Strollerderby : abstinence

Levi Calls BS on Bristol’s Abstinence-Only Message

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

I don’t whether to be disturbed or relieved that Levi Johnston has emerged as the voice of the reason in the ongoing Palin family drama.

After Bristol Palin assumed a (paid) role as the new face of abstinence-only sex education, Johnston decided to speak out about his, ah, more nuanced view of teen sexuality.

In this clip of his appearance on the Early Show yesterday, he is refreshingly frank about the problems with simply telling teenagers, “Don’t have sex! Don’t have sex!”

One great quote not included in the clip: “It's [abstinence] a great idea and a great message she's trying to send out to the world and all the young kids. It's not easy raising a baby. But I do think there's more things to it than just not having sex."

Johnston probably doesn’t know this, but the numbers support his view that it’s just not “realistic” to believe you can stop teen pregnancy with an abstinence-only message. Family planning services substantially reduce the number of abortions and unplanned pregnancies, particularly among poor women—who are certainly not getting paid to fly to New York and preach about how difficult it is to be a teen mom.

Photo: threebrain.blogspot.com

Bristol Palin Campaigning for Abstinence Only

Controversial Sex-Ed Book's 15th Anniversary Edition Coming Up

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about me, but let me clarify that I describe Robie Harris's It's Perfectly Normal as "controversial" because, technically, it is true: It has caused a lot of controversy, frequently hitting the top ten list of most-challenged books, inspiring hysterical accusations of its being child porn, and generating publicity stunts like that of the woman in Lewiston, Maine, who checked it out and refused to return it because it was "amoral" (generating such attention that the library had to order several more copies. I love—kinda—book banners).

But I do not think that the content is (or at least ought to be) particularly controversial.

It is a comprehensive, well-researched, much-vetted book on puberty, sex, reproduction, and sexual/emotional health and safety. In short, exactly what far too many of our kids don't have access to. Which doesn't mean I don't see where the ideological buttons are getting pushed: It presents various sexual orientations as normal, discusses abortion without condemning it, and gives all the cautionary information necessary for sexual decisionmaking without preaching about timing per se. And yes, it contains tasteful, educational, yet light-hearted line drawings of naked kids and teens, and also of couples in bed (under covers!). It is, after all, a book about (1) how bodies change at puberty and (2) explaining the very basics of some of what people do in bed. Some of us don't learn so well by text alone.

Perhaps less on the usual radar about It's Perfectly Normal are two characters—a bird and a bee—who appear through out the book representing the voices of a curious teen who's eager to grow up and one for whom all this information is a bit much and feels a little uncomfortable. I found it all this joking a bit hokey on first read, but I'm not the target audience. And after a bit of relflection, I could see that the point of their banter was to subtly say to kids reading it, "It's OK if you're not ready to think about this much yet (and it's OK if you're really curious)." That's a level of nuanced thoughtfulness and consideration that the sexphobic abstinence people rarely muster.

Of course by the time some of our kids are old enough for It's Perfectly Normal, that bird and bee will be old friends from It's Not the Stork (ages 4 and up) and It's So Amazing (7 and up), which are quite similar, but with less detail and covering fewer topics in developmentally appropriate ways. I am particularly grateful for the pages devoting to debunking gender stereotypes at the beginning of It's Not the Stork, before the book dives into the anatomy lesson covering what the actual differences are.

I have critiques too (also no shocker to many of you, I'm sure). Particularly, I think that the gender stereotyping in the cartoon version of the sperm and egg meeting (in each book) are overdone, to the point of actually being somewhat untrue to the biology. I think the care to not offend anyone leaves kids with no explanation that breastfeeding is normal or why formula is sometimes used. Then again, they don't need to know very much about that. These are, in the end, small things.

I'm thrilled that these books continue to be updated (the 15th anniv. edition of It's Perfectly Normal is due out this fall), and I hope we're moving toward a time when they can gain the popularity they deserve.

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Did Sarah Palin Know That Bristol Was Sleeping With Levi?

