Beyond Abstinence

[sweetness6280]

VP

Unless she's raped, mom's in control of her legs.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj99/sweetness6280/bulldog_cop.jpg

This is the poo police. You have exceeded your maximum poo allowance for today. Thank you very much.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I don't even count abstinence. It's like having a "no poopie" policy with a child instead of getting them potty trained.

*laugh*

That's the best analogy - EVER!

*laugh* I love it!

Aren't we being rather deterministic and over-eager to discount the concept of free will? Isn't there any more nuanced or balanced view? It's really just that simple?

And BTW, if this is your view you sure wouldn't count on rubbers. You'd have to put the girls on the contraceptive patch, because you can't count on them remembering to take their pill, either. Hey boys - welcome to the promise land!

 

[serpentmoon]

~~~~~

'No one would claim that two-parent families are free from conflict, violence, or abuse. However, the attempt to discredit the two-parent family can be understood as part of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan has described as a larger effort to accommodate higher levels of social deviance. "The amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can 'afford to recognize,'" Moynihan argues. One response has been to normalize what was once considered deviant behavior, such as out-of-wedlock birth. An accompanying response has been to detect deviance in what once stood as a social norm, such as the married-couple family. Together these responses reduce the acknowledged levels of deviance by eroding earlier distinctions between the normal and the deviant.'
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, 1993

I’m sorry, I may have misunderstood. Are they/he saying having a baby out of wedlock should be considered deviant behaviour? It was certainly thought so over here in the 1950s but I hope we have moved on from a situation where girls have to leave home and travel to a foreign city to have their babies and put them up for adoption so they can go home without the shame!

We are on a porn site, we know sex is the big and fascinating taboo and even more so when you are a teenager. That’s not going to change but for …. sake don’t call it deviant.

Talk to them, give them information and give them condoms!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Who the hell is trying to "discredit" two-parent families???

Typical rightie phrase there. That kind of ideologicaly-inspired inaccuracy makes everything else suspect, in case you were wondering.

eta: yes, it's quite true-- out-of-wedlock mothering should not be considered "deviant" in its own right. I know plenty thirty-year-olds that make that decision.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

*laugh* I love it!

I think that teenagers are desperate to be taken seriously and desperate to become adults. I don't think it's just "hormones" that makes them want to have sex; I think it's also the knowledge that this is a privilege that our society reserves for adults. The same goes for drinking. A lot of cultures have rites of passage for teenagers, and I think our society desperately needs one. When the society doesn't create a rite of passage, teenagers make up one on their own, and it often looks like binge drinking or like sex that they aren't necessarily ready for.

I think kids need more education, not just about the mechanics of sex but about the emotions. If you have sex with somebody you like and feel a burst of tenderness towards them afterward, is that love, or is it just the feeling that sex brings? If you're attracted to two different people, and you don't believe in polyamory, how do you handle that? If someone's in love with you and you only like them, is it ethical to have sex with them? There's so much that experienced adults take for granted as they negotiate the world of sex that teenagers mostly haven't been exposed to and need information about. I remember when I was a virgin, the thing I most wanted information on was what does the woman need to do to make it a good experience for both of them. I'd been given the most rudimentary of sex education, so I knew that penis + vagina = heterosexual intercourse, but knowing where the parts went wasn't my biggest concern. I didn't just want to have sex, I wanted to be good at it, and nobody would tell me how.

God, you couldn't pay me to be a teenager again!

Good post (notwithstanding my quibble with the first line).

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Who the hell is trying to "discredit" two-parent families???

Typical rightie phrase there. That kind of ideologicaly-inspired inaccuracy makes everything else suspect, in case you were wondering.

eta: yes, it's quite true-- out-of-wedlock mothering should not be considered "deviant" in its own right. I know plenty thirty-year-olds that make that decision.

Oh BS, Stella. Anytime someone says that for the good of the child a young mother should marry the boy or that married parents should go to great lengths to avoid divorce, the automatic response is to recite a litany of conflict, violence, and abuse within marriage. I've seen it here more than once in discussions on related subjects.

This writer has deconstructed what's really going on when that happens, and I think she's exactly right: The culture has been trying for 40 years to elevate single parenthood to being considered equivalent and a "valid" lifestyle alternative, and dissing marriage is one tool in that. I won't pretend that the issues aren't as thorny as they can be, but neither will I pretend that society hasn't paid a huge price for the massive increases in illegitimacy and divorce. We should really get serious about that, and no longer be willing to just go along with the pop-culture concensus. This shouldn't be a right vs. left issue.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I’m sorry, I may have misunderstood. Are they/he saying having a baby out of wedlock should be considered deviant behaviour?

Yes, that was the belief of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-NY, a scholar considered one of the foremost experts on social welfare policy from the early 1960s until his death in 2003. Social scientists have documented the tremendous societal damage inflicted by massive increases in illegitimacy. No serious person can deny that, or deny that having two parents is better in every way for a child than having one. The fact that some single mothers seem to do OK and that some two-parent families are dysfunctional doesn't contradict that.

