Thursday, January 22, 2009
I Want to Blog About Sex... Can I?
Someone once told me that Americans don’t talk about politics and religion with strangers. One can, however, talk about sex because it is a sure way to open a conversation. I don’t know if that’s true so I want to test it.
I read CNN yesterday morning and this article, “What is virginity worth today?”, caught my attention. http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/01/22/virginity.value/index.html. If you read it, too, or are going to read it, what do you think?
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4 comments:
One of the more interesting parts of the article (for me) was this section: "A recent study in the journal Pediatrics showed that religious teens who take virginity pledges are as likely to have sex before marriage as their religious peers, and less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active."
This makes me think of the arguments around sex education. I personally believe that any sex education curriculum for young people that teaches abstinence, should also teach them about contraceptives and STDs. Young people are making life changing decisions and they deserve to have all of the information needed to make those decisions. We live within a culture of instant gratification and its not suprising to me that very few young people wait for marriage. We should definitely teach young people about the benefits to waiting, the value of healthy sexual relationships, but to demand that they make perfect choices is denying the real pressures that are upon them and also the choices we (adults) have also made as young people. I think its about communication and information
I hear in the news about communities getting upset at what the school wants to teach the children or the type of curriculum that the government wants to put out to the public. But I would like to see my own church teaching parents how to talk to their children and give them the information. Parents and church leaders joining together to teach young people, not only about waiting for marriage and healthy relationships, but also about physical development, STD's, and contraceptives.
Yea, I do think sex education could be more complete by including information on both contraceptives and STDs. One without the other is like teaching people how to extinguish fire (when by not starting a fire in the first place would have solved any problem) or telling people fire is scary when they don’t have an idea what fire is.
I am going to make a paradoxical proposal-- I think the most persuasive method to teaching youths about abstinence shouldn't be based on religious grounds. Rather, it should be based on what they will gain out of it. Many people today, sadly as you have pointed out, live in an instant gratification world. If one is "absorbed" into this instant gratification world, then not using condoms or birth control shouldn't puzzle us because all that matters is now and not about that blood test result 3 months later or a new born in 9 months'. Perhaps only when people know what's in store for them and what they will potentially lose out on will more progress in this area be done, if any. However, I think I am making things too general and simplifying the matter. When physical pleasure kicks in, the brains just stop working.
Besides talking about potential benefits to abstaining from pre-marital sex, the method and delivery is also very important. Influential individuals that impress upon young people between the ages 12 and 20 may not be their parents. So identifying the right people to address these issues to the target audience is key, too. And then there's this weird thing about human psychology, where "the more you don't want me to do something, the more I want to do it." Thus, to encourage one to develop individualized reasons to abstain from pre-marital sex - and not just downloading the message from someone else - might be what we really want to strive for.
I agree, I don't think that the information has to come from a religious group and using relevant role models is effective. I just get tired of hearing people get so mad at what public schools attempt to teach when parents fail to tell their children what they want them to know. I'm speaking from my own small town experience and my experience with my own parents who said NOTHING.
Maybe if parents started the conversation, they would see the relevance of your ideas.
You aren’t alone, Heidi. Parents in big cities don’t talk about it either. I am wondering if talking about the birds and the bees is something parents find difficult. I am not a parent so I don’t know, but I would think that if I were to talk about sex, drugs and such with my children, my concern is they would want to try it. Obviously no parent would want that to happen. But on the other hand, if I weren’t the one who initiates such conversations and at least form the framework of how my children view such issues, then my other worry is where would that other source be. So that responsibility then falls squarely on the school’s shoulders, which often times use cookie-cutters to dish out public policies.
Won’t it be great if we could come up with a book or something that parents could use to talk with their kids?
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