As unambiguous as we might wish the subject were, though, the reality of teen sex and pregnancy won’t go away just because some want it to. It isn’t laughable. And it’s not really news.
The hormonal imperative to reproduce has been getting young Americans in trouble since before there was an America: As many as a third of colonial brides were pregnant at the time of the Revolution, according to several historical sources, and possibly more than a third of births were out of wedlock.
What has changed, though, is birth control. The modern day fairly bristles with it.
Among sexually active 15- to 19-year-olds, 83 percent of girls and 91 percent of boys report using contraception””possibly explaining the 34 percent drop in teen birth rates between 1991 and 2005, according to the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Yet the recent reversal of that trend (teen births have since risen 3 percent) reminds us that we must never relax our efforts at education. Every single kid has to be given the necessary information and urged to be smart, even when hormones scream.
Getting pregnant young is a tough thing. Carrying a baby and raising the child is hard work; giving one up is, for many, even harder. And though I support reproductive choice, it can’t be argued that abortion is a cakewalk either. I know””and I was an adult when I had mine.
And abstinence programs just don’t work: A 2004 study by Yale and Columbia Universities found that fully 88 percent of those who pledge abstinence have premarital sex anyway.
So we’re left with birth control, and information. And kindness, and compassion.
No, blast it, that is NOT all we’re left with. That’s simply what the left wing wants us to think. There is this cure, untried since the 60’s, of training the young in self discipline and self restraint. IT USED to be the job of every parent to see that their children got such instruction because they understood that all good character starts here. It was import ant to teach children what NO means and wht it iwas used for. Now, of course, it all-things-inclusive, so No is out and YES is in.
If sex is cheap and easy to obtain, and contraception is uniform and cheap and easy to obtain, then sex will become cheap and uniform. Because cheap and uniform and easy to obtain, therefore meaningless. It becomes simply another form of entertainment – and you may well say that that’s precisely what it is right now. LM
Could this writer be the EmilyH who appears occasionally on Stand Firm? The style and the argument are somewhat Episcopalian. For instance, “What has changed, though, is birth control. The modern day fairly bristles with it.” I think it’s Viagra that’s having a bristling affect these days. If 91% of boys between the ages of 15 and 19 use contraceptives, as Emily says, then I think they have about licked the problem. We’ll just have to work on that recalcitrant 9%.
In my acquaintance in the past two years, THREE unmarried 17-19 year olds have become pregnant and borne children. Thank God, the infants seem healthy (so far). None of the three young mothers is planning to wed anytime soon; one is shacked up with the young father. That couple explained to me, “if we don’t marry, she gets all kinds of $$$ and a housing allowance, so we don’t have to live with parents.” Plus, a young unwed mother looks dandy on student aid applications, and she’ll receive more $$$ if they DON’T marry while she’s taking college courses!!!
The two others are not shacked up, but each recently moved to her ‘own’ apartment courtesy of the taxpayers.
We’re not talking inner-city or rural poor kids here, friends. In one of the three cases, mom and dad are solid and working. In the other two, there was a divorce, but all are working. The REAL TOPPER: these two mothers were educated in RC school systems financed by their grandparents. The grandparents are dear family friends, and both sets used to regularly lecture us about the ‘high morals’ their grandchildren were being taught at their ‘elite’ schools! It was no comparison to the loathsome low morals found at public schools (where my own four did very well, thanks). Funny, they haven’t brought that topic up recently!
Honestly, I think these girls (I can’t call them women, they are so immature) are PLANNING to get pregnant, to gather in the benefits! After all, their parents throw ‘showers’ and help them financially all along the way, including free baby-sitting! There’s no consequences except free gifts and money, so why not?!?
Of course everyone [i]reports[/i] using birth control. They know it’s the responsible thing to do, even if they don’t actually do it. I think Little Cabbage is on to something – where is the down side of young parenthood? For me, it was always that a baby would mean getting married young and not getting to go to college, at least not in the traditional sense of being on my own and joining a fraternity and having a fine old time. It was something to be actively avoided, because I had A Future ahead of me.
I think there’s a loss of that sense of the future as worth the trouble; the world teens see is that you’re either The Best or you’re nothing, and not everyone can be the best. There’s no sense of the honor of a well-lived if modest life. It’s a scary world out there, and there aren’t enough good role models. I wish there was a way to move the needle a bit so that having a child young wasn’t exactly a shame-fest, but also didn’t get you on a magazine cover smiling with your cute doll-baby. There’s gotta be a middle ground in there.
[blockquote] And though I support reproductive choice, it can’t be argued that abortion is a cakewalk either. I know—and I was an adult when I had mine [/blockquote]
What a very telling phrase! I read it: “And though I support baby-killing, it can’t be argued that abortion is a cakewalk either. I know — and I was an adult when I had my child killed.”
