If there is a shame here, it’s a national shame ”” a failure of our puritanical society to accept and deal with the facts. Teenagers have sex. How often and how safely depends on how much knowledge and support they have. Crossing our fingers that they won’t cross the line is not an intelligent strategy.
To wit, our ridiculous experiment in abstinence-only education seems to be winding down with a study finding that it didn’t work. States are opting out of it. Parents don’t like it either. According to a 2004 survey sponsored by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, 65 percent of parents of high school students said that federal money “should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives.”
We need to take some bold steps beyond the borders of our moralizing and discomfort and create a sex education infrastructure that actually acknowledges reality and protects our children from unwanted pregnancies, or worse
The problem isn’t the curriculum, the problem as usual is the “its the other guy’s issue” approach:
[blockquote]65 percent of parents of high school students said that federal money “should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs …[/blockquote]
Hey, parents, 65% is a supermajority to get [b]local schools[/b] to fund such programs. If it is not important enough for you to pay for it locally, don’t ask Uncle Sugar to do what you don’t want to do yourselves.
I agree with Tom…the Constitution confers no power upon the federales to tell us what to do or not do with our naughty bits.
That said, I like PJ O’Rourke’s comment that if liberals can pass out condoms in school, why can’t we mossbacks pass out firearms. We can always tell the kids that not shooting someone is always an option…
Good heavens, what do we talk about EXCEPT sex? My daughter points out that if parents don’t mention condoms, etc., all the kids have to do is turn on the TV to hear it. It’s not lack of information.
Don’t have the reference, but wasn’t a study or journalist report recently published in which the interviewer asked inner-city pregnant teenagers about this? Their response was reported along the lines of, “We know all about how to use condoms and all that, but we [i]wanted[/i] the babies.”
It’s not a lack of information or availability.
This culture is a wash in sex. Ads sell sex, movies make biology films tame. This is a puratanical society? How about liberals take responsibility for the barnyard morality they are selling.
#4 Try:
http://www.newser.com/story/34808/principal-of-pregnancy-pact-high-school-quits.html
for a suburban version.
Watching a tv show with my son the other night:
commercials for KY Jelly — his and hers edition
commercials for EFD it seemed like one for each medication!
and on and on. And this was in what used to be known as “prime time”.
No, the problem is not that there is too little talk of sex, there is waaay too much talk of the mechanics, not enough of the consequences.
Very few of the programs (scenes from an American Mall, I think, is the exception) deal with what happens AFTER the act.
Talking about sex did not help the Episcopal Church at all.
Don
“….a failure of our puritanical society to accept and deal with the facts.”
We need to realise that there are those who see no difference between “puritanical” and “discretion”, in fact “discretion” is a dirty word to them. I know, I know, they are exercising discretion in their judgement.
My puritanical ancestors had far less of a problem with sex than my sex-riddled neices and nephews have.
Don
“My puritanical ancestors had far less of a problem with sex than my sex-riddled neices and nephews have.” Really? 8 out of 10 Puritan brides were with child according to Church records of marriages and births. Apparently things were not so easy then either.
As nearly everyone has said, it’s not a lack of information. It is rather, I think, a lack of formation. What are our options? (1) some combination of hand-wringing and giving up; (2) asking the federal government to spend more money on some program or other; (3) praying, talking, raising our kids well, and working to create positive change in culture. #1 is a waste of opportunity. #2 is a good way to raise taxes, create new government positions, abdicate on parenting and give more power to people who probably won’t know how to use it well. So that leaves #3. Our prayer should be the opposite of the hopelessness of option 1. Our talk should be different from the “information” and entertainment we hear so much of, in a culture that is willing to euphemize sex but very rarely talk seriously about it. (There’s a good straight-talk article in the latest edition of Prism, published by Evangelicals for Social Action, on Porn, BTW.) As for raising our kids, I’m still in the midst of that, and anyone who has advice please chime in loudly! And as for changing culture, I’m in the midst of Andy Crouch’s new book on [i]Culture Making[/i] and recommend it to all.
Deaconmark, that’s an interesting figure, one I’ve never heard before. Can you offer me a source for that? I teach and write about the Puritans and would be grateful for a citation I can follow up on. Thanks.
