No Information Is Bad Information
A woman who works in my department was recently excited to share the news that she had become a godmother. Her friend’s daughter gave birth to a baby girl late last week. The strange part? Her friend’s daughter is a junior in high school.
I may be in the minority, but I’m still shocked to hear that a high school kid has given birth. It also bothers me that other people, like the woman in my department, don’t seem to think anything is out of the ordinary. Why should I be surprised? After all, there were several pregnancies during my sophomore year in high school, and that was WAY back in 1992-93. Maybe at this point I’m supposed to have accepted that teenage pregnancy is a part of our culture. I’m sure that there are teenagers that have had children and were still able to be successful, but at what cost? How can you explain limited choices to someone who has apparently failed their first attempt at an adult decision? It may appear that the space between a high school kid and a young adult in their early twenties is narrow, but the difference in maturity is often very wide. This is an army of spoiled mallrats, not the teenagers of your grandparent’s generation.
I think that abstinence-only programs do a disservice to young people. That’s not to say that I don’t support the practice of abstinence for teenagers, but only that I’m aware that the reality of personal relationships rarely figures into sex education. In what other field is giving out “too much information” so often cited as the “real” cause of the problem? In my experience (and probably yours), complex decisions are easier to make as knowledge increases. Certainly I make bad decisions sometimes (and feign ignorance), but that has little to do with a lack of understanding or the availability of information.
Those that believe that handing out condoms encourages sexual behavior are not far removed from those that believe gay marriage opens the door to bestiality. There just isn’t a connection. Preventative education is a much better option than being forced to decide the best way out of a bad situation. By all means, encourage your kids to come to you while you can still make a difference. If you’ve demonized anything short of abstinence, and set yourself up as unreceptive to discussion, what are the chances your children will turn to you for help before it’s too late?
There are also parallels in youth drug education. Why does most literature insist on lumping all illegal drugs together as “BAD”? Don’t get me wrong, I think that drugs are bad, but for a variety of reasons directly related to the effects of each drug. There appears to be little benefit to making blanket statements that by their very nature are more likely to be called into question. It might be time to differentiate between softer drugs like marijuana, and the more lethal varieties, that include cocaine and heroin. When your kids find out the difference (and they will), you risk a complete loss of credibility.