Brett Singer — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:07:00 GMT

In an interview with Tyra Banks that will air on Monday, Levi Johnston says that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin "probably knew" that he was having sex with her daughter Bristol. Levi also tells Tyra that Mama Palin allowed the young lovers to sleep in the same bed at her home.

Well. As the Church Lady might say, isn't that special.

It's all well and good to scream and holler about how "the media" should "leave these kids alone," as Angie Harmon recently did on Fox News. But someone needs to tell these kids to stop doing so many interviews. I mean, Tyra? Really Levi? Why? If the reason is "because they asked," someone needs to point out to the young hockey player that "no thanks" is an acceptable reply.

Over at ParentDish, Susan Wagner writes that Bristol and Levi "clearly they haven't been getting very good guidance from the adults in their lives. It's our job as parents to help our teens mature into responsible people, and sometimes that means saying no -- to sex and to interviews." Funny how the advice from "the media" can be better than whatever these two seem to be getting from their own parents.

Source: US Magazine via AOL ParentDish

Image: FameCrawler

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Why Teen Girls are Taking Drugs Meant for Cows

JeanneSager — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:01:00 GMT

It's rumor and conjecture at this point, but Wisconsin health officials are taking seriously claims that a rash of teenage girls have taking drugs commonly used on cows to force their bodies to abort babies.

The kids allegedly got hold of prostaglandins, drugs used by farmers to regulate cows' heat cycles for breeding, and ingested them as "a cheap and easy way to end their pregnancies without their parents finding out."

According to officials, as many as ten girls ages fourteen to eighteen have owned up to the home abortion practice, and the American Veterinary Medical Association has gotten pro-active, sending warnings to practitioners about the usage and storage of the drug to discourage the practice from spreading.

Though the numbers are still small, that it's happening at all is clearly indicative of the fact that these kids are just that - kids. Shannon reported on the alarming spike in teenage pregnancies recently, pointing to the fact that at least half of American teens are having sex. Throw in kids' fear of being proactive with pregnancy preventions, and it's not hard to imagine how kids end up in this predicament.

They're having sex like adults. But they're still kids. And at the end of the day, they are afraid of how to properly deal with the consequences of their actions. They're afraid of owning up to their parents that they've made a mistake.

What should happen? It's really up to the kids and their families. Whether it's a baby given up for adoption, a baby kept or an abortion (pro-life groups are naturally using the news to once again decry legalized abortions, somehow arguing that legalizing abortions has actually encouraged these types of home abortions despite the fact that the legalized abortions means kids have much better options) is dependent on the family and their situation, but what's important is that these kids get the support of adults, adults who have the good sense not to feed their kids dangerous drugs meant for massive animals with drastically different genetic make-up.

But as Shannon pointed out recently, with abstinence-only education comes a lack of discussion about what happens when. . . and if . . . And pregnancies are happening, have always happened. Shrouding sex in mystery is not stopping it, but it is still putting our kids at risk.

Image: SFGate.com

Bristol Palin Tells Fox Mom's Got it All Wrong

KeriF — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:58:00 GMT

Bristol Palin went on Fox News last night to confess that she doesn't think abstinence education works.

Actually, what she said was, "Everyone should be abstinent, whatever, but it's not realistic."

When pressed for detail by mom's buddy Greta Van Susteren, Bristol told her, "Because it's more and more accepted now." "It" presumably referring to hot and heavy teen sex.

Unlike her mom, who seemed to be unable to refocus interviews when they took unwelcome turns, Bristol had no problem holding her own with Van Susteren, repeatedly telling her, "I don't want to get into detail about it," when, well, she clearly didn't want to get into detail about it. Sure, there were plenty of "likes" and "y'knows" sprinkled throughout, but hey, she's a teenager.

When asked point blank why she didn't use protection, Bristol replied, "I don't want to get into detail about it." She did say that she was not philosophically opposed to birth control. Perhaps Mom never had the birds and the bees talk with Bristol, or maybe Mom left out the part about everything you can do to prevent pregnancy? Sarah Palin famously stood her ground that abstinence-only education works, even with glaring evidence to the contrary.

