn’t much detail about the research criteria that would seem to be most relevant to the opinions Dr. Schalet offers. The sample is described as “white, middle class and not particularly religious.” I get the “white” part but am not sure I think that the American and Dutch middle classes are perfectly analogous. And “not particularly religious” is about as helpful as “somewhat taller than a few of the people who live behind one of my next door neighbors.”
The “Gosh, why can’t we just be more like Europe?” meme is a familiar one with academics who write for the New York Times and could easily warrant a book-length response so I’ll leave that for another day.
Another one of the most tedious things about the Times in recent years has been the effort made by contributors to work a left-leaning talking point in any article. Dr. Schalet doesn’t pass up the chance to shill:
Respecting what she understood as her family’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Kimberly only slept with her boyfriend at his house, when no one was home.
Hey — guess what I got an email about from Obama for America last Friday?
But enough about the hack nature of a newspaper that was great about a thousand years ago. Back to the book. Let us go to yet another quote from the good doctor:
The difference in their experiences stems from divergent cultural ideas about sex and what responsible parents ought to do about it. Here, we see teenagers as helpless victims beset by raging hormones and believe parents should protect them from urges they cannot control.
Or we see them as children grappling with their first encounters with adulthood. I don’t view my daughter as a “victim” of adolescence, I see her as a very, very young person who doesn’t need to be thrown into independence without an instruction book of sorts and a safety net. In other words, she isn’t ready to make adult decisions because she has a very limited understanding of consequences. So, much to the chagrin of Dr. Schalet and many other progressive types, I will continue to parent; I won’t punt the responsibility to my child.
The Dutch parents I interviewed regard teenagers, girls and boys, as capable of falling in love, and of reasonably assessing their own readiness for sex.
Don’t call your eye doctor, you did just actually see the words “teenagers” and “reasonably assessing their own readiness for sex” in the same sentence. It’s probably not a stretch at this point to wonder whether Dr. Schalet was ever a teenager. Her op-ed scholarship continues in the next sentence:
Dutch parents like Natalie’s talk to their children about sex and its unintended consequences and urge them to use contraceptives and practice safe sex.
The implication, of course, is that American parents do not.
I am a practicing Roman Catholic, admittedly overprotective father and I’ve had conversations with my daughter on the subject. We went over every sex-education lesson she got in school, both before and after. Naturally, she wasn’t thrilled to be talking to her dad about any of it but she relaxed a little and actually brought it up after a while. We were able to do this because we have always communicated which, of course, is the foundation of any success a parent can hope to have once the kids start navigating the random waters of puberty. I harbor none of the illusions that Dr. Schalet continually implies “American parents” have. In the past year, I have talked to many parents from backgrounds far more diverse than the sample used in this book and found that I’m not an anomaly. Again, this isn’t olden times, many of us do try to communicate with our children now.
Let us move onto the most blood-boiling statement from Dr. Schalet:
Normalizing teenage sex under the family roof opens the way for more responsible sex education.
That is the second time in the article the word “normalizing” is used. Dr. Schalet employs the tired progressive academic tactic of defining the terms of a faulty premise from which to continue unabated on to predetermined conclusions. And these conclusions only work if you are willing to radically redefine normal as she sees it.
Which I am not.
Enjoyed it? What's so funny?
I plan to use it; retroactively, if necessary!
A close friend of mine from high school, total hippy, very rebellious, dad a small businessman, Nixon supporter... We no longer talk, but I happen to know she’s a committed conservative now. Mutual friends can’t believe it.
These are the same kinds of leftists (NEA, Planned Parenthood) who think 10 year old girls should be taught about the great wonders of orgasms
Wasn’t there a classic porn movie franchise about this?
dfwgator: this is a good list, but it’s missing some things from mine:
SAT score (PSAT if younger ... if too young for PSAT then no way)
Professional asirations and measurable progress to same (etc. apprenticeship, AP classes, etc.)
He has to be able to comfortably support her when she’s having my grandbabies.
Not porn per se, but maybe you’re thinking of the American Pie movies?
Get ready to see and hear more propaganda geared towards accepting teen sex and about the sexual rights of teens by the left-wing. It is their agenda. Even the UN is getting in on the deal and is promoting sexuality rights of children. I also see another article here at FR by the Seattle Times about and promoting transgendered teens.
The left-wing agenda in regards to gay marraige is and has been that no individual has a right to oppose the left-wing perverse morality in regards to sexuality. They will not stop just at gay marraige. The left-wing want to use the Courts and the State to force their perverse morality on others and have their views on sexuality rule the culture.
Next will be the ‘age of consent’. The deinition of the ‘age of consent’ currently is decided by the people of each state through their ‘right to representation’ just as the definition of marraige used to be.
Many people think that the definition of marraige is not that big of a deal but they will find out that it wont stop there. If you give up your right to define ‘marraige’ or what is normal in regards to gender sexuality then this right will be further challenged by the left-wing and it will soon be the ‘age of consent’ that they challenge.
What right do you have to tell another family what age their children are ready for sexual relations?
Articles like this are setting the stage.
Better the LSAT, the GED, or the MCAT.
GED = GRE. Sorry.
Taking a poop is a perfectly natural function, too. But we don't allow kids to crap wherever they want. We expect them to control themselves.
Sorry, my mother didn't raise me to be a common candy dish where everyone gets a peice. I am the finest crystal; to be set upon a shelf, protected, and treasured. And any young man with designs on my daughter had better treat her the way my beloved husband treats me - with the utmost respect, or he'll find himself at the altar with a shotgun in his back. I expect no less than the most respectful of treatment by my son to any young lady he dates, too!
How bout “Keep your daughter from pregnancy and disease by chopping the dick off the sex hound that’s trying to find 3 seconds you’re not there to mount her”?
I also wish more liberals here would stop asking why we can’t be more like Europe and instead, simply move over to Europe. After all why imitate what you think is utopia when you can LIVE in your utopia?
More gibberish from the NYTimes.
Haven’t they filed for bankruptcy protection?
When I was going out with my fiance, we got stranded one night in a horrible storm over a friends house. I called my parents, and they told me in no uncertain terms I’d better get home pronto.
Years later I had a friend whose parents were very lax and let boyfriends and girlfriends spend the night over the house. They became hard workers, but mainly because they realized no one in the family would stand by them if they failed at anything - nobody really cared about anyone else.
It took me a while to realize how much my friend envied my “strict” parents. Last I knew of her she still had not had a good marriage.
While dating my future wife that happened. I drove through the snow and blizzard and finally made it to her house - she still live with her folks. But by then it was too bad out to head back to my place.
I slept on the couch in the den. And Mom made a great breakfast!
Keep The Family Peace By Letting Your Teens Have Sex At Home.
Wonder what the police would do if it was done in a single parent home?and what would the other parent think?.
Bad ideas are like bad kids no matter how bad they are you still love them.
This is just pure craziness.
God’s laws and principles (including benefits requiring responsibility) are to our collective benefit when obeyed, and to our hurt when neglected. As marriage goes so does the family, and when the family goes so does the nation, and all the kings men and money will not fix it, but the surrender of saving faith to the Christ of Scripture who saves sinners will.
From promoting citizenship without oaths of allegiance to sexual relations without the lifetime commitment of marriage, the Left continues it War against the only-wise and holy God, at great cost of souls, lives and money: http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.html
“Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.” (Deuteronomy 12:8)
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” (Psalms 19:7)
“.. a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.” (Romans 2:19-20)
“Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. “ (Ecclesiastes 7:29)
But surely you read it for the side-splitting humor of its advice columns, right? I know I do!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.