She's Having a Baby

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

“Nobody said that parents have to stop being involved in their kids’ lives. It’s still gonna happen.”
My mother was very vocal in her opinions of me having sex, she grounded me
when I broke curfew, she could be a real tyrant when I fucked up. But I still had sex. I lost my virginity at 15 in an apartment across the street from school during lunch hour. I went on to be one of the luckiest women I know in that I NEVER got pregnant and never contracted any STDs although I was rather promiscuous.

This is the kind of stuff I am talking about–you use your experience to say that regardless of what parents do “it’s still gonna happen”. OF COURSE, there will always be the strong-willed, determined, obstinate kids who will manage to work around mom & dad–but MOST won’t. Do you know when most teen age pregnancies are conceived? In the afternoon when the kids are not supervised. Sure, we all know of the stupid kids who screwed behind the incinerator or in the janitor’s closet or cut school to meet their old man–but those kids are in the minority. Do you really think that your experience is the norm? That EVERY or even MOST girls did the same as you? I don’t.

There is a school located in my home state called Piney Woods Country Life School–it’s a boarding high school, a historically black coed institution. They have a 0% pregnancy rate.

Why? Caring teachers, emphasis on education, work requirements and 24 hour a day supervision! Supervision works because it enforces abstinence.

Maybe your experience would have been different if you had been sent to a boarding school like that one–or if she went to school with you like one of my friends did to keep her teen straight. Extreme kids require extreme measures–but most kids just need more parental involvement, lots more training in sexual issues–including contraception, and planned supervised activities until they are trustworthy and strong enough to resist temptation.
Or, the alternative–decide they’re going to do it anyway, get them contraceptives and leave them to their own devices.

62

Aside from this part, my response to your entire post is “you have to be kidding me.”

Resist temptation? Resist human nature to be sexual? What? I’m all for abstinence and I’m all for contraception. I agree that parents should continue to be involved in their children’s lives, but whether they are or not doesn’t make one wit’s difference where sexuality is concerned. The more a parent tries to repress it, the more a kid is going to want to go for it.

This boarding school you mentioned–just because it has a 0% pregnancy rate DOES NOT mean that is has a 0% sexual activity rate. In fact, if we want to get mathematical, 0% doesn’t necessarily mean zero people. One student out of 500 is .002 percent. In whole numbers, it’s easy to say that there is a 0% pregnancy rate, but it still exists.

Plainly, HUMANS FUCK. All the time. Procreation, sensation, conquest, love,
acceptance, for whatever reason, we do. No amount of parental pressure is going to do anything except perhaps cause mental strain.

Sure, lots of kids DON’T have sex, but it’s their choice. Whether they’re choosing not to do it because of the risks, because they want to keep a promise to their parents, or because they don’t feel ready, it’s still a choice they are making.

I’m sure that you’re a good mom, and that you’ve done well raising your daughter, so don’t take any of this as a personal attack against you. I just don’t happen to agree that repression is the key ingredient in keeping our teenagers virgins until they’re “old enough to resist temptation on their own.”

Also, I don’t agree, entirely, with the sentiment that otherwise harmless teenagers need to be supervised. Children need supervision, perhaps a junior high school aged child needs a lot of supervision, but not a sophomore, junior, senior in high school.

If we trust them to drive, work, manage their own paychecks, and so forth, then we should trust them to make their own decisions about sex and relationships.

If we don’t give them some level of trust, that only increases their urge and tendency to rebel. If we don’t give them trust, they’ll be little mama’s boys and daddy’s girls and live with us forever. They’ll never leave. (Ok, the last little bit was humour, so sue me.)

Veni, Vidi, Visa … I came, I saw, I bought.

63

Smilingjaws: I don’t think anyone is saying teenagers are going to have sex no matter what. I think the point is, no matter what the parent(s) say/do/believe, if the teenager is determined to have sex, he/she will find a way, no matter what.