Parents Are Smarter Than Government Policy
At least, in San Antonio, where, in a survey, 80 percent of the parents of low-income students were for teaching their children about condoms and birth control "as early as middle school years," writes Cindy Tumiel in the Express-News:
As Bexar County continues to suffer one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, local health educators find themselves in the crosshairs of a passionate debate over what to teach children about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.Abstinence is the core message of all school-based sex education programs, in line with the Texas Education Code. But the state leaves it up to local school districts to decide whether to teach students about birth control and condoms, and at what grade level to introduce that information.
..."What we found is the vast majority of parents really want us to include positive information about contraceptives and condoms," said Realini, the lead author of the study.
Parents were asked to choose between "abstinence-only," which covers only the failure rates of condoms and contraceptives, and "abstinence plus," which teaches about the benefits of condoms and contraceptives as well as their failure rates.
The city's three largest districts — Northside, San Antonio and North East — all include abstinence-plus programs at high school-level health classes.
The result showed 80 percent of parents favored an abstinence-plus curriculum, 13 percent favored abstinence only and 7 percent wanted neither.
"I think that is telling — they want the schools to provide their children with information," said Northside parent Julie Eversol, who sits on the district's health curriculum advisory committee.
But Sylvia Enriquez, a parent who lives in San Antonio ISD, said the lessons should begin at home. "For some kids, it's easier to get the information from school than from their parents."
School district officials interviewed Friday said they didn't think the small study would have much influence on their policies.
I'm not surprised that parents turn out to be a lot more sensible about their children than fundamentalism-driven state policy. What do they really care about, fundamentalist goals -- or not seeing their daughter knocked up or their son a daddy at 15?
More on this from a (free) feature in The Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein:
Schools and other groups that accept the federal funding have to promote abstinence and play down the effectiveness of contraception. In January, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services effectively tightened its restrictions on what abstinence courses can teach. In a request for grant applications, new and detailed guidelines said that an acceptable curriculum should include teaching about "the potential psychological side effects (e.g., depression and suicide) associated with adolescent sexual activity" and stress points such as the following: "Non-marital sex in teen years may reduce the probability of a stable, happy marriage as an adult" and "Teen sexual activity is associated with decreased school completion, decreased educational attainment and decreased income potential."These statements "misuse" scientific data, says John Santelli, a professor of pediatrics and of population and family health at Columbia University, as well as a former official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There may be some truth to the associations they draw, but their conclusions are confused," he says.
...Sex education has long been a subject of controversy. But the current debate is turning into the latest culture-war issue to play out in the nation's classrooms. While the fight over whether to teach intelligent design in schools has received a lot of attention, the battle over sex ed may become even more heated. On one side, parents are challenging school boards and lobbying for legislation supporting comprehensive sex-ed programs.
Other groups that support the abstinence approach are urging states to further limit sex ed. Earlier this month, Kansas's board of education recommended to local school districts that teachers secure written permission from parents before students attend sex-ed classes. Some state legislatures are considering bills that would circumscribe the teaching of sex ed: A bill in South Dakota seeks to prevent any instruction in the use of contraceptives in sex-ed classes. A bill under consideration in Missouri would prohibit groups that provide abortions from teaching sex ed in the schools, effectively banning organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
...Sue Briss heard in the fall of 2004 that her daughter's school, Shamrock Middle School, in Decatur, Ga., was offering a sex-education course that winter, and she began talking to other parents. Some parents formed a group, Georgia Parents for Responsible Health Education, and researched the program. They felt "it was fear and shame based," she said. "There's nothing in there talking about sex as a natural part of a healthy loving relationship."
The program had been developed by an abstinence nonprofit. After the parents sent a representative to meet with a school administrator, the school found the curriculum hadn't gone through the normal approval process and agreed not to teach it. The controversy "made us think about and analyze sexuality education issues," says Crawford Lewis, superintendent of the Dekalb County School System. "It increased our awareness."
The problem isn't lack of education or access to birth control. The problem is that kids are stupid and irresponsible.
I posted a link in your comments a while back about a Planned Parenthood study. It showed that giving students access to model sex-ed curriculum and free access to birth control has barely any effect on the pregnancy rate. I emphasize that this study was done by Planned Parenthood. If their own studies show that sex-ed ain't a magic pill, then how are you going to argue with them?
nash at March 30, 2006 9:29 AM
Yes, and I wrote a column suggesting the costs of pregnancy be a prominent part in sex education -- that it causes not just babies, but debt. Wanna get a new car stereo? Nuh-uh...you're going to be putting your salary toward a breast pump and diaper bins.