Puritanical society??? What planet are we talking about? Next we’ll be providing private rooms with beds and condom dispensers at our grade, middle and high schools. Instead of study hall, the kiddies will have a government supervised sex break. Any couple getting pregnant gets an F and the girl goes to the basement for an abortion. Yes Mr. Blow, this is our future allright.
12. Laocoon:
“As for raising our kids,…and anyone who has advice please chime in loudly!”
I believe that there were three things that helped me more than anything else:
1. It wasn’t what I knew that helped, it is who I was. If a teen knows that he is a child of God and that God has purpose and expectation, the teen will practice spiritual strengths in the face of temptation.
2. Hope. In the sexual saturation of the 1960s I knew that I didn’t have to fail; The reasons to succeed were immense.
3. Good role models. I happened to have parents, other relatives, Church associates, and even a good public school teacher or two that modeled a life of discretion and purity. I could see the families that they had were successful and blessed (and happy).
It is these three things that I want my children and grand-children blessed with. They don’t need a bottomless pit of information.
May God bless all who wish to bless their children in this way.
Don
The whole area is quite complex and one finds wildly differing figures for premarital pregnancy rates. Still in question is the whole Puritan attitude to sex even between the married. Scholarly views have shifted and are still in dispute. My point was that this generation didn’t invent the problem and though we blame television and the culture, the problem is an age old one. Here is one of many articles:
“The world fill’d with a generation of bastards: Pregnant brides and unwed mothers in seventeenth-century Massachusetts
Else Knudsen Hambleton, University of Massachusetts Amherst”
15, your point was to portray the Puritian’s as sanctimonious hypocrates. The Puritan’s were not perfect Christians nor did they claim to be. And you are right the problem of sex is an age old one. Sinners being sinners the problem will always be with us. However there is nothing wrong with Christians upholding sexual abstinence before marrage as Holy to the Lord.
On one level I don’t care what the pagans do. We Christians are not to do that.
Gee, Deaconmark, your assertion about premarital activity is also a big surprise to me, as I am also very interested in the Puritans. The abstract of the article you cited seems to conclude the exact opposite of your assertion, however.
Here are a couple of good introductory articles on the Puritans:
J.I. Packer, “Why We Need the Puritans”
http://www.apuritansmind.com/PuritanArticles/JIPackerQuest.htm
(As most here probably are aware, Dr. Packer, one of the leading theologians in the Anglican Communion, left the Anglican Church in Canada over its unbiblical teachings, and is in the process of being defrocked by the Diocese of New Westminster.)
Professor Harry S. Stout, “The Puritans Behind the Myths”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/halloween/features/puritans.html
Where does this guy come up with stuff like “Of course, most of corporate American is Republican … “? That is like saying “Most used car dealers wear plaid suits.” And what would it matter if either were true?
Jefferson: firearms = condoms? Its funny because it is ridiculous. Plenty of highschools have experienced, sadly, what happens when an angry kid has a firearm. I suppose after he gets off a couple rounds, someone will shoot him. A sexually active kid with a condom is probably responsible.
Yes – perhaps the culture is awash in sex. What does it teach them? Not much. It offers lots of suggestive images, but in the end, it’s usually to sell a product, or outside of much context.
But the author makes a solid point: parents should be talking to kids honestly about sex. Parents can teach that actions have consequences. And get the facts straight.
I think conservatives will lose if they constantly use fear as a way of teaching about sex. Teenagers know that sex can be fun. Conservatives teach kids that sex is dangerous. Until you get married. Is it true? Teens decide to learn on their own unless they have a reason to trust what the parents say.
I admit, I’m always amused when I hear a conservative talk about the “barnyard ethic” of liberals. I’m sure that some liberals do encourage people to have sex and don’t share the conservative view of it. Such a view is not essential to liberalism. I grew up in an environment where people were liberal about social policy, but very conservative in their own personal ethic. They were social pragmatists.
This whole notion that teenagers can’t be kept out of trouble in regards to sex is simply not true. My parents succeeded gloriously – by inhibiting my social life. They simply didn’t allow me to have any money or socialize with friends outside of school. So parents can do it, if they want.
Most are not willing to, because they don’t want their kids to be outcasts. They deserve what they get.
DonGander, thanks for the brotherly and helpful reply.
