hadespussercats wrote:"This idea of "if a kid can talk about that sort of thing with her parents" always comes up. If that's the test, then parents are no longer parents in any respect, and they are just child support payers, since every issue arising in a child's life involves interaction with the parents. "
Coito, For many people sex is a particularly awkward subject.
So? That's no excuse for cutting parents out of such important decisions regarding their children, for whom they are legally responsible.
Even more so between parents and children. Parents and children who have a good rapport on other levels might still have difficulty broaching this subject together. I'm not saying that's how it should be-- I'm saying that's how it is.
That is as it may be, but the difficulty one might have with obtaining the consent of one's parents to sex, contraception, abortion or tanning does not relieve the child of the obligation to do so before engaging in such activities, any more than it's the child's "right" to start smoking crack just because she finds it "awkward" to discuss it with her parents. Why libertines and feminists assume that having sex is a civil right for a child is beyond me.
As for a twelve-year-old getting pregnant-- you say, "It's not just the children of bad parents who get pregnant, or are sexually active."
My comment wasn't about whether or not the parents were bad people. My comment was about the fact that getting pregnant at age twelve is unusual, in that many girls are just hitting menarche at around that age, and in that while there certainly are many kids who are sexually active that young, it's still awfully young to be having sex, even by modern American standards ( I can find research for that point, if you need it.)
Last stat I heard was that 50 percent of children under the age of 12 are sexually active, so it's hardly all that unusual it seems.
Parents who are comfortable talking about sex with their children, who talk to them about risks, who are open to questions, aren't likely, in my opinion or experience , to have a pregnant twelve-year-old daughter-- unless she was raped.
It's not a question of probabilities, it's a question of parental authority and the duties and obligations of minors to be obedient.
I can also find you research/commentary about physical development in general and cervical development in particular that support my assertion that for most girls, carrying a pregnancy to term at age 12 is dangerous. I don't have time to hunt for links now. But I think it's fairly obvious that most 12-year-olds are not ready to be parents.
Then they shouldn't be having sex, should they?
As for "16 and Pregnant"-- I think the main reason people watch that show is because they're all train wrecks. I find it depressing. And I'm going to do what I can to inform my son about safe sex early on, so hopefully he never finds himself in that fix-- whether or not he ever tells me he's sexually active. I'd like him to know he could. But I understand that for most kids, their mom is the last person they want to talk to about stuff like that-- particularly once they're a teenager.
You're being negligent if you give him opportunities to have sex because it means you are not properly parenting him and paying attention to his daily activities and who his friends are. Education is a good thing, but you're still required to actually parent your children, and if that means monitoring their activities because they cannot be trusted to keep their dick in their pants where it belongs, then that's what you have to do.
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