‘The Real Deal’ on teen sex (Scarborough Country)

Scarborough Country (MSNBC) ^ | 5-21-03 | Joe Scarborough

[cgk]

‘The Real Deal’ on teen sex
Media also has to be responsible
"The Real Cancun" featured body shots aplenty.
COMMENTARY by Joe Scarborough

May 20—  A new study on teen sex should serve as a wakeup call for Americans. Almost 50 percent of high school students across America engage in teen sex, a large segment of those teenagers reporting as many as four sex partners per year.

       AS YOU KNOW, all that means more unwed teenage moms, more cases of kids getting AIDS, and more reasons why the federal government is taking more of your tax dollars every year.
       The United States now has the highest rates of teen pregnancies, births, and abortions in the world. If you wonder why, just look at what our culture feeds into the minds and souls of teenagers. 13-year old girls have spent the past 5 years idolizing pop acts like Britney Spears. She went from Disney girl to slithering MTV teen faster than you can say “sex sells.” Teenage pop star Christina Aguilera also played teenage sexpot last year by doing a soft porn spread in a popular magazine, while other videos and reality-based shows on MTV did nothing short of promoting the concept that teen sex is hot. The winner of the shameless sexploitation of teens has to go to Euro-teen trash act t.A.t.U., which is made up of two young girls making out in wet t-shirts on stage and on TV.

[CatoRenasci]

Your post counsels dispair: they're gonna do it, so don't try to stop them.

While my youth was many years ago, when I was in high school and college, some kids had sex, some didn't, and as the kids got older and moved from high school to college, the number of virgins dropped precipitously. As far as it goes, it's true that if kids are really determined to have a bit of the old in-out (as Alex put it in A Clockwork Orange, they will find a way.

Where you're wrong, I think, is in thinking you can have no influence over whether they want to have sex or not, how much they want to, and with whom.

By raising kids with sound moral values, who know they are loved, and have real self-respect, you reduce the likelihood that your kids will have sex because they don't feel good about themselves and want someone to love them. You will reduce the likelihood they will have sex because they don't have anything else to do if they're active in school, athletics, music, church or any combination of the above.

None of these things will guarantee you kids won't have sex before marriage. If you're really lucky, your kids will wait until marriage. If your just pretty lucky, they'll wait until they're in a real relationship with another young person who respects them and isn't using them.

In any event, not to try is to increase the likelihood they'll be used by someone who regards them as simply a piece of meat.

[fml]

Good Lord,who knows? I have 3 kids but still remember my days in H.S., all I can say is to be honest and forthright with your children. The truth is at some point in everyones life (different for everone) they make their own choices. If, my kids opt to do the "right" things wonderful, but if disaster (yes, I mean disaster at an unwanted pregnancy) happens, well I guess thats part of my wonderful life too. Make any sense? Because my family is still a work in progress, I only have ideas stemming from my knowlegde of right and wrong, not actual answers. Teach them to abstain, that love is forever and love comes after high school if it is real.

[bvw]

Here it is about "culture" -- when you reside within an area, you can not avoid it, nor should you, in many ways. Parents are the most repsonibble for their children -- but everyone in a culture also has a responsibility to the young, to the families that raise the young into moral, ethical, well-adjusted, high-functioning, able, healthy, sane adults.

Some do not mind that they'd live and let live so that the coming generation is raised as rats in heat. Well, there is no future that way. The cesspool doesn't breed health and sanity.

Such an attitide is immoral, vile, mean.

[bvw]

Hey, King Rat, can you ever answer the question, or are rats exempt from answering?

[Desecrated]

So silly you missed the point entirely...

[CatoRenasci]

Hot damn you must be one them thar sofisticats I been hearin about, you plum smart Ill bet. Next time you post about rural types it will probably be about white trash sluts who cant keep their legs crossed.

Oh, you mean the people Bill Clinton trolled through a trailer park for? C'mon, get real. It just seems to me that kids who grow up in fundamentalist churches or away from the cities might be more likely to have strong moral values and less likely to be caught up in all of the sex-craze than the kids in the cities and suburbs where it's on TV 24/7 and in the malls and everywhere.

[bvw]

Try harder then, or take some vitamins.

[KantianBurke]

tak tsk! namecalling! Not only are you violating FR's rules of conduct but you're setting a bad example to the rest of the community. And of course your "question" won't get answered as its besides the point. As for your ideological connection to Hill though, that's something that should be expounded upon.

[fml]

Your telling us that even if you decide to ignore your repsonible-ities for rearing your children, there are outside factors that you can, and should, blame for any inaduquacies in your childs upbringing?

[bvw]

So, you withdraw, and ATTEMPT to save your own kids while standing by and cheering on the rats who would debase the children of others?