Yeah, sister. I support reproductive choice too: Choose to wait until you are wed to take part in the marital act that can lead to reproduction. Instruct your daughters and sons that God made sex to be enjoyed by a husband and a wife committed just to one another. If they sin and give into temptation, exercise forgiveness and compassion, but don’t assume they are going to do it just because “everyone else” is. There really are some who wait and these are the examples our young ones should look to and the standard we should hold — yes, even today in the sexually enlightened (read: permissive) 21st century!
[blockquote] What a very telling phrase! I read it: “And though I support baby-killing, it can’t be argued that abortion is a cakewalk either. I know—and I was an adult when I had my child killed.â€[/blockquote]
I’m not a big fan of abortion, either, but that was just…harsh and uncalled for. Seriously. Especially from someone whose next paragraph contains the line, “If they sin and give into temptation, exercise forgiveness and compassion…”
Demonizing women who have had abortions doesn’t create an environment where a woman can go into more detail on what she means by “not a cakewalk” – I suspect there’s a story there that would give another woman a chance to stop and really consider the ramifications of that choice. But we’ll never hear that if shrill cries of BABYKILLER! are the first response to saying you had an abortion. So women who have had abortions stay silent about the downside, and the story from the pro-choice side remains “if you mess up, you go to the dr. and they take care of it and it doesn’t matter a bit” because no one will stand up to give the more complex picture. I know women who would like to talk openly about the entire experience of their abortions, but they can’t because they don’t fit into the “it ruined my life” or the “it was like getting a pedicure” camps, and yet all of their stories ultimately support a pro-life position. We need real discussion and it’s not going to happen with all this polarization and name-calling.
The other problem with the above is that it makes of sexual contact one more public display, which has become a kind of entertainment. Let’s EVERYBODY talk about sex and more sex and let’s all see “educational” pictures and run ads on television – in short, let us take one more piece of privacy out of the closet, so to speak, and turn it into yet another piece of exhibitionism. Odd: homosexual behavior is protected because what happens in the “privacy” of the bedroom cannot be hauled into the public light, but everything else can – if it is heterosexual. Aren’t we EVER going to get tired of public exhibitions of everything, no matter how personal? Or is everything we say and do properly in the public domain, except for homosexual acts ? Larry
Little Cabbage:
[blockquote]The REAL TOPPER: these two mothers were educated in RC school systems financed by their grandparents. The grandparents are dear family friends, and both sets used to regularly lecture us about the ‘high morals’ their grandchildren were being taught at their ‘elite’ schools! It was no comparison to the loathsome low morals found at public schools (where my own four did very well, thanks).[/blockquote]
It’s a losing battle to be taught ‘high morals’ at school, and then get no moral instruction at all from Parents, and bad moral instruction from the television.
But I will grant that there have been some holes in catholic moral education. Look at catholics like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, for example. Two, rational, sane adults, that don’t know the teaching of the church they profess to follow.
#8 Here are a few more ‘holes’: I re-read my post and see I forgot to include a very interesting fact. The families who sent their kids to the RC schools are one and all staunch, active members of the GOP, and ready to share their far-right political stands with one and all.
My post had nothing to do with politics, it was to share my own recent observations of several ‘nice’, middle-class, church-going families. Out-of-wedlock birth no longer has a social stigma. More and more young women see pregnancy as their key out of their parents’ house and into their own ‘crib’, with the taxpayer picking up the tab. Talk about backwards: the way the system works, more $$$ goes to a ‘single’ mother (for rent, college aid, food stamps, medical insurance, etc.) than for a young woman of high morals who chose to NOT engage in sex and/or bear a child. There is no social penalty, and plenty of financial goodies, so why not have a kid or two or…?
Little Cabbage:
[blockquote]#8 Here are a few more ‘holes’: I re-read my post and see I forgot to include a very interesting fact. The families who sent their kids to the RC schools are one and all staunch, active members of the GOP, and ready to share their far-right political stands with one and all.[/blockquote]
It might disappoint you, LC, that even in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, crypto-Call To Action members send their kids to catholic schools. How do I know? I see them when I pick up my kids. And in social situations, they are never bashful to share their opinion of politics and the Church. How do I know? Because I have dinner with them upon occasion.
I don’t know the reason for your hostility towards Catholics and Catholic Education, but it doesn’t become someone professing to be more compassionate.
#10 Please re-read my posts…there’s no hostility against the RC church per se, I’m simply noting that our very close, very conservative family friends used to regularly lecture our family (and I use the word lecture precisely) about how superior the morals being inculcated into their grandchildren were at their elite and expensive RC school.
Since the pregnancies and unashamed shack-ups, they have stopped the lectures. Everyone reading this has compassion, especially for the newborns. The original post was about the problems of teen pregnancy, and I addressed it from my very recent experiences. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that other readers know of very similar situations, too.