Posted on 12/23/2007 3:22:14 PM PST by goldstategop
America is talking about teen pregnancy. Britney Spears's baby sister Jamie Lynn, all of 16, is pregnant. The father, her 19-year-old boyfriend Casey Alridge, who may or may not face statutory rape charges for having sex with a minor, is someone she met at church.
Then there is Juno, a satirical comedy about a tortured but well-meaning 16-year-old who gets pregnant and decides to give her baby to a childless couple who later want to divorce.
It has been fascinating to watch the debate sparked by these two moms-to-be, with the principal question in each scenario being, "Why didn't she use protection?"
I asked myself what kind of protection they were referring to. The kind that prevents pregnancy and STDs? But what of the protection from the psychological, emotional and spiritual scarring that early sex engenders?
Studies demonstrate a direct link between teen depression, suicide and sex. The Heritage Foundation reports, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, that about 25 percent of sexually active girls say they are depressed all, most or a lot of the time.
Amazing. Sixteen-year-old girls are having sex and the world is largely OK with it - so long as they use a condom.
Indeed, I have met many parents who, while preferring that their teenage daughters remain celibate, still take them to doctors to get the pill in basic acceptance of the fact that their 16-year-olds will be having sex. But are these well-meaning parents not aware of the many studies which demonstrate a direct correlation between an absent father figure and young teen girls surrendering their bodies to boys who don't love them in order to obtain masculine validation (which I chronicled extensively in my book Hating Women)?
PERHAPS THESE parents may not be aware of the studies linking divorce and overexposure to sexual partners prior to marriage. The more people you have sex with, the more of an expert you become in the opposite sex. And the definition of an expert is someone who can spot flaws, which goes some way in explaining why men and women find it so difficult these days to find an adequate partner.
As far as girls in their mid-teens enjoying sex or exercising their free choice to have it, let's not fool ourselves. Studies I cited in my book Kosher Sex show that almost 90% of girls who lose their virginity in their early to mid-teens regret it. So why do they do it?
Overwhelmingly, because they were pressured by boyfriends who made them feel that if they didn't put out, they'd be out. The classic refrain, "If you really loved me you'd do this for me," is something that countless young girls have heard from silver-tongued Don Juans who know instinctively how to wear down the armor of a vulnerable teen.
And in an age where young women suffer from pitifully low self-esteem, and in a culture that makes them feel like their looks are always subpar, many young girls will compromise themselves in order to feel loved.
It was interesting to read in one of the press reports that Jamie Lynn's father, Jamie Spears, was furious that his daughter both got pregnant and sold her story to OK magazine. I do not wish to judge him. But it seems fair to ask, "Why the anger from a distance? Why were you not present to protect your daughter from a relationship that was getting far too serious? You should be the principal man in your young daughter's life."
Mothers cannot be as effective in protecting their daughters from men simply because they are not men, and therefore do not know how the male mind works. That's why fathers must be actively involved in their daughters lives in order both to provide a level of immunity to their daughters from being desperate for a boy's attention, and to give their daughters a noble standard by which to judge the men who want to date them.
Sex is the most powerful of all human activities. It brings in its wake a tidal wave of emotion, enough to cement two total strangers together as bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh. But when that wave hits you, you better be pretty darn anchored or there is no telling where you might wash up.
THAT IS why sex should be practiced by adults only and within the confines of a devoted and secure relationship where there is no possibility for abuse. It's way too intimate for strangers and it's way too overpowering for kids, even big kids like teenagers.
Some will say that I am being too harsh on young men like Jamie Lynn's boyfriend. Perhaps he does love her. Perhaps he is committed to her. But the test will be whether or not he wishes to marry her and ensure that this very young woman is not left to raise his child on her own.
If he truly loves her, then he will not hesitate to take himself off the market and devote himself to her. And this child, like all other children, deserves a stable and nurturing environment, and few would dispute that the best such environment is marriage.
The New York Times, in a front-page story, raised the question as to whether Jamie Lynn can continue to star in her Nickelodeon TV show, since parents will now see her as a bad role model. Fair enough. But it seems incredible that the spotlight in such cases is usually focused on the girl rather than her boyfriend. We are not raising a generation of gentlemen in America who respect women enough not to have sex with them before they are ready.
That's why the scourge of teen sex will always be among us until we inspire dads to be intimately involved in the raising of their children, and raise boys to respect and cherish women as their equals rather than as a means to their more selfish ends.