Happy for you and you kids, sure ... but that's a rot to not speak against the debasement of common culture, because, gee -- yours are safe. Standing by while innocent blood is shed.

[Under the Radar]

laurav, your post is a good one. I think about this a lot. In my experience, it is just as you say. I myself was a virgin until I was 24, but I have always been an odd duck. Most of my peers were sexually active from 15 on, and most of their parents "knew" they were virgins.

I think about this for several different reasons. My brother and his girlfriend (now wife) got pregnant when they were 17. I know he loves his son, but I also know he will regret his choices from now until he dies (because he told me so).

I also watched many of my peers as they went off to college. Most girls made it their life's work to lose their virginity the second they hit campus. The frenzy of promiscuity was striking-- all these "good girls" competing with each other on who could be the biggest slut.

So, what will I do differently?

#1 I won't trust my kids. This was a value that I think is highly over-rated (and most kids will admit that they are able to get away with so much because their parents "trust" them).

They won't have cell phones, beepers, private e-mail, unfiltred access to the Internet until they leave home. They won't have locks on their bedroom doors. They won't be allowed to make or receive phone calls not in a common or family room.

My husband and I firmly agree that the most poisonous aspect of today's teen life is over-reliance on peer groups. We won't allow it. No hanging out at the mall, no sleep overs, no disappearing for hours at someone else's house.

All of this is predicated on the fact that we will be homeschooling and, of course, forgoing daycare in favor of *gasp* me staying home.

The behavior of todays teens is rooted in the fact that they are put in day-care from the time that they are infants, then sent to school, where they are encouraged to embrace a large number of after-school and extra-curricular activities. Most children are not raised by their parents-- they are raised by their friends and by television. As a result, their sexual behavior most resembles that of primitives instead of cultured citizens.

What I have outlined is extreme, but I don't think that you can break the strangle-hold that the American system of child-rearing has on people by anything less. You have to fight it vigorously, not in half measures. I think that there is plenty of evidence that there is no way that you can influence your children and teens once they have been weaned from you onto their peer group, so you must fight it from the very beginning.

[fml]

Don't think so - the day more than just the parents raise their own children is a sad day indeed. You may rely on tv and other outlets to help you with your responsibilities but I never will.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[bvw]

Conduct, you speak of conduct? What do you conduct except the rats in the sewer! Your conduct as a man is reprehensible, with the callousness you've expressed.

[CatoRenasci]

Kids! What's the matter with kids today? Why can't they be like we were: perfect in every way! What's the matter with Kids! To! Day!

[bvw]

You're trying, but need more effort. Keep it up!

[KantianBurke]

what the heck is your obession with rats??? That what you threaten to feed your kids for dinner when you catch them sniffing glue? And what you term as being "callous" most of the rest of us on planet earth view as taking care of our own and not meddling in other people's business. But you and your buddy Hiterly "know" whats best for us peons right?

[Desecrated]

Whatever you are smoking, give me some. I never said anything about TV raising kids. I used the Beatles and Elvis as examples of controversy IN THEIR TIME. The next generation always tries to outshock the previous, and the older generation will always complain about the actions of the younger. It's practically a universal law. No one should be surprised that kids are acting in ways that are "shocking," it just means you are old. :)

[Under the Radar]

So make your own culture. Unplug. You can't do anything about what is on television or in movies or on the radio and in books, magazines, etc. So excise it from your life.

Teach your children to be just the opposite of what popular culture tells them to be. Teach them to be judgemental. When your two year-old sees a picture of Brittany Spears on the cover of a magazine in the grocery store and asks her about it, tell her that it is a picture of a prostitute. When she asks what a prostitute is, tell her it is a woman who uses her body to make money.

You can't influence our culture-at-large-- it is gone to us, never to be regained. The best that you can do is to cloister your family and know that they will make it through the coming dark ages, because you have prepared them well. But we are years past the point where it would be feasible to expect others to share our same mores and values when it comes to raising children. It isn't going to happen.

[Under the Radar]

So, you withdraw, and ATTEMPT to save your own kids while standing by and cheering on the rats who would debase the children of others?

There is a difference between facing reality and enjoying it. I may not be happy to be living in a landmine-ridden wasteland, but standing about and screaming that someone else should do something about these landmines is pointless. I prefer to mark the landmines so that my family can avoid them while we get on with our lives. It is somehow much more productive.

Happy for you and you kids, sure ... but that's a rot to not speak against the debasement of common culture, because, gee -- yours are safe. Standing by while innocent blood is shed.

I suppose it would be useless to point out that your posts are hypocritical to the extreme-- screaming about debasement in culture when you are unable to articulate a rational argument, and issue personal attacks. You are certainly winning no converts to your cause.