Furthermore, it's ridiculous to simply put this off to irresponsibility instead of making teaching responsibility part of the curriculum -- in a way that gets through to kids (perhaps such as what I said above).
Amy Alkon at March 30, 2006 9:38 AM
Actually, I found the most commonsense advice to birth control given in your column. Some idiot wrote to you, complaining that he can't pick up girls because his female friend happens to be carrying his child and is expecting him to become a permanent fixture once the baby is born.
As I remember, you said something about how you can save 500 dollars and buy a new stereo, make a payment on your new car, do this and that with your 500 dollars... OR, you can spend it on diapers, baby food, baby formula, baby clothes, day care and baby sitters.
I would think that kind of simple commonsense reasoning would appeal to even the simplest minds of middle school males.
And while you didn't say this, think also of how your time is spent. You can spend your time meeting new potential mates, going to college to improve your situation, spending quiet leisurely time by yourself, or you could spend it working two jobs to feed the kid and keep it in day care while you work yourself into exhaustion, cleaning up spit-ups, taking care of kids when they're sick or cranky, keeping their appointments with doctors, driving them to school, and other functions, entertaining them, and actually taking an active role in their upbringing so they don't turn about to be featured on "America's Most Wanted."
Patrick at March 30, 2006 9:38 AM
Patrick, SHHHH!! If that gets out, who will have kids and keep Social Security afloat? ;-)
I like Amy's point about not just teaching kids about birth control, but teaching them about responsibility itself. Someone in another thread made a great point yesterday that the greatest educator for people is experiencing the consequences of their actions. A lot of teenagers don't seem to grasp the connection, but maybe there is a way to teach it. They need to be thinking about what their life is going to be like in five or ten years and about how their current actions can have a positive or negative impact.
Pirate Jo at March 30, 2006 11:02 AM
This really irked me:
"Non-marital sex in teen years may reduce the probability of a stable, happy marriage as an adult."
How so? Does having sex as a teenager mean your marriage is going to turn into crap someday when you're 45 years old? Or does it make you less likely to fall into the marriage trap in the first place? Marriage IS the number one cause of divorce, after all.
Pirate Jo at March 30, 2006 12:54 PM
How invasive and challenging is a tubal ligation for an otherwise healthy young woman of 18-22?
Am I mistaken that such procedures are later reversible (again presuming routine and 'average' health status)?
If the answers to the above fall within "Not that big a deal" and "No", then why aren't we more aggressively marketing such procedures to young adult women who have a pretty good confidence they don't want to be pregnant any time soon?
Three cents worth of pondering from a 45 year old guy who thanks the Goddess (not AA, but the Big One) daily that his current female partner can no longer conceive nor does she wish to do so.
SteveHeath at March 31, 2006 9:28 PM
There are risks to that tubal ligation -- of going into menopause, for example...can't remember the others. Being somebody who doesn't want children (and, in fact, is typically undercharmed by other people's), I was considering one until I heard about the risks.
The idea that teen sex is necessarily (or even often) a bad thing is ridiculous. What's equally ridiculous is how teens aren't taught -- in a way that's effective (see my debt idea above) to protect themselves, instead of to be (hah!) abstinent...a denial of human nature typical to the fundanutters.
Amy Alkon at April 1, 2006 6:22 AM
If I close my eyes and cover my ears it will all go away...If I close my eyes and cover my ears it will all go away....If I....
Thanks for the feedback, AA. That does explain why my newest plan to get Filthy Sinking Rich via the opening of Teenage Tubals R Us franchises has not yet taken hold elsewhere.
SteveHeath at April 1, 2006 10:37 AM
Hey Amy, I'd be curious to see where you got the info that early menopause is a side-effect of a tubal. Unless you had your uterus or ovaries removed, I can't see how it would affect a woman hormonally. If the tubes are simply severed (or filled with a titanium-alloy coil, like mine, in an outpatient procedure) that's just a mechanical procedure that wouldn't affect menstruation. Today, in fact, was the two-year anniversary of my Essure procedure. Got it done at the age of 34 and would have done it at 24 if I'd been able. I laugh at stories of women being forced to undergo psychological counseling before getting a tubal. If you ask me, it's the ones who want kids who need their heads examined!
Pirate Jo at April 1, 2006 5:30 PM
It can be a complication.
http://www.wdxcyber.com/nbleed9.htm
Amy Alkon at April 1, 2006 5:39 PM
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