40 years ago illegitimacy was considered "deviant." Moynihan was concerned that "defining deviancy down" - a phrase he coined - so that illegitimacy was no longer considered deviant was bad for society, because he believed illegitimacy is bad for society. He greatly feared that it was leading to the destruction of the black family with awful potential consequences for African Americans.

Now, 40 years later we've run the experiment and - surpise! - he was exactly right. Practically every social pathology is aggravated by or is a direct consequence of exploding levels of illegitimacy.

 

[Liar]

Aren't we being rather deterministic and over-eager to discount the concept of free will? Isn't there any more nuanced or balanced view? It's really just that simple?

Only if you take it as serious as a heart attack.

Free will is not extinct when it comes to teens and their hormones, but empirical data suggests that it's at the very least weakened, wouldn't ya say?

 

[Shwenn]

Aren't we being rather deterministic and over-eager to discount the concept of free will? Isn't there any more nuanced or balanced view? It's really just that simple?

I agree. I think it's a good idea to teach kids absitnence. That can't be the only thing we teach them, though. Also, teach them proper condom use. Teach them how to be safe about it.

It doens't even have to be condoning the act. You can frame it as, "Now is not the time, but the time will come when you are older and this is what you will need to know when that time comes."

You can totally teach responsible sex and absitence at the same time.

The whole argument always seems like a false dichotomy to me.

 

[Corylea]

It doens't even have to be condoning the act. You can frame it as, "Now is not the time, but the time will come when you are older and this is what you will need to know when that time comes."

When I was in high school, we had civics classes that were supposed to teach us how our government worked and what principles it was based upon, so we'd be good citizens when we were old enough to vote. Nobody let the fact that we weren't yet old enough to vote get in the way of teaching us what we'd need to know when we were old enough.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yes, that was the belief of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-NY, a scholar considered one of the foremost experts on social welfare policy from the early 1960s until his death in 2003. Social scientists have documented the tremendous societal damage inflicted by massive increases in illegitimacy. No serious person can deny that, or deny that having two parents is better in every way for a child than having one. The fact that some single mothers seem to do OK and that some two-parent families are dysfunctional doesn't contradict that.

40 years ago illegitimacy was considered "deviant." Moynihan was concerned that "defining deviancy down" - a phrase he coined - so that illegitimacy was no longer considered deviant was bad for society, because he believed illegitimacy is bad for society. He greatly feared that it was leading to the destruction of the black family with awful potential consequences for African Americans.

Now, 40 years later we've run the experiment and - surpise! - he was exactly right. Practically every social pathology is aggravated by or is a direct consequence of exploding levels of illegitimacy.

yeah, massive increases. I'm in favor of massive decreases in population expansion, as you already know....

I kind of think it goes both ways though-- illegitimacy, in the case of the unprivileged, is a direct consequence of social pathology.

In any case, the object is to help teens avoid all sexually transmitted side-effects, of which many are more life threatening now than ever. And teaching abstinence doesn't work.

 

[serpentmoon]

Yes, that was the belief of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-NY, a scholar considered one of the foremost experts on social welfare policy from the early 1960s until his death in 2003. Social scientists have documented the tremendous societal damage inflicted by massive increases in illegitimacy. No serious person can deny that, or deny that having two parents is better in every way for a child than having one. The fact that some single mothers seem to do OK and that some two-parent families are dysfunctional doesn't contradict that.

40 years ago illegitimacy was considered "deviant." Moynihan was concerned that "defining deviancy down" - a phrase he coined - so that illegitimacy was no longer considered deviant was bad for society, because he believed illegitimacy is bad for society. He greatly feared that it was leading to the destruction of the black family with awful potential consequences for African Americans.

Now, 40 years later we've run the experiment and - surpise! - he was exactly right. Practically every social pathology is aggravated by or is a direct consequence of exploding levels of illegitimacy.

I’m not an academic, an experiment or a statistic. I’m a person and I have first hand experience of both being given up for adoption because of the social stigma attached to having a child out of wedlock. I also have personal experience of the damage inflicted by stigmatising unmarried sex and instilling a huge fear of getting pregnant outside marriage. From personal experience I can think of nothing worse than filling teenagers with guilt and fear.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I’m not an academic, an experiment or a statistic. I’m a person and I have first hand experience of both being given up for adoption because of the social stigma attached to having a child out of wedlock. I also have personal experience of the damage inflicted by stigmatising unmarried sex and instilling a huge fear of getting pregnant outside marriage. From personal experience I can think of nothing worse than filling teenagers with guilt and fear.

Many people mistake guilt and fear for responsibility and caution.
I'm sorry you had to endure all of that, serpentmoon

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Oh BS, Stella. Anytime someone says that for the good of the child a young mother should marry the boy or that married parents should go to great lengths to avoid divorce, the automatic response is to recite a litany of conflict, violence, and abuse within marriage. I've seen it here more than once in discussions on related subjects.