So if abstinence isn't realistic, what will keep other teens like Bristol from getting pregnant?

"To see stories like this and see other teen moms," she replied.

Her advice? "Just wait 10 years… It'll be so much easier." Looks like little Bristol is all grown up.

Smackdown: I Don’t Care If My Daughter Has Sex as a Teen

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Progressive, feminist, supposedly sex-positive parents are, of course, pretty well united against the absurd excesses of abstinence-only education and the religious no-sex-until-marriage frenzy.

What continues to amaze me though, is how little the positions they do take really vary from the underlying values of the abstinence worshippers.

As a parent, I keep running into a nudge, nudge, wink, wink understanding that even though we know it’s not good to base policy on it, of course really we all want to put off our daughters’ sexual awakenings as long as possible (or at least until they’re out of the house). There are jokes about chastity belts and not letting boyfriends come over until age 30. Every once and a while I feel the urge to get out a calendar and check the year.

I confess that I don’t get it. Not a smidgen. (And neither, for the record, does her father.) I don’t think this is just a matter of my having a defective freak-out gene. I really think that this attitude is not in our daughters’ best interests.

Concerned and thoughtful parents like my colleague Shannon, argue that it’s not really about the squick factor. They think it’s important for their daughters to put off the confusion and emotional drama of sexual relationships in order to get solid in forming their own identities, to make sure that they don’t get distracted by serving other’s needs first.

It sounds good at first, but I have to disagree. It’s not sex that hampers girls’ development, sense of self, or progress toward a career. It’s negative, hysterical, sexist attitudes about sex. (And the unintended pregnancies, abusive relationships, etc. that follow.)

The self-esteem argument is really the religious right’s argument minus the God and marriage specifics. It says this: “Sex is such a god-awful big deal that it will necessarily consume you when it happens and so you must wait for some future time at which you will miraculously be able to handle it.”

I don’t buy it. Sex is a powerful force, sure, but we have a fair amount of control over how much power we really give it. Making it something dangerous to your very identity gives it just as much power as making it central to your very identity.

I think this attitude is partly to blame for teens continuing to mistake sex for love. It also still places far too much emphasis on the importance of the “first time,” leaving girls (and women) feeling attached to first lovers who don’t deserve a third glance (or feeling like failures for choosing a less-than-perfect first lover).

In its usual gender-specific form, this attitude also perpetuates the idea that girls can’t really want sex for their own reasons, that they must be succumbing to the media hype and trying to please someone else and they will automatically lose their sense of self in a sexual relationship.

(Yes, clearly, far too many girls are getting pushed into sex they don’t want. But telling them they should never say yes does not help teach them when/how to say no.)

Of course I also have to wonder why, if people think sex is such an overwhelming cognitive thing to get started at, the conclusion they draw from that is that it’s a good idea to put it off until kids leave the nest and are distanced from familial support systems and previous friends, have easier access to alcohol, are first learning to live on their own, and are facing academic and/or job pressure. Or, for that matter, until they are 30, feeling their biological clocks and suffering pressure (internal and external) to find “the one” and settle down.

Obviously I wouldn’t argue that everyone ought to start having sex in high school. “Ready” is a super complex and individual cocktail (and takes two). Not everyone over 18 or 20 is ready. Not everyone younger isn’t. But high-school does have some potential advantages: financial security, parental backup if needed, and some extra time to be processing, daydreaming (or angstfully writing in a journal). That could all actually form a safer place to experiment than newly adrift in the “real world.”

Of course we all use our own experience as a touchstone. I starting “fooling around” at 15 and having sex at 17 with someone trustworthy I’d been dating for many months and who served, as good friends and partners do, to help me learn more about myself as well as how to have a relationship. I made out with a jerk or two in there first and lived to tell the tale with my self-esteem intact. In fact, those early experiences gave me a very clear and relatively safe tutorial in the difference between attraction and love, flirtation and friendship, passion and trust that has served me well.

