Several months ago I highlighted a column by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post in which she expressed her belief that teenage abstinence was just a hopeless fantasy (my words, not hers). Marcus is the mother of two girls, ages 11 and 13, and her pessimism emerged afresh two weeks ago when it was revealed that Bristol Palin, the daughter of the abstinence-supporting governor, was pregnant by her boyfriend.
Now I am probably one of about five people in California who ever reads Ruth Marcus' column, so it's not as if I think she has the country in her sway. Nor do I think she's particularly bent on forcing this issue. She's expressing her opinion, which is her job, and I'm sure she's a caring mother and sincerely believes she can't expect her daughters to save sex for marriage. I just happen to think she's wrong, very wrong, on an important cultural issue. And as I believe her ideas are representative of the prevailing cultural wisdom, I highlight them and comment on them.
In early September, Marcus wrote about "The Lesson of Bristol Palin", which she takes to be that even parents who believe in abstinence for their kids can end up with a pregnant daughter. Fair enough. But Marcus cites a statistic that more than 60% of U.S. high school seniors have had sex and concludes that efforts to promote abstinence - in schools and in families - are pretty much futile.
Marcus apparently believes that abstinence education is widespread and being taught well - two highly debatable assumptions. (Effective education is never just a one-time or one-way message.) But the saddest, most cynical part of the piece is when she writes:
Being a teenager means taking stupid risks. The best, most attentive parenting and the best, most comprehensive sex education won't stop teenagers from doing dumb things. The most we as parents can hope for is to insulate our children, as best we can, from the consequences of their own stupidity.
Really? Is that the approach that teaches kids responsible decision making? I'm sure she doesn't think that's cynical, but when you expect the worst from someone and offer that the proper role of a teenager's parent is to mop up their messes, you can't set the bar much lower than that.
And where does this "stupidity" come from? We know that not every teenager is given to abusing drugs. Not every one of them drinks. Even though the law allows you to drop out of school at 16, most kids finish high school and go on to college. It's not every kid who's a delinquent. So what's the difference between kids who make redeeming choices for themselves and those who don't? Researchers, like those at the Search Institute, have a good grasp on this. Unfortunately the everyday world isn't aware of what researchers know so we retreat to a position of defeatism and cynicism: "Being a teenager means taking stupid risks." (Read what Search has discovered about assets and risk behavior patterns; Marcus' assertion has no basis.)
Marcus says she'll be delivering an "admittedly muddled message" to her girls when they talk about what to take away from Bristol Palin: "Wait, please. But whenever you choose to have sex, at some distant moment, don't do it without contraception."
The important question isn't whether Sarah Palin has been a bad parent. The question is whether there's anything beyond "Wait, please" that can help delay teenage sexual activity? Good news: there is. But I'm not sure Marcus has any idea.
Nor am I sure that she holds teenage sex to be a bad thing, as long as it doesn't result in pregnancy, HIV, or another disease. There's a casualness about the role of sex in a relationship that is a little jarring. Do we seriously think that young teenagers - or old ones, for that matter - ought to be sexually active, and that their emotional development is barely affected by it? That's where the pro-abstinence side I think could make a strong argument, and shake off the perception that they are just anti-sex and pro-ignorance. But they, too, have failed to put forth a constructive solution.
At the heart of this - on both sides - is plainly a reluctance to discuss relationships and sex often and authentically enough to be helpful to kids. One of the best curriculums I've seen on the subject, for instance, asks kids to think about and process through the worst sexual mistake they've ever made. Few parents are comfortable going there. But make no mistake - kids talk about sex to one another. Who's hooking up with whom is standard Monday-morning hallway chatter in high schools, and even pre-teens are aware that sex is a component of certain teenage and adult relationships, though they remain ignorant of the complexities and dynamics.
We in the church world fail to sell the value of abstinence because we oversimplify it, telling them they "just" need to do this or that. The truth is that a direct "here's what to do" works for some kids; but not for most. We've failed to appreciate that "just say no" really is just too hard in many cases - so kids dismiss us. Our failure to grasp their need to know why? and what if? and what about? ends up with us failing the credibility test, and that perception is crucial if you want your advice to be taken seriously. Kids want to know that we've been there, that we empathize with where they are today. You've made mistakes and learned lessons? Great, but don't expect that your seasoned understanding will simply transfer. A postmodern precept is that one person's experience is not necessarily prescriptive for everyone. That happens to be true here.
And who can sell good behavior anyhow? What adolescent wants to be "good", or would tout their "goodness" to others? Talking about everything you haven't done yet doesn't make you very exciting. Instead, it's much easier to work toward something than keep yourself away. That's why "purity" became the buzzword in Christian circles over "abstinence". "Purity" describes something you possess; "abstinent" merely denotes what you haven't done.
Two authors who get this are the husband-wife team of Eric and Leslie Ludy. Their book, Teaching True Love to a Sex-at-13 Generation has some good things to say about the need to teach sex in a context of relational wholeness. Kids and teenagers need to see themselves not just as they are in the present - hormonally charged, heavily influenced by peers - but who they someday will be, including the kind of husband or wife, father and mother they see themselves becoming. And the Ludys draw a bright-line distinction between "innocence" and "purity" which should be a help to parents who struggle with whether it's right to introduce the subject of sex if their 11-year-old is still blissfully unaware. (It is.)
No, the lesson of Bristol Palin is not that we should expect every teenager to be sexually active. The lesson is that what we're doing now to educate kids about healthy sexual values is not working. Marcus seems to believe that the answer is to abandon all but the clinical parts of sexual education, so that kids stay "protected". That's a strange prescription, one that in the end stifles dialogue rather than promoting it, and makes kids vulnerable rather than protecting them.