Deaconmark, it looks to me like Jim the Puritan is right. Got anything else? I’ve been studying the Puritans for years, and haven’t come across anything yet that suggests conclusions like what you said in your first comment. But their name gets bandied about quite a lot since the days of Mencken, no? Anyway, if you have more sources for me to consider, I’d like to see them.
Because many people, perhaps the majority, will fail to follow the right path is not a reason to not point that path out. The truth is that abstinence works every time it is tried. People do not get pregnant because of abstinence, but because of a lack of abstinece. I have it on pretty good authority that the majority of people on the Dallas area roads break the law by speeding. Does that mean that we should not enforce speed limit laws? I also know that a large portion of the young adult crowd experiments with illegal drugs because they can produce wonderful feelings. Should we not then enforce the drug laws?
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Studies show more teens are NOT having sex than are. News focuses on the sensational and the exceptions. That’s what makes it news.
Odd for me to chime in to support deaconmark, but here it is. I am reading “Shaekspeare, the Biography” by Peter Ackroyd. In the chapter discussing Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway, Anne being pregnant at the time, Ackroyd says that a private “plighting of troth” was regarded by couples as a binding agreement, with the church wedding following later, often after sexual relations had begun. This was, he says, very common. The early Separatist settlers in New England may very well have taken this custom with them, as the history of “bundling” suggests. In both cases, the giving of promises and especially the beginning of new life were seen as belonging within the context of marriage and family. Pregnancy=marriage, a far cry from the modern situation.
That’s “Shakespeare” in #26 above. Blame jet lag.
Most of us, I hope by now, have gotten over the notion of Puritans as “The Scarlet Letter” syndrome. “Puritanical” as a synonym for prudish and rigidly negative simply doesn’t match the evidence as those of use who have been studying pre- colonial America know full well.
So the art icle above is dangerous nonsense for its suggestions will have nothing to do with sexual “right behavior.” Rather, we see in its attitude the creation of Huxley’s Brave New World’s view of sex, namely, a form of entertainment to be separated from its evolutionary purpose. It really is worthwhile, even necessary, to read BNW again to see how close we are to this norm. If a rereading doesn’t frighten you, you are not paying attention or are an Episcopalian.
Well, what IS the right thing to do. First, admit that sexual behavior is a moral issue, not a problem to be solved, like finding a cure for the common cold. In short, we must assert once again that this behavior is an issue of meaning, not of practicality. Second, sexual instruction should begin and end on instruction in self discipline and self restraint. The ability to say NO, like it or not, is at the very heart of all good character. If one cannot see that scripture is involved in this issue, then one must see that it is an issue of character, and that self-indulgence is inherently inimical to good character. Sex is a the heart of life, after all, and life is not a form of entertainment. Larry
I was very clear with my children that sex was for two people who were married. I had very frank discussion with them about sex that went way beyond the biological mechanics. I let them know that if they decided to have sex. That meant they had decided they were adult enough to handle the consequences. I could not prevent them from obtaining condoms or the pill but I sure as hell was not going to putting into a pez dispenser and passing them out like candy. I let them know that motherhood and fatherhood were life long commitments. (If the child was not adopted) You have a child to support you quit school work during the day and go to school at night. Supporting a child requires a full time job so a part time night job just would not cut it. Bottom line once you have a child you change your priorities. The fact that I spoke from the experience of giving a child up for adoption at 17 did not give me less credit it gave me more. I also made it clear that abortion was not an option for my daughter and if someone aborted my son’s child I would be heartbroken.
This is what I taught my children and other parents have the right to teach differently to their children. It is none of my business. If you want to take Suzie to the clinic for an IUD, you are her mom. Not me. But none of this has any place in the public schools. It is not the schools place to teach our children about sexuality. Biology sure but they can not put a moral dimension on that subject and saying just take a pill or just say no without giving them the moral reasons is borderline criminal.
The repeated nonsense that somehow if the kidlets are not given the pill or condoms in school and taught about such things they will never know about them floors me. I was able to get a pill prescription at 17 and that was over 30 years ago. Last time I was at the drugstore they had condoms, condoms mind you right on the shelf out in the open. Like you could actually pick them out, go to the register and buy them. And take them home with you for your own use. Shocking. Course it does not inspire much confidence that they shelve condoms right next to the pregnancy tests. Just what are you saying merchants of America??
