Tweet
What did your parents tell you about sex? And teen pregnancy? And what you are worth?
I’ve had different talks with different people, and virtually no information at all from school, but I really like the message in this article. It’s directed to moms and not kids, but that has never stopped me before.
As news of Bristol Palin’s breakup with fiancé Levi Johnston fans the flames of the never-ending debate about sex education, my thoughts keep turning to Sarah. I wonder if she wishes she could go back and do things differently. Would she offer something in addition to abstinence education? Will she change what she says to Willow and Piper?
As a mother, I think about what I will tell my young daughter about the millions of teenagers like Bristol Palin who get pregnant before they’re ready. What will I be able to say to prevent her from joining the statistics?
And when I start imagining "the talk" we’ll have, I realize that very little of it will actually have to do with sex. It will be more about the need for self confidence, an inner strength and the ability to say no to things she isn’t ready to do, to not want to please someone so badly that she’ll do something she knows is risky to earn or keep their love – whether that’s to have unsafe sex, to take drugs or to stay with someone who demeans or abuses her.
The author also talks about relationship violence and manipulation when she speculates:
I don’t know Bristol Palin, but I imagine her getting pregnant had something to do with rumors of Levi cheating, with her wanting to win him/keep him/prove her love to him. And when they were in the moment with nary a condom to be found, she didn’t stop him because she didn’t want him to stop loving her.
I could be very wrong, but from my experience – from years of scares I shared with friends, the hands I’ve held as pregnancy tests were taken in school bathroom stalls, the fingers that were crossed, willing periods to come, that’s what it was about. None of them got THAT lost in the heat of passion that she didn’t consider the lack of contraception and what might happen. None of them just didn’t have access to contraception. They just considered more strongly the repercussions of stopping the act. They took a risk for affection.
I actually think that she’s wrong and that plenty of kids don’t know enough about condoms. Not enough facts anyway.
But the part of the article that really made me think was this:
If I do, I’ll explain how badly I wanted someone to love me because I didn’t love myself. I was young, insecure, and I wanted to know that someone wanted me. I didn’t want to stop when he was finally showing me that he wanted me; I didn’t want to be the uptight one who insisted on protection. Someone else would readily take my place; I wasn’t that special.
I want my daughter to know that she is THAT special. I’ll tell her all about sex and that I hope she waits until she’s older, in a monogamous relationship and all of the other things I’m supposed to say.
How is she going to convince her daughter of that? And help her daughter believe it even when she’s around her boyfriend? I’d like to see what her daughter writes in a few years.
What do people teach boys about this?
17 Comments
Great post Cassie! A very important subject for all kids and their parents!
Pups when you get here please DIGG and Recommend this Diary!!
I’m pretty sure that mothers want all of their children to be well-treated and to treat others well.
I’m pretty sure that whatever it is that fathers want doesn’t matter a bit.
I take this post to heart, Cassie. Thanks for writing it.
I agree with you, I don’t think for one minute bristol got pregnant to snag this guy, I think she was just too uneducated to understand the implications of her physical and newly aqcuired drive
the drive to reproduce is even more powerful at times then the drive of self preservation and in fact the will to reproduce IS the drive of self preservation
this drive disguises itself as pleasure
if you have no education you are doomed to pregnancy plain and simple
in addition;
the little information she might have been given was usurped by the fear of being found out, too fearful to seek protection against pregnancy, and sinc she “heard” there are other “techniques” to stop pregnancy that’s what she counted on
I don’t know sarah but I know hundreds of sarah’s
You ask excellent questions snarkgirl. And you’ve given me insight into the teen mind that never occurred to me. Thanks.
The best protection I had as a girl in the days just before the pill was invented was fear of my mother! No way would I ever have been able to tell my mother that I was ‘accidentally’ pregnant. Just wouldn’t happen. When my own daughters were teens (before the fear of AIDS and herpes and such) I made sure that their doctor knew that if they asked for birth control that I approved. And I talked with them about that. I also warned my son that some girl might want to become impregnated to lock him in…..and that he had a duty to protect himself and any girlfriend from unwanted and unanticipated pregnancy. I don’t think I’d like to go back to the days of shame as controller, but I do think there is some role for shame in this story. How is it that 40% of babies are born out of wedlock these days? That is not good for the babies, their mothers, society. Bristol Palin was brave to say that abstinence education obviously doesn’t work. Now let’s get real.
That 40% out of wedlock statistic is misleading. You have to factor in all the non-teenage couples in long-term monogamous relationships who are not married but who are living together as man and wife, planned for and very much want the baby, etc.
I also never hear any discussion when this subject comes up about the fathers of these ‘out of wedlock’ babies. Bristol and Levi are kind of an exception. The actual statistics on teen pregnancies are that only 15% of them are teen-teen relationships. The rest? The girl is under-age and the ‘boy’ is an adult male. Someone who could and in many cases should be prosecuted for child molestation and/or statutory rape. These are national statistics and I know for a fact that in two different counties in two different states that I lived in they hold up as well.