If my daughter has the chance to do the same—armed with the facts to protect herself and the solid knowledge that her worth doesn’t depend on her choosing one way or the other—it won’t bother me in the slightest.

Photo by Made Underground, via Flickr.

The Other Side:

Smackdown: Sex Before Twenty? Hopefully Not My Kids

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Study: Virginity Pledges Fail Big Time. Bristol Palin Declines to Comment

Cole Gamble — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

According to the research, 1 out of 8 teens will take a vow of virginity until marriage. Did you think the stat was that high? That’s means 1 of every 8 couples in America is having some very awkward, highly uninformed and unprepared post-marital sex. But virginity pledges aren’t about enjoying sex (‘cause that would be super sinful to enjoy your body). Instead, these pledges are meant to save youngsters from the dangers of sex with the fool proof abstinence method.

But guess what? It doesn’t work. At all. What’s more, virginity pledge takers are more likely to engage in dangerous sexual activity such as not wearing a condom.

You know abstinence is also the main line of strategy our outgoing administration has used to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Upon hearing that they could just stop having sex, all of the genocidal rapists primarily responsible for the epidemic must have slapped their collective heads and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

If you could tell by the tone of this blog, I see no point in virginity pledges and in fact find them dangerous. That’s is not to say I want my kids doing when they’re 13 and I certainly not going to encourage them to do it sooner than later. It’s just that it’s completely biological normal to want to have sex as a teen. When you stand in the way of biology you tend to get burned.

But maybe I’m way off. Do you think virginity pledges are a good thing? Maybe you didn’t believe in them when you were young and single, but now that you have kids of your own you’ve flipped your position. How wrong am I?

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Mother Blames Cervical Cancer Vaccine For Daughter's Paralysis

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:20:00 GMT

The cervical cancer vaccine can’t seem to untangle itself of controversy. First, abstinence groups worked overtime to block its widespread use, arguing that it would encourage premarital sex. What it actually does is prevent girls from contracting four of the strands of HPV that are responsible for the majority of cervical cancer cases in the world. Yes, HPV is an STD, but the vaccine has almost nothing to do with premarital sex. Since HPV is so easily spread, it is entirely possible that a girl could wait until marriage to have sex and then contract HPV if her husband had had as much as one sexual encounter before the marriage.

Fortunately, the abstinence argument against the vaccine has been mostly steamrolled, particularly in the U.K., where a government-funded program aims to save 400 lives a year by administering the Cervarix vaccine to 300,000 12- and 13-year-old girls. (In the U.S., the more commonly used, but very similar, vaccine is called Gardasil.)

But the program has gotten some bad—and scary—press recently, after a 12-year-old girl became paralyzed from the waist down shortly after receiving the vaccine at school. Ashleigh Cave’s mother, Cheryl, believes that the shot was implicated in her daughter’s illness, but doctors have claimed that the vaccination was unrelated to the sudden onset of Ashleigh’s dizziness and eventual loss of the use of her legs.

Although nothing I’ve read indicates that Ashleigh has been definitely diagnosed yet, it seems clear that she has Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis, and which has previously been linked (perhaps wrongly) with the cervical cancer vaccine.

13 girls are reported to have been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré after receiving the Gardasil vaccine in the U.S., causing some concern among parents about the safety of getting their daughters vaccinated. However, considering the total number of girls who received the vaccine and the natural incidence of the disease, 13 is within the number of people who would be expected to fall prey to Guillain-Barré just by chance. Doctors and health experts continue to assert that there is no reason to believe the cervical cancer vaccine is unsafe.

Still, it is only too easy to understand why Ashleigh’s mother harbors her doubts, considering that her daughter’s initial diagnosis was “vertigo and generalised myalgia, probably due to recent vaccinations.” I hope further investigations can set the public’s collective mind at ease.

Photo: straightfromthedoc.com

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Evangelical Preacher Urges Congregants to Have More Sex

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Addressing his congregation of 20,000, Rev. Ed Young urged his married followers to spice up their love life with some increased intimacy. "And when I say intimacy, I don't mean holding hands in the park or a back rub," the Texan evangelical preacher clarified. After all, Young reminded his flock, sex was God's idea in the first place.

