(03-28-2012, 04:14 AM)DeeBye Wrote: In your eyes, maybe. But in my eyes it's very clear. Teach kids what they need to know. Our views of what kids need to know about sex might differ, but I'm sure there is some common ground we can agree on that would lower the number of teen pregnancies and abortions.
To some of you, this may be academic discussion. This is a very real issue to me, seeing that I have three teenage daughters.
I went with the strategy of giving them all the information they want, and probably more than they want. Don't hide things from them. That just makes them want to go find out for themselves.
The oldest is 18 now, and my strategy has worked well. They know in theory about sex, the good and the bad. Neither of my high-school girls has indulged in it themselves, and neither dresses too provocatively, either, *by their own choice*, not because of pressure from me. Any parent with a brain knows that pressure from a parent has limits to what it can do short of locking the kid in the house anyway. Both girls have mentioned that after what I've told them, they watched how the girls who dressed in very revealing clothes got treated. They realized sure, they got a lot of attention, but not always who you would want it from. That's just one example. I think it works far better than "Don't do it, and no, I'm not telling you any more than that."
Doesn't mean they haven't thought about it, and doesn't mean they haven't peeked at the seamier side of the 'net a few times, but, if I've done my job right (and I think I did) it won't harm them. They've been given all the tools they need to think about their actions before doing them, and make the right decisions for themselves.
That is the key to raising well-adjusted teenage girls, and boys, too. Don't shelter them from everything possible and do let them see the world as it really is sometimes before they're 18. So, no, America, you don't have to be super-religious to raise teenage girls who aren't raging hormonal sluts, no matter what the Baptists tell you.\
On the school issue and sex education. Letting parents pick is all fine and good when America had good parenting skills. But we don't anymore. When the local Baptists take over the schoolboard, and a couple years later teen pregnacy rates rise, (and this happened in my wife's old hometown), I think mandating a certain amount of sex education in schools is a good thing. Also, if you really think telling teenagers "Don't do this" is enough to keep them from finding more info and/or trying out something they want to know about, you're fooling yourself. It's much more likely to keep them from finding out the stuff they need to know than stopping them from trying it out anyway. I don't necessarily think the schools need to hand out condoms, but, showing them an example of how to apply one in sex ed class is fine.
Of course, the fact that America gets less and less rural all the time affects the sex ed issue, too. Anyone in a rural area can tell you that the farm kids know more about sex in real terms than the city kids. They may be naive socially, but, they've seen that part in action at some point, and it's just a part of life's cycle to them. My wife grew up in town, and if it hadn't been for her grandmother, she said she might have made some life-altering mistakes, because her mother was all for "Don't do it" and that's all. I grew up out on the farm, and I had the relevant and important things mostly figured out before sex-ed ever got to me.
As I said before, neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party appeals to me. I'm a fiscal conservative, and neither party is that right now, and I'm a social liberal. However, while the Democrats are socially liberal, there's also a streak in their party who think that 'freedom' only means 'free within our politically correct boundaries' or 'free if we approve of it' which is not freedom at all. It's just that gay people are approved, but a man owning a gun is not approved by the Democrats. To me, that's the same thing the Republicans are doing, just turned the other way; guns are OK, gays are not. Also, personal freedom requires personal responsibility, and politicians suck at that, always.
Anyway, I'm not happy with either party at the moment, and I am one of those independents. In the end I'll vote the man (or woman, I don't care), but unfortunately, it's 2004 again.
I would love to see proportional representation of some kind, rather than winner take all, too. I think that would help our system a lot.
--Mav