I’m not sure that deaconmark’s 8 of 10 is accurate, but I remember reading a source referencing the frequency of pregnant Puritans at the time of marriage–virtually all were couples who were already betrothed and they were not uncommon nor did they result in any manner of punishment or shunning. On many issues, the Puritans were far more open minded than they are given credit for. However, I can’t remember the exact time frame of the information, either, and I think it was late 17th century or maybe early 18th century–not first half or mid 17th century.
I don’t have references here, Dave C., so I don’t know either. However, didn’t the Mayflower go in 1629? An ancestor of mine, arriving in 1639, was early enough to have his name placed on the landscape in Massachusetts. Seems to me these narratives about life in New England, settled New England, would be later 17th century. If someone with resources knows, please post.
In any case, the theory that modern kids don’t know about sex and babies is just as full of holes as it was for kids in ages gone by.
The Mayflower was 1620 with separatist Puritans. The larger influx began in 1629 (if I recall correctly there were 1,000 settlers brought in on several ships travelling together in 1630) to found the Massacusetts Bay Colony that subsumed Plymouth colony.
Another scholarly source for your reflection. In [u]Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America[/u], author David Hackett Fischer (at the time of his writing of this 1989 work Harmsworth Professor of American History and Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford), Prof Fischer investigates the issue of premarital pregnancy in the 13 colonies.
Concerning New England, he writes:
“In Massachusetts during the seventeenth century, rates of prenuptial pregnancy were among the lowest in the Western world. In the towns of Hingham, Sudbury and Concord, the proportion of brides who were pregnant on their wedding day approached zero in the period from 1650 to 1680.” Prof Fischer observes that the premarital pregnancy rate was higher in seaports than elsewhere. He gives figures on Boston (3.6% gave birth within 7 months of marriage; 6% within 8.5 months of marriage, and 14.3% within 9 months of marriage). In Ipswich, the figures were 3.8%, 6%, and 8.2% respectively.
In contrast to their New England counterparts, there were higher rates of premarital pregnancy in the Chesapeake colonies.Rates were higher for immigrants (those coming over from Europe) than for natives (established colonists). Per Prof Fischer, the rates were:
Somerset Co, Md 7 mo 8 mo 8.5mo 9mo
immigrants 23.7% 32.9% 34.2% 36.8%
natives 9.5% 19% 19% 20.6
Middlesex County VA 9.4% 15.2% 16.8%
Gloucester Co, VA 2.8% 13.9% 13.9%
These figures should not be confused with the rate of illegitimate births, which in both areas were far lower (though higher in the Chesapeake than in New England).
Among the Society of Friends in Delaware, “fornication before marriage was sometimes cause for disownment, the heaviest penalty in the power of a meeting to inflict.” The Pennsylvania Law Code of 1683 imposed a stiff sentence against fornication.
By contrast, in the backcountry (the western portions of the 13 colonies), premarital pregnancy rates were high. For example, Prof Fischer quotes Anglican missionary Charles Woodmason’s comment of 1767 that “94 percent of backcountry brides whom he had married in the past year were pregnant on their wedding day, and some were ‘very big’ with child.” Missionary Woodmason attributed this to to social custom (opportunities for the young when walking home the long distances from church or after community socials). There was also a scarcity of clergy to perform weddings. In addition, Prof Fischer notes that the northwest of England, from which many backcountry colonists emigrated, had far higher rates of prenuptial pregnancy than other parts of England.
So – those above who say there was a lot of premarital pregnancy are right, and those above who say there wasn’t are also right. I think the key point, though is that these pregnancies were premarital, not (as is unfortunately the case too often today) with no marriage planned, or even intended.
sophy0075:
Amongst all the heat, I thank you for the light. One aspect of all your history is the fact that at various times and various places there were great changes in the norms. Great revivals made great changes in these norms. Wilderness families produced some of the vilest desperatos on the continent.
In my post above I am actually refering to my victorian grandparents who are often disparaged by the “Puritanical” name. All of this causes confusion. In 1900, by the way, according to the 1900 US census, the rural illegitamcy rate was about 2%. A century of revivals and civilization had done its work. It saddens me greatly to know that today there are such a great percentage of children without a parent. The good work of the 19th Century has been destroyed.
Don
Thanks to all who allowed my question to pull us a little off-topic to consider the Puritans! Especial thanks to Sophy both for the helpful information about Puritans and for bringing us back to the original point of this thread.