This writer has deconstructed what's really going on when that happens, and I think she's exactly right: The culture has been trying for 40 years to elevate single parenthood to being considered equivalent and a "valid" lifestyle alternative, and dissing marriage is one tool in that. I won't pretend that the issues aren't as thorny as they can be, but neither will I pretend that society hasn't paid a huge price for the massive increases in illegitimacy and divorce. We should really get serious about that, and no longer be willing to just go along with the pop-culture concensus. This shouldn't be a right vs. left issue.

Anyone remember what Dan Quayle said about Murphy Brown?

 

[Corylea]

The discussion of teenaged pregnancy assumes that the girls don't want to get pregnant. Certainly that's true for many girls, but it's also true that many girls get pregnant intentionally. I used to work at a community mental health center on the South Side of Chicago, and we had a lot of single mothers who'd had a baby at fifteen on purpose. Why? They'd felt unloved for all of their short lives, because of their parents' pathology, and they got pregnant because they assumed that the baby would love them. They were shocked and horrified when they discovered how needy babies and toddlers are and disappointed to learn that the direction of the flow of love was supposed to be the other way.

They also knew very little about how to rear a child properly, not surprising considering that they hadn't been given good parenting, themselves. I had one single mother who told me that she'd saved her money to buy her daughter a children's book, and her child was so ungrateful that she threw it on the floor. I asked how old her daughter was, and she said, "Nine months." Nine MONTHS? At that age, children have no conception of what gratitude could possibly be; they throw things because they can, because up till now, their arms haven't worked very well, and it's so cool to have them enough under their control that they can throw things. I tried to explain this to my client, and she was skeptical.

People make fun of the classes where kids have to carry a five-pound sack of flour with them everywhere and make sure that nothing bad happens to it (remember the "Bad Eggs" episode from Season 2 of Buffy?), but letting teenagers know that during their first few years of life, children take a lot and give very little is crucial. (Yes, I know, babies can be adorable, and watching someone learn about the world for the first time can be a blast. I don't mean to say that parents get nothing out of rearing very young children, just what parents get is something that it takes a certain amount of emotional resources to appreciate it. A teenager who's so emotionally starved that she had a baby in order for it to love her is doomed to disappointment.)

 

[Selena_Kitt]

When I was in high school, we had civics classes that were supposed to teach us how our government worked and what principles it was based upon, so we'd be good citizens when we were old enough to vote. Nobody let the fact that we weren't yet old enough to vote get in the way of teaching us what we'd need to know when we were old enough.

OMG the analogies are PRICELESS today! LOVE it!

(p.s. extra points for mentioning Buffy )

 

[rgraham666]

I find it amusing to find one of the premiere economic determinists on this board arguing about free will.

 

[Guest]

Anyone remember what Dan Quayle said about Murphy Brown?

I remember.

I was just thinking about that yesterday.




Found the clip -

The title character, a divorced news anchorwoman, got pregnant and chose to have the baby, a boy, who was delivered on last Monday's episode, watched by 38 million Americans. "It doesn't help matters," Quayle complained, when Brown, "a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman" is portrayed as "mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'life-style choice.' "

I remember the show they dedicated to this. It had to have been painful for Quayle to sit through, but it was delightfully entertaining.

 

[PMI]

Okay -- we are all laughing at Sarah Palin because she doesn't support any sex education in the schools other than teaching abstinence.

But -- what, other than abstinence, is socially acceptable behavior for teens?

Wow, loaded question!!! Socially acceptable behavior is defined differently by the teens than it is by us for the teens. As a mom, I would be able to accept a lot from my teenage sons, reluctantly or not. Just sayin

ETA: As a mom, I am not laughing at Sarah Palin'

 

[shereads]

From the Telegraph (UK), regarding the now-removed MySpace page of Sarah Palin's daughter's alleged babydaddy:

Poignantly, in the one part of the site where it asks about children, he wrote, "I don't want kids."

Well, you've got one now, boy-o. And the global population of unwanted children is about to be larger by one.

Ignorance isn't always bliss. Sometimes it's just tragic.

 

[shereads]

Free will is not extinct when it comes to teens and their hormones, but empirical data suggests that it's at the very least weakened, wouldn't ya say?

Recent studies of the human brain prove that teenagers are even less able than pre-adolescent children to resist impulsive actions. The part of the brain that considers consequences prior to taking action becomes relatively non-functioning in an excited teenager. It's why we put them in the front lines of combat; it's why abstinence pledges become a dim memory in the back seats of cars. It's why society should breathe a sigh of relief every time a teenaged girl wants to be on The Pill.

 

[shereads]

Anyone remember what Dan Quayle said about Murphy Brown?

I do!

He said, "Three words: 'Murphy Brown.'"

 

[Guest]

I do!

He said, "Three words: 'Murphy Brown.'"

Oh, that carefree time.

One could always count on a Quayle-ism to bring a smile to your weary face.

 

[shereads]

Oh, that carefree time.

One could always count on a Quayle-ism to bring a smile to your weary face.

Remember when he was, like, the gold standard for stupidity in high office?

Good times.

 

[Guest]

Remember when he was, like, the gold standard for stupidity in high office?

Good times.

When stupidity was amusing, not life-threatening.

*sigh*