Your reading of the data, while accurate, would have in no way helped me talk nervous insecure girls into bed when I was in high school, and is therefore irrelevant.
:)
The Sex Positive Agenda pays for all sorts of studies. In the end, the Sex Positive proponents (Reich, Kinsey, feminists) see sexual activity as a birthright that everyone including kids should be engaged in.
They seek to end all moral judgements over sexual pairings regardless of sex, age, number, relation, marital status, or species of partner(s). They may fund a study every now and then to suggest a genetic origin for homosexuality but in the end, it matters not to them. They want an end to all moral judgements. If you want to “do it”, you should be permitted to at any age without any impact.
They oppose abstinence in schools not because “it doesn’t work” but like advised a homosexual to “resist the urge”, they consider abstinence an unhealthy supression of sexual desire. They seek to see EVERYONE sexually active including kids.
Check out http://www.positive.org and their “just say yes” campaign. There are plenty of “health services” officials who support this agenda. It isn’t just the star quarterback pressuring girls to have sex. It is the liberal platform.
How healthy can it be for girls to use hormonal birth control right at the moment in life when puberty is putting their bodies through hormonal changes that will affect them the rest of their lives?
How healthy can it be to catch STDs that can ruin their reproductive capabilities before they’ve even been in one committed relationship?
Omedalus seems to have a problem with teens abstinaing at least THROUGH high school (and definitely college).
Funny thing is, all of the superficial sexual relations of jr. high, high school, and college students is making it harder for them to find a deeper relationship. Everyone is too busy sowing their wild oats to make any committment until much later in life.
It is a prolonged adolesence.
Yhea...I heard that song...funny how that song really works. :D
Merry Christmas to you, Omedalus.
We need parents to teach boys how to be gentlemen, as well as dads and moms teaching daughters that their self-worth does not hinge on Lothario Jr getting some off of her.
I know the author said dads play a part is givng their daughters psychological armor against would be don juans. Is the strategy for patterning boys the same? Do moms have more influence with them?
I ask as a dad of young kids. I am impressed by the author and will follow up on him.
In other words, making themselves emotionally and spiritually unmarriageable, maybe until their late 30's, maybe forever.
Too much sexual experience distorted sexuality for many of my generation, including myself. (I didn't get married until I was 37, my dear husband 38. I was so fortunate to find a good man, one so sound and sane: God has given me than I deserve!)
That --- extended emotional unmarriageability --- is a "sexual dysfunction" in itself, isn't it? I would want to spare my children that.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, weegee.
Merry Christmas (almost!), Mrs. Don-o! Speaking of 16-year-old girls, Ubiquitous Anoreth has a *date*, almost :-).
Oh, that insight deserves a Gold Star!
Merry Christmas to you, dear Tax-Chick. You ARE going to make a video, aren’t you?
That was a great video - it’s been making the rounds of the e-mail groups.
We don’t have a video camera. Maybe I’ll send Anoreth to a film production class at the community college, and then we can get one :-).
Hey now. I don't have a problem with abstinence, if it's the best course of action for the individual. This doesn't just hold for teenagers, mind you, it holds for everybody. Most people simply aren't worth sleeping with, regardless of age. :)
It's not a matter of either total abstinence or total promiscuity. The school's head cheerleader can be dating (and sleeping with) the school's star quarterback without necessarily also doing so with the entire football team. Ideally a sexual relationship should be something magical, precious, to be shared only with someone who takes your breath away physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Now, it's pretty clear that teenagers are perfectly capable of feeling this kind of passion for one another - in fact, they're prone to doing so to a greater extent than adults, and with less wisdom. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example, aged 16 and 14 respectively. Those two crazy kids didn't need to keep their hands off each other, they just needed their parents to be a little bit more supportive of their relationship. :)
I had some truly amazing times with my high school sweetheart, and I wouldn't want to deny anybody that kind of life experience. (Mind you, I was a total loser in high school - of the Star Trek Fan Club, constantly playing Dungeons and Dragons variety - and to this day I don't have a clue why any self-respecting girl ever went out with me, but that's a whole 'nuther story).