More sex, Young has frequently argued, means that you "will perform better at work, leave a loving legacy for your children to follow and may even prevent an extramarital affair."

I think I kind of like this guy. As I've pointed out elsewhere, evangelical teens are more sexually active than almost any other religious group. This kind of open talk about hot sex in marriage is necessary if the church wants to keep teens committed to abstinence.

Young challenged his congregants to a "congregational copulation" (hot!): seven days in a row of lovemaking for the Lord. And the results, judging from the looks of Madeline and Rob Hulsey (pictured), were nothing short of miraculous. On the Sunday after the challenge was issued, Young's wife, wearing tight jeans and knee-high black boots, said that at the end of this "sexperiment," many of the congregants were "smiling."

As for single people, Young suggested eating chocolate cake. 'Cause that's sort of the same as physical intimacy with another human being....

Photo: New York Times

Evangelical Teens' Very Active Sex Lives

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, there's a cartoon that made me laugh so hard I spit out my tea. Although it's not technically Bristol Palin's unborn child speaking, it easily could be. Two kids are sitting on a stoop and one says to the other, "I was an abstinence-only baby."

An article by Margarot Talbot in this same New Yorker tackles the issue of evangelical teen pregnancy in a more serious vein. Even for someone who is already convinced that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work, these statistics are shocking.

Although 74 percent of white evangelical teenagers are opposed to premarital sex, more evangelical teens are sexually active than almost any other major religious group, including mainline Protestants, Jews, and Mormons. The average age for an evangelical to lose her virginity is 16. And half of these kids are not using protection. Compare that with 69 percent of non-evangelical teens who report using contraception every time they have sex.

The reason for this high percentage of unsafe sex among evangelical teens likely stems from shame at being sexually active—if you carry around condoms or suggest using one, you could give the impression that you are looking for sex. Furthermore, abstinence-only sex ed. teaches that condoms are not effective protection against STDs and pregnancy.

As we’ve seen in the widespread conservative support for Bristol Palin’s plans to get married and have a baby at age 17, for many evangelical parents, a teen daughter becoming pregnant is not a problem—so long as she keeps the baby and marries the father. This is a perfectly valid attitude based on a personal moral belief. The problem is that this retroactive problem solving often does not lead to happy families.

The states with the highest divorce rates and the highest teen pregnancy rates are all red (where people are, obviously, more likely to be evangelical conservatives than social liberals). The states with the lowest divorce and teen-pregnancy rates are all blue.

Many are arguing, even within the evangelical community, that if Christians want to preserve a commitment to abstinence until marriage, they must do more to encourage happier, younger marriages, since delaying sex until age 25 or 30 is just not realistic.

A large part of encouraging young Christians to have happier relationships is offering them more realistic attitudes toward sex. If hormonal teenagers are taught, for instance, that masturbation is sinful, they are more likely to have less engagement with and control over their bodies. Similarly, teen girls who are taught that they can always become "born-again virgins" if they "accidentally" have sex before marriage are not likely to embark on a responsible sex life. And such guilt-addled, unrealistic attitudes toward sex are likely to cause problems for couples well into marriage.

Photo: Mary Ellen Mark/The New Yorker

Could Sex on TV Lead to Teen Pregnancy?

Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Cole Gamble — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

This is a topic that’s not gonna get a lot of play from the Obama camp. People would call bringing a 17-year-old pregnant girl into a political debate just mean. I don’t care; I think it needs to be discussed because Bristol Palin’s situation launches a fiery hot cannonball right into the heart of Sarah Palin’s social policy: Abstinence training doesn’t work.

Sarah Palin will possibly be our vice president and her policy on teen sex is abstinence, which is no policy. Condoms, diaphragms and birth control pills are not the devil’s work. To not educate your kids to practice safe sex is to encourage them to have unsafe sex. That is not a message I want our second highest governing official passing to my kids.