The author’s point about teaching daughters to have good self-esteem, being able to say no, and all that character-building stuff is the right stuff. These girls get into trouble because they are teenagers – they go through self-doubt, self-deprecation, acne and greasy hair, depression and all the usual teen-age stuff. Knowing that they have the tools to be assertive and self-confident go farther than just handing out condoms (although they should have those too) and telling them to just say no.
(((CASSIE)))
Betsy told us that you’re here … Excellent Post and Comments !
Thanks SK. My 16 year old daughter will be reading this post forthwith. I hink she gets it anyway, but just to be safe.
kudos!
;~P
Cassie,
Thanks for keeping on top of this issue.
I’m approximately 45 years older than Bristol, and it sounds like I knew a hell of a lot more about birth control than she did. And no one told me. (Parents were too embarrassed and no sex ed in school.) It seemed obvious. What’s the problem with today’s teens? Brainwashing?
Cassie,
Good post! It’s great to hear your perspective on this. I like the sentence highlighted in the first quote:
Of course, I grew up male rather than female. Its true that I wasn’t told much about sex, but the details of sex were not what I needed. I needed to learn about relationships. I was exceedingly naive about relationships: how to start them, how to nurture them, how to end them, and what about commitment? For example, my Mother told me recently (about 50 years too late!) that she wondered why I would call a girl for a date, and then after the date it seemed like I’d forget about her. Well, duh! My attitude towards relationships at the time was event-driven! It didn’t occur to me that an important part of a relationship is what happens between dates! But no one was talking with me about my relationships. That is the right context for the discussion about sex.
You go girl!
Bob in HI
Thanks snar, dugg. Here’s how some rural teenagers handle it:
Reports surface that teens are taking cow drugs for abortions
Just say Moooo.
That is terrible. And this is a very good piece, Cassie.
The one who worries me is the little one Piper.
She’s been carrying that baby around like she’s his mother.
I fear unless sarah palin decides to change her tune, Piper is headed for a teenage pregnancy.
He mother “had to get married” and now her sister has a baby at 18. A message was sent to all republican girls that you don’t need sex education, abstinence is best and if that fails, at least she made the right “choice” and had the baby.
thanks Cassie, love to read your reporting. This is worth forwarding around — off to my address book…
“I wonder if she wishes she could go back and do things differently.”
Of course not. :-) Republicans know that their ideology is always right. It’s people that suck. Even members of your own family, although it is more likely that they were misled by libruls. :-)
My Munchausen by Proxy Catholic extremist mother had a beaut of an abstinence-only plan for me (right out of Stephen King’s “Carrie”!) — she chemically burned all my skin when I was in first grade as HER MARITAL abstinence-only “Natural” Family “Planning” ploy to avoid another killer pregnancy. She already suffered childbirth-caused incontinence and feared non-Catholic Dad would divorce her for not risking PEDOPHILE Vatican-commanded childbirth suicide or spousal desertion. So on the advice of a playboy Baltimore priest, she slowly disfigured me, blamed my “rash” on Dad’s “bad genes”, and bullied him into staying. Meanwhile, Dad followed the priest’s OTHER advice of taking up alcohol and hookers on the side. Mom’s abuse offered the double “grace” of imposing LIFELONG INVOLUNTARY spinsterhood (please note I didn’t say abstinence) on me also. I couldn’t bear for high school guys to see my scalded arms, let alone any unmentionable parts. I don’t recommend Mom’s method because it made me suicidal AND boy crazIER at the same time. My advice for preventing teen pregnancy among LOOKS AND LOVE-CONSCIOUS teen BEAUTIES and ordinary teens is to SHOW THEM GRUESOME MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS FROM CHILDBIRTH ITSELF AND THE HIGH DESERTION RATES OF TURNED-OFF FATHERS. While NORMAL babies are initially entrancing, are they worth MOTHERS suffering life-RUINING bladder and bowel fistula incontinence? Are girl babies worth dramatically increasing BREAST AND FACE-EATING CANCERS in their mothers? My best friend was slowly killed by her last daughter who triggered her estrogen-sensitive face cancer that rotted off HER NOSE, EYE, EAR, LIPS, PALATES AND FINALLY BRAIN. A former co-worker’s sister AND BROTHER-IN-LAW were both killed by their last daughter, who caused breast cancer in her mother, then a fatal stress heart attack in her dad. What mother in today’s unaffordable and unreliable medical insurance crisis can afford kidney dialysis or a transplant for pregnancy-caused diabetes? Who can afford a disabled child in our tanking economy? I’ve read plenty of gossip about Bristol’s promiscuity on Alaskan blogs, so I suspect she was purposely competing with her not-so-holy “super” mom in some baby-making, attention-getting competition. I’ll bet if Bristol could have seen a recent PBS film on an African fistula hospital, she might have thought twice about unsafe sex. The younger Palin girls should see that film. Moreover, the younger girls should note how long Levi stuck around and demand Bristol be truthful about how childbirth itself may have turned him off. I also collect Washington, DC area obits on women who die young of breast cancer shortly after delivering girls, or from childbirth complications. It’s time for women to reclaim their reproductive health back from the MUNCHAUSEN BY PROXY, MATRICIDAL, PEDOPHILE Vatican.