Posted on 02/25/2009 11:35:33 AM PST by AJKauf
When I, a parent of a 17-year-old daughter due to graduate from high school this May, originally read about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy during the presidential campaign, I shared the same sense of indignant outrage expressed by many upon hearing the news. Why on earth is a girl that age having sex, particularly when she was raised by a mother who staunchly supports abstinence-only education? Didn’t she listen?
Yes, I’ll admit my first reaction upon learning of a pregnant teenage girl is to think that it really should be that simple: telling one’s child “don’t have sex until you’re married” should be enough. Never mind the whole virginity pledge thing; explaining the risk of STDs, AIDs and teenage pregnancy should be sufficient rationale. And, just in case it isn’t, then the threat of an angry parent with “a 12-gauge double-aught buckshot” should be enough incentive for teens to “keep their britches on.” And yet, obviously, it isn’t. The Bristol Palins and Jamie Lynn Spears are proof enough that “just say no” doesn’t always sink in....
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
is being a responsible parent keeping them at your side every moment?
This whole article and discussion is ridiculous. The writer acts as if birth control has been effective! Planned Barrenhood has made their own business by promoting birth control, which is like a "free ticket" for all the sex you want (in the eyes of a teen). This is always going to lead to SOMETHING.
I did abstinence couseling for 10 years, and believe me--it works!
My husband and I had a joke that if we'd had relations before we got married, we would have gotten pregnant. :) We have two beautiful adopted sons whose birthmothers chose life, and were generous enough to let them go.
It’s not just birth control in general, it’s using it correctly. Most of the condom failures generally cited are because they were used incorrectly.
I’m always so glad when threads like this get posted to see all of the perfect people who haunt Free Republic
I’m glad to be surround by those who never made a youthful mistake and always did the right thing, even when lack of experience and wisdom made other, less prefect creatures falter.
It’s so nice to hear how they have never had one of their children stumble because their perfectness has been inherited by their offspring.
Gosh, aren’t we all lucky to have these paragon of virtues here to remind the rest of us just how imperfect we are, or may have been when we were young. And how if one of our children makes a mistake, it’s because we’ve been such awful parents who may have actually forgiven (horrors) our children when they made a mistake.
The issue as I see it is Mother Nature’s fault, although it seems no one consulted her about raising the age requirement of sexual maturity or asked permission to change it from her designated time.
Society decided that the age level must be raised to 18 or 20 yrs of age to allow education and other developments that were not figured into Mother Nature’s original schedule and expect as usual that their decision is enough to change the bodies natural urges and desires. As the old TV commercial used to say “ It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature”
Most of our Grand Parents or Great GP’s were 14 -16 years of age when they were married and started families, I’m not disagreeing with the decision or the need to further education and other maturities before marriage or sexual contact or to extend the age of starting a family; just that the body was designed to be active in the years after puberty by nature and it’s not easy for man to curtail an urge that strong with just his abstinence requirements.
OH, I fully understood your post.
Since the kids didn’t live up to a standard that their parents set, the parents or the kids are hypocrits. This is the LEFTIST definition, with the INTENT that no standards should be espoused.
...and tequila and a false sense of security and a sense that everybody’s doing so it’s OK.
because Palin is for abstinence ONLY education and if she talked about using condoms and birth control, Bristol wouldn’t get pregnant.
That's TWO strikes.
You can either go back and read it again, or simply ask me what I meant.
YEP...I have a grandson who was the result of a “birth control” practice that didn’t work....condoms.
Opponents of teaching, or practicing abstinence persist in propagating the myth that those who advocate abstinence fail or refuse to teach about the use of measures to prevent conception. There is not reason to conclude that Bristol Palin and her boyfriend didn’t know about the glorious condom. But young folk. and even mature people, can permit themselves to get carried away by passion and do things that they may have resolved, in a cooler, more rational state not to do. And then they may forget about those precautionary measures as well. It happens in the best of families. Its called “the human condition.”
Yea, mom should have never had another kid, especially one that should have so clearly been aborted /s
You’re the perfect condescending leftist who believes himself smarter than everyone else. Typical of an “atheist” as well. Stuff it.
Actually, the issue was handled just fine....except by some of the media. And it was precisely the MEDIA that caused problems with its obvious bias. I also think it was the reaction of our pop culture of death (parroted by that MEDIA) that was in a state of incredulous horror....having found a woman, an authentic feminist with intelligence, governing experience and the ability to communicate ....having found her to LIVE a virtuous LIFE. THAT ALONE disgusted them! The fact that she had a child who made a very human mistake doesn’t seem to penetrated the LOGIC center of their brains. Such people REALLY would have preferred that she and her daughter have abortions. Such people are those who think it good to allow all and any types of sexual encounters, apart from natural and moral law, without having to deal with consequences....AND they want to be APPROVED for so doing.
I think she knows she did something dumb, but it was not picking him. These are not the kids of “A Summer Place.” But surely she knew that
being the daughter of Sarah Palin, she ought to have known that she didn’t have the freedom to act that other kids did.
I know of a certain Mr. Obama that has kids all over the world who might have benefitted from an abstinance lecture.
of course we have to promote abstinence, not birth control. But birth control should still be taught in a clinical fashion as a Plan B in case all the abstinence teachings are thrown out the window in the heat of passion.
Oh, wow, you show your ignorance and instead of trying to find out what I'm talking about--which is a very conservative point of view, which I foolishly thought was obvious--you whine "Leftist!"
I never posted anything to indicate I think I'm smarter than anyone else, yet YOU claim to know what I was implying...and you were wrong. But *I* am the condescending one?
Your post merely proves that I'm at least smarter than you. :)
Wow, Troll, you’re really trolling against Governor palin today. Not that it’s helping your cause any...
I personally know of two good men/dads....one a pastor, the other a headmaster at a Christian school.
Each had more than one child....but one in each family made a moral mistake.
Each (almost adult) child paid the consequences of their actions...
..and the parents kept loving them.
How hard is that to understand by the liberal media...
..It's not hard....they're simply playing Devil's advocate for real.
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