This is the same ideological turd our current government took into the African aids crisis, suggesting Africans could cure their aids plague with some good old fashioned abstinence training. Not condoms or other safe sex devices, just sweet chaste abstinence. Thank goodness we finally bombed Africans with some rubbers or else we wouldn’t be seeing a drop in the numbers of newly infected.

But what about our children’s precious minds? If we talk frankly to them about sex and even provide them with protection they will become ruined people, sexual deviants of the highest order. They’ll transform into beings so brutally, nastily sexualized that their actions will make unicorns cry, right? Well listening to NPR the other day, I heard the words of a republican delegate praising the Palin’s composure during this delicate time for their daughter. The woman said, “I think the situation with her daughter just makes her one of us. She’s got problems like any mom: you tell your kids what to do, but kids will do what they do.” Um, thank you. Kids will do what they do and if you want to stick your head into the sand that is “abstinence only” training, then you won’t be able to see your kids running around having unprotected sex. Persistent ignorance is not good child rearing. I am not saying it is travesty that some 17-year-old got knocked up. What is a travesty is a 17-year-old running around having unprotected sex, in which there are far greater dangers than pregnancy looming, just because mommy and daddy believe teaching smart responsible sex is like offering your kid an apple from the tree of knowledge. It’s a slap in the face of human nature and responsible parenting. Please someone tell me just one instance, any instance, in which choosing to be ignorant saved the day.

Teaching abstinence is fine, if it’s a piece of the puzzle, not the only option. There must be some abstinence only proponents out there. Tell me I’m wrong. Please explain to me how abstinence only works, show me the numbers. Show me how being honest and open with your kids ruins them, because I need to know I am not just shouting into a void. So what do YOU think???

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Down with “The Herp”: 1 in 4 New Yorkers Has Herpes

Cole Gamble — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Hey New Yorkers, I got a fun and quick game for ya. Gather up three of your friends. Now take a good look at the circle of you. One of you has herpes. See, wasn’t that fun? According to the New York Health Department, over a quarter of the Big Apple’s denizens has got the magic touch.

Now you might be saying, “Oh they must be including cold sores as herpes.” Nope, that 26% number is all gential herpes. This is compared to a national average of 19%. Wait, what? Almost 1 in 5 people in America has Herpes? What is this, the seventies?

Whenever news of increased STDs or teen preganacies comes out, you find two opposing reactions. On one side, and I might add the side I reside on, people believe this is proof we need to be educating and encouraging our kids to seek protected sex. On the other hand, there is that constituency that clamims the only solution is to preach abstinence—a strategy that has been shown to increase STD and teen preganacy rates.

So c’mon New York. Give your kids the safe sex talk. And hey, NY, I still love you. I just wish I could wrap a big condom around you.

Photo: AP

Dads Pledge Purity for Daughters. Ewwww.

Amy Kuras — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:03:00 GMT

I don’t know why this phenomenon squicks me out so much: the father-daughter "purity ball." In which girls as young as elementary age and as old as college age spend a night getting dressed up and going dancing with their dads.

Dads, on the other hand, take a pledge to, as this NYT article puts it, "cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity."

Okay, I think I have figured out the squickitude: Why are these men taking ownership of their daughters' sexuality in such a way? If delaying sexual activity were the goal, why aren't these fathers as concerned with their son's virginity as well? Why is that the avenue through which they choose to get personally invested in their daughter's success or failure?

Have they heard of maybe coaching soccer?

What makes it difficult for me to completely condemn this is the stated motivations of many of the men who brought their daughters to the ball. Being a good example themselves, for one. Showing their daughter they cherish her. Being an involved father.

These are all things I can get behind, and I believe the studies that say having a close relationship with their fathers can keep girls away from too-early sexual activity and teen pregnancy. I have always been close with my own dad, and I know that helped me make some smarter choices than I would have otherwise.

But the "daughter's sexuality as father's commodity" troubles me. I'd think the last thing a young girl struggling with issues of sexual maturity would need is the idea that she loses her father's esteem along with her virginity. Or that her main value to her father is remaining "sexually pure."