Someday when I have a daughter, I'm sure the day will come that I catch her dressing like a tart for school. When that happens, her mother and I aren't going to tell her to simply not have sex - 'cuz if you honestly think that works, then it must truly be a long, long time since you've been a teenager. Rather, we'll tell her to focus her energies on boys that are actually worth it, and not to simply give it up to every pimple-faced retard in her class - and most importantly, to use her libido as motivation for self-improvement, to make herself someone that a genuinely cool guy can get crazy about. If she's in a healthy, fulfilling, playful, and monogamous sexual relationship with the captain of the baseball team who just got a full ride to Yale, I'd wish her all the best, and I'd have her mom make sure she's using protection while I in turn make sure that her loverboy, awesome as he may be, doesn't have any side-dishes. If, on the other hand, she's sleeping with some four-eyed Star Trek Fan Club member who runs his own Dungeons and Dragons group, then, well, she and I are gonna have to have a little talk. :)
Oh, and...
Merry Christmas!
If there's anything that's left me feeling hurt, cynical, callous, bitter, wary, reflexively sexually self-serving, and habitually emotionally guarded and self-protective, it's not having enough youthful sexual relations. :P
I mean, seriously, you want a formula for lifelong bitterness? Imagine being a 15-year-old boy, surrounded every day by freshly nubile female flesh at the dawn of its fertility, before the pressing tread of age has even begun to mar its perfection - and you can't touch any of it, because you have zero athletic ability, even less social acumen, zits the size of Cleveland, gonads the size of zits. You're so pathetic the jocks don't even waste their time bothering to beat you up anymore. The cheerleaders aren't impressed by your Level 12 Half-Elven Fighter-Mage, and the girls that are impressed by your Math Olympiad medal kinda look like you in a mirror.
You know what's the only thing that slapped me into shape and made me start trying to somehow make a respectable - or at least viable - human being out of that mess? The prospect of getting laid, of course - and not just by ugly overweight codependent hose-beasts, but by the girls that I actually wanted. I figured that actually being a hot, fun, witty, popular guy was far, far outside the scope of reality, but maybe, just maybe, if I got into shape, participated in more social events, made some friends outside my Dungeons and Dragons group, and found something to talk about besides partial differential equations, that I might be able to trick a hottie into thinking I was cool enough to be with for a while.
Fifteen years later, here I am, still working on that. :) But I think I'm a better man for it. And, in looking back at high school, if there's one thing that I kick myself for in retrospect, it's that I was too dismissive of myself when it came to getting girls, too willing to shake my head in despair and thinking to myself that the effort is futile. If I had tried a little harder, that effort would have manifested itself as further self-improvement - maybe I'd have learned to play a musical instrument, or decided to go to a more impressive college, or developed more ties with my community. Either way, it would still be paying personal dividends to this day.
I have a little brother of high school age, and I don't tell him he shouldn't have sex. Instead, I have tried to teach him that he should work on being someone worth having sex with. The little booger doesn't listen, of course. :) But hopefully he'll eventually figure it out.
I wish you well in your quest to be the right kind of man. It's a worthy goal.
:o)
Merry Christmas to you. And your little brother, too.
And watch out: that kind of thinking could lead to matrimony...
Shhhh! Don't tell anyone! I can't have people thinking I'm husband material just yet!
(If, however, you happen to know any fun, hot, successful, mid-to-late-twentysomething right-leaning Jewish girls in the Seattle area, by all means drop them a hint or two! ;) )
“You will not stop your 16 year old daughter from having sex unless you chain her to the bed, home school, and never let her out of your sight.”
That’s bullsh*t. There are plenty of girls that wait. To make a blanket statement that they’re “all” going to have sex is a lie.
“There are plenty of girls that wait.”
Yeah, but that’s not necessarily because their parents stop them per se. The girl can decide to wait of her own accord. Parental influence bears some effect on the teen’s decision, but so do friends, teachers, TV and literature, and basic human biology.
If your daughter has developed a serious case of lust for some guy in her class and is intent on sleeping with him, telling her “I’m your parent and I forbid it,” is extremely unlikely to be effective in keeping her from doing so. You can still try to reason with her and talk her out of it (the most effective approach I’ve heard of is to point out that high school boys are simply really, really bad at it... :) ), but ultimately the decision is hers. If she’s a healthy, happy, well-adjusted kid, chances are she’ll make the right one.
Did you read the rest of my post?
I didn't say there weren't any that didn't wait, now did I?
I have that printed and ready to put in a frame by my front door for any suiters that come seeking to court my daughters that are just now 11,10 and 4.
Even now by girls know that they can not single date until they are 16, and I must meet the young suiter and have a 1 on 1 conversation with him and speak to his parents about his intentions and mine.
“Too strict” many here may say; I say I love my girls too much to let some hair leg boy have his way with them.
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