Posted on 05/27/2003 8:57:29 AM PDT by cgk
Sex and abstinence: Wait loss
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
It's a scene that will forever be embedded in my brain: the demeanor of my 11-year-old daughter when I explained to her the secret of life. She wins the prize for the best poker-face ever!
My normally bubbly, expressive little girl was extremely quiet and still when I gently went over the basics of "where babies come from." As I scanned her face, struggling for signs to help me determine what I should say next – like how much detail to add or what words to use – she gave me absolutely no guidance. Throughout my 20-minute gut-wrenching lesson (I was as cool as a cucumber on the outside!) she said but one word when I finished, "Yucky."
I expect Kristin and I will laugh together about our memories of "the talk" someday.
To be sure, I would much rather have waited until later to explain the mystery of procreation. But in today's world, I knew time was against me. Our children are bombarded with sexual information – there's no escaping it in our modern culture. What a shame that we have polluted their innocence with images and false information about love and human sexuality.
According to recent research, our children are paying with their bodies for the pathetic reality that adults have failed in our role to protect childhood innocence. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy found that almost 20 percent of children have had intercourse before their 15th birthday. One in seven of these sexually active girls became pregnant.
Having sex at such an early age leads to many problems, the study notes. Sexually experienced children were far more likely than virgins to engage in other risky behavior. They were six times more likely to drink at least once a week. They were three times more likely to smoke and four times more likely to use marijuana. Worse, only about a third of parents were even aware their children were putting their health in jeopardy by having sex.
Parents and kids alike often squirm in conversations about sex. But the truth is kids need to hear from you about the beauty of sex in marriage, and they need you to protect them from images that say otherwise. It is a constant but worthy battle that must be waged on many levels every single day.
For example, my own children are well aware of the policy at our house when it comes to renting films: If it has worse than a PG rating – Mom or Dad will watch it first to determine if our teens can see it. R-rated movies are off limits. Yet, because many of their friends' parents have given in to the "battle over the ratings," my teen-age sons will frequently present me with a popular PG-13 or R-rated movie at the video store, just to see if it would be OK, this one time. I always respond, "The answer is the same tonight as it was last weekend, and last month, and the month before that: NO." It's become sort of a game for our family, but it's really a lesson for all of us in the importance of setting standards and keeping with them.
Like it or not, we're teaching our children from the moment they come into the world. They watch us like hawks. As they see us obey laws, treat others with respect and remain faithful to our spouse, they learn to do those things, too. If we engage in watching raunchy videos, use foul language or cave-in to the cultural pressures on us as adults, how can we expect them as children, to not give-in to pressure?
For those parents who have the fortitude to fight the battle on behalf of their kids, there isn't a lot of reinforcement to be found. Abstinence-education in schools can be helpful, if the programs truly teach kids to say "no." But beware: Many programs have the word "abstinence" in the title but send a mixed message – instructing children what to do if they decide to have sex, instead of making them realize that their health and happiness depend on waiting.
As a Heritage Foundation study last year found, "many traditional safe-sex programs now take to calling themselves 'abstinence plus' or 'abstinence-based' education. In reality, there is little abstinence training in 'abstinence-based' education. Instead, these programs are thinly disguised efforts to promote condom use."
Heritage Foundation research also proved that real abstinence education can help cut sexual activity among youth. But as the example above shows, it's up to parents to make sure the program their children are in is a good one.
As parents, most of us would do anything to protect our children if we saw they were in danger. Unfortunately, this survey proves that too many children today are in danger. Parents are the first – and often the only – line of defense for today's youth. Your mission is clear, Mom and Dad. As Dr. Laura would say, "Now go and do the right thing."
Most of the bad things people are forever attributing to sexual indulgence -- demeaning women; conceiving children they don't want and don't know how to care for; lying to gain sexual access; marital infidelity -- are expressions of character flaws or failures of responsibility that just have sex as one of their occasions. It's a bit like the drug mess. The argument has been made that we ban drugs because intoxication is harmful to society, yet there are innumerable persons who use intoxicants modestly and cautiously, and many legal ways to get completely smashed that no one would suggest should be banned.
If we want our young folks to behave responsibly as sexual beings, we have to exhibit honesty and teach responsibility. That includes giving our kids the benefit of what we know to be true, not pretending to certainty or uniformity where it doesn't exist, and not letting them wriggle out from under the consequences of their decisions and actions. President Bush's concept of a "culture of life" seems to me to be central to that effort.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Does this mean you approve of fathers telling their perfectly normal sons it would have been best had they been born without sex organs?
Or did you just react to my post without actually reading it?
Did you tell your daughters you wished that they had been born without their sex organs?
He was dead serious.
If you think telling pre-pubescent children they should have been born without their sex organs is such a good idea, why didn't you tell your daughters that?
Or is it only boys who should be singled out for the terror treatment?
He had no reason to be frustrated or exasperated. I was fourteen years old. I had done nothing. I never did anything until I was in my twenties, when I went nuts.
"Deprivation dwarfism" is what happened to me.
If you do not allow your children to have normal social experiences (experiences that have nothing to do with sex), their only alternative is to have abnormal or zero social experiences.
You don't learn how to interact with other human beings in a vacuum.
In this article, the daughter is obviously traumatized by her mother's sex talk.
Something is wrong with that.
In the process of teaching children sexual morality, sex should not be turned into something ugly and frightening.
Parents who have no time for their children preach at them and then wonder what went wrong.
Parents who actually participate in their childrens' lives and actually know them fare much better.
That is my only point.
I suppose upon a cursory read, one might see a contradiction. However, the two are separate matters. One relates to the fallacious reasoning by the author that all R-rated movies are bad because of sex. I pointed out that several things can cause an R, and only one of them is sex.
In the later post, I pointed out the long-standing contradiction that exists within the entertainment industry itself - especially television - where it's OK to show violence but NOT OK to show people making love.
Two separate arguments, two separate issues.
But nice to hear from you, old friend!
Michael
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