Texas Sex Ed to Get Even Dumber

Amy Kuras — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:32:00 GMT

Oh sweet fancy Moses, tell it me it has not truly come to this. Texas schoolkids will devote a large portion of their health education classes next year to such topics as proving who their babydaddy is and how to get child support.

The target audience for this "Parenting and Paternity Awareness"" curriculum? 15-year olds.

This is the same Texas, mind you, that teaches abstinence and abstinence only in their sex ed classes. So let's just parse the message here: Don’t have sex. But if you do, and you get knocked up, which you will since we won’t tell you how not to, here's how to deal legally. Since if you're having sex you're too much of a whore to actually have a relationship with the father and will need to drag his ass into court to get what's coming to your kid.

I'll acknowledge this sort of information might be useful in many non-trainwreck type situations. But. Soooo much wrong with this. School authorities are willing on one hand to acknowledge high schoolers are having sex, may find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy, and need to be armed with this information, but on the other refuse to admit that maybe sharing birth control information would keep kids from having to face this kind of situation in the first place.

I mean, I went to a Catholic school and while we were certainly taught abstinence, our sex ed class included information about all the aspects of sex: relationships, decision making, self-esteem, values and oh yes, BIRTH CONTROL. And it was never assumed that we'd find ourselves having to haul a babydaddy into court.

High Rates of STIs Among Teen Girls

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:53:00 GMT

A national study found that one in four teenage girls has at least one of four common sexually transmitted infections: the human papillomavirus (HPV), Chlamydia, genital herpes, and trichomoniasis (a parasite). Although these diseases, if left untreated, can lead to cervical cancer, infertility, and pelvic inflammatory disease, young women could easily not know they have them unless they get regular gynecological checkups. You know what this means, parents: you’re gonna have to get involved in your kids’ sex lives. The chances that a 15-year-old is going to find a way to get to Planned Parenthood on her own are pretty slim. And the good news is that all of these infections are treatable.

Planned Parenthood weighed in on the survey, saying, “The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure.” Particularly lacking in this country are sex education programs geared to young women of color, who are disproportionately affected by STIs. The study revealed that the rate of infection among African American girls was an alarming 50 percent, compared to a 20 percent infection rate amongst whites.

The demographic that could be most instrumental in protecting young girls are a group to whom no parent would want to entrust her child’s welfare: teenage boys. As promiscuity becomes increasingly socially accepted at younger ages (with, for instance, a marked increase in anal sex among straight teens), it becomes more and more difficult for young girls to establish personal sexual boundaries. So I would strongly urge parents of adolescent boys to communicate appropriate, respectful sexual contact. Both boys and girls need to understand that the old teen boy rule of "Get as much as you can, as often as you can, from as many people as you can," could actually threaten lives.

Photo: msnb.com

You're Doing It Wrong: Date Night

Madeline Holler — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:34:00 GMT

You know "date night"? You're doing it wrong. Or someday you will be. This is what brain scientists are telling us and they should know, right? They're all in happy, sexed-up relationships.

But you like your date nights? You look forward to them? No you don't. And if not now, someday you won't. You're going to get sick of them just like you're going to get sick of your partner. (But remember, that's OK.)

So what can you do on date night to get sparks flying? Well, you're going to have to make some changes. Quit going out to the same restaurant, quit going out with the same couples. Find something -- anything new -- and go do it together.

From NY Times' The Well:

"...couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park." Yes, but won't the kids be pissed when they find out?

It turns out the brain likes novelty, and new activities stimulate the brain's reward system and flood it with dophamine and norepinephrine -- the chemicals released when you first fall in love and also those involved in drug addiction and obsessive compulsive disorder.

So couples in the study who were told to pace the floor together reported a lower marital satisfaction than the couples who were told to chase a ball while their ankles and wrists were bound. I'll bet they did!

Granted, this study was for older couples in their 50s, but still. Younger parents might want some excitement too!

Personally, I hate the term "date night". I also refuse to utter "girls' night out" but that's just me and my hang-ups with language. Both are worthwhