Should Parents Know If Their Teen is Having Sex?

01.01.2011

Our TV was out of commission for most of December and though this was a blessing in disguise, I did get backed up on some of my shows. One of those shows is Men of a Certain Age. I love Ray Romano, what I can say.

Last week’s episode brought up an interesting issue with teenagers. Ray Romano’s character catches his daughter’s boyfriend naked in the bathroom and realizes that his daughter’s having sex. When he confronts her about it she says a bunch of different things including, “You didn’t expect me to be a virgin when I went to college?” and “Mom knows.” It’s this response that bugs me.

Ray Romano’s character and his wife are divorced and the kids mainly live with their mother. He realizes that his daughter’s been using his place to have sex. When he tries to talk over with his wife the issue of their daughter having sex, she’s rather blasé about it. He tells her she should’ve told him but the wife disagrees. She says their daughter confided in her and asked not to tell him. This makes him angry and insists that their daughter having sex affects him too and he should’ve known about it.

I found myself siding with him but when I imagined myself being put in the mother’s shoes, I wasn’t so sure. If Rob and I had a daughter and she confided in me that she was having sex, for example, would I share that information with Rob? I think I should. But what if the daughter asks for confidentiality? How do you tow the line? You, as a parent, want to make sure you keep the line of communication open with your kid(s) so you don’t want to betray him/her. But I think while the kid is living in your house, both parents need to be aware of his/her actions.

In the show’s case, the daughter was using her dad’s absence during the day to have sex. This is wrong on so many levels and the fact that it’s happening at the dad’s place the daughter’s involved him. What if something happened to either her or her boyfriend? The dad would be held liable. Ok, so I’m going into lawyer territory here (I’m a lawyer’s wife), but I think the writers on the show dismissed an entire issue and they shouldn’t have. I sometimes feel that our society is more favorable toward women on these issues because of “women power” and I don’t agree. Not when it inhibits one parent from being a parent or pits one parent against the other. I think the dad had every right to being angry. He can’t make the decision for his daughter whether or not to have sex but he should’ve been made aware of it.

The Dangers of Education, Part III

06.05.2010

[I promise that this will be my last entry using the Mother Jones article on the crisis of overpopulation.]

I understand that organized religion can provide many benefits. Those who truly heed Jesus’ call or any other prophets to whom they pray really do do good in the world and help those less fortunate, provide an education, and try to help develop a positive self-esteem. But I believe that organized religion can fall into the same trap that many governments fall into: a need for control and power. The Catholic church is absolutely no exception to this and, I think, this comes out with issues about children and birth control.

Using the Philippines as an example, Whitty, the journalist from the Mother Jones magazine, states that birth control was once very high in the predominantly Catholic country. However, because of its religion, in 2003, the Philippine government “bowed to the church demands to support only ‘natural family planning’ – otherwise known as the ryhythm method, and grimly referred to as Vatican roulette.”[1]

“Today more than half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unplanned – 10% more than a decade ago..the Guttmacher Institute [a think tank] calculates that easy access to contraception would reduce those births by 800,000 and abortions by half a million a year. Furthermore, it would deliver a net savings to the government on the order of $16.5 million a year in reduced health costs from unwatnted pregnancies, including the brutal medical consequences of illegal back-alley abortions.”[2]

So an education about birth control would:

1) REDUCE unwanted births by 800,000. REDUCE UNWANTED BIRTHS!

2) REDUCE abortions by ½ million a year. REDUCE ABORTIONS! Isn’t this what we ALL want regardless of where we stand on the issue?

3) saving money. Saving Money. One more time: SAVING MONEY!

So an education Reduces unwanted births, Reduces abortions and Saves money. What is the problem?

Ronald Reagan instigated the “global gag rule” in 1984 prohibiting the US funding of any foreign family planning organization to provide abortions which also, as a result, slowed and even stopped these organizations from providing health care to at least 26 developing nations, primarily in Africa. STDs skyrocketed along with unwanted pregnancies. I’m not advocating abortion as population control by any means. I’m advocating education of contraception and the dangers of sex when not careful. “The UN estimates that at its height in 2005, the unmet demand for contraceptives and family planning drove up fertility rates between 15 and 35 percent in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Arab states, Asia and Africa…”[3]

I get that Catholics want to advocate life and I don’t have a problem with that. But why can’t a woman (and a family) decide WHEN they want to bring a child into the world? It all comes down to sex and how it’s so “taboo.” An act that is innate and natural is taught that it is wrong and is used by the church to ensure control. This, in my opinion, is a crime against humanity. Accept that people have sex, provide them with the necessary information and celebrate the joy of a birth even more because you know that it was not only planned but that the parents have done what they can to prepare themselves to properly take care of the child. This could lower child abuse statistics, it could lower our overpopulation statistics and, in the end, contribute to raising happy, healthy and successful individuals. How is that so wrong?

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[1] Whitty, Julia Mother Jones Vol. 35, No. 3, San Francisco, CA, June 2010, pp. 40.

[2] pp. 40-41.

[3] p. 41.