Roger ChesleyWe want our teenagers to do what's right and be safe: Take your vitamins. Wear your seat belts. Don't post too much information about yourselves on the Internet.
Wait to have sex until after marriage.
All of those instructions are wonderful, but parents know - as parents always do - that our little darlings won't always heed us. Sometimes they're lazy. Sometimes they're forgetful. Sometimes they're curious; often what's forbidden is what's most alluring, in spite of religious and moral teachings.
As parents, do we want our children to know only the religious warnings, or do we want to equip them for whatever might happen?
More simply, do we promote only sexual abstinence, or do we explain both the wonder - and consequences - of having sex? And how should our schools handle the issue?
That brings us to the latest tiff between the Family Foundation and Planned Parenthood. Virginian-Pilot writer Julian Walker reported Friday that the pro-life, Richmond-based foundation has called for the state to eliminate its funding to Planned Parenthood, the provider of reproductive health and family planning services. Ostensibly to help alleviate the state's budget shortfall, the Family Foundation's move is just another opportunity to target its rival, which provides abortions among its programs.
Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, says abortion services comprise just 7 percent of the group's activities in Virginia. The state has paid it roughly $250,000 for health and education services - not for abortions - over the past four years. A spokeswoman for Gov. Tim Kaine suggested a cutoff of funding wasn't likely.
Here's what I don't get. If the Family Foundation wants to help end abortions, it should welcome Planned Parenthood's services on sex education.
Some 26,500 women and girls had abortions in 2005 in Virginia, the latest year statistics were compiled by the Guttmacher Institute. The institute does research and policy analysis on sexual and reproductive issues.
Last year, a major study ordered by Congress found that students who participated in abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who didn't.
The flip side? Students who took comprehensive sex-ed classes behaved almost identically.
Still, according to Guttmacher, most Americans support comprehensive sex education that encourages abstinence and provides medically accurate information about contraception.
In the 2008 General Assembly session, the Family Foundation backed reinstatement of funding for abstinence education programs that Kaine had cut earlier. That legislation was defeated in the Senate.
It's clear that millions of dollars spent on abstinence-only programs haven't had the desired effect. It's also clear, to me anyway, that parents have to stay involved in their teenagers' lives, hammer home the abstinence message, and prepare their children for the day - married or not - that they ultimately have sex.
Pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are real consequences. For young people, though, the pleasure derived is too great a temptation.
Such straight talk is important. Nobody should advocate that children proceed in such a monumental decision while ignorant about what it means.
The Guttmacher Institute, quoting a wide-ranging 2006 report from one its researchers, noted that the vast majority of Americans have sex before marriage, "including those who abstained from sex during their teenage years."
The report by Lawrence B. Finer covered the years 1954 to 2003, and it showed that even among women born in the 1940s, "nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage."
As the father of three teenagers, I find the statistics jarring. But I can't say I don't have all the facts.
My children should have them, too.
Roger Chesley is associate editor of The Pilot's editorial page.
Reach him at (757) 446-2329 or at roger.chesley@pilotonline.com.
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Corporate taxes & any type education
If corporations paid their fair share of income taxes, public education in all subjects would receive more funding, thereby enabling the hiring of great educators in more fields, ensuring better educated, more well rounded young people. Most floor sweepers, that is, 1s who actually sweep, are part time summer workers. Persons who operate sweeping vehicles, also do basic mechanical maintenance on these machines. These machines weigh thousands of pounds & are quite dangerous if handled by the untrained. So, it's not too much pay for a person to operate heavy equipment, in tight spaces, safely, while also being responsible for maintenance. If you believe it is, then you most definitely should think 1 mil, least of all 22 mil, is too much for 1 who has so terribly mismanaged a corp.
2nd try...
What in the world do coporate taxes and sex education have in common? NOTHING. How does one go so far out in left field like that. BTW, 22 mil divided by 3k equals $7333 anually per person. That is about half minimum wage so that is not legal unless we are talking about illegal alien floor sweepers. Floor sweepers are necessary but to think that they should earn 60k plus is brain dead. Now, how about we stay on subject.
straight talk starts early
Straight talk about sex starts at an early age. You provide your children with age appropiate information. Sex is a natural biological function, and a beautiful part of life, and should be openly discussed with your children. There is no mystery to all of this, but common sense and maturity will lead you kids down the right path. Life is not all that complicated.
CB,
why not suggest 50% of the "Big Three" CEO's salaries & those of the oil companies & other overpaid, non tax paying, (super low, if they do pay), inept, industry leaders, to pay for sex ed to be taught to your liking. Let's see, Ford's Alan Mullally made $22,000,000 last yr. Enough to pay over 3,000 floor sweepers. Since you feel "good money" shouldn't be spent on such an individual who is willing to be a floor sweeper, maybe you'd have no problem with it being spent to help keep a kid from being dumbfounded as to just what type problems can arise from engaging in premarital sex. Or corporations overall could pay more than the 13% share of financing, (through corporate income taxes), the federal budget they pay now. Individual inc. taxes make up 42% of the amount financing the budget.
At least...
At least you were man enough to admit that neither abstinence only or "comprehesive" sex education has a better success record than the other. Planned Parenthood may provide some good services but they also provide abortion services. To say that they don't use tax dollars for abortion is playing a game with the grand pot of money that they use for whatever. State tax money augments their organization and therefore is a contributor to state sponsored abortion. My biggest problem with Planned Parenthood is what they deem "comprehensive". It is far more liberal than advertised and includes "education" of acceptance of practices that I don't want my children to think is normal. In other words it is a social engineering and conditioning experiment that I don't like nor agree with. Stick to the ramifications and responsbilities of sex, how to avoid diseases and pregnancy and I will be happy. Leave morals and standards to me!!!
teenage sex
This is just a guess, but I believe that teens have been having sex for, oh, I don't know, maybe a couple of milliom years? And throughout that time, I guess that parents and society have made it clear what the ramifications of sex are, and not much, except diseases, has changed.
My guess is that if teens don't know by now what the consequences of their actions are, then no amount of education or money spent will do anything except keep certain groups paid and promoting whatever agenda suits them. Hey, watch out for Aids and babies! There, now they are educated and it didn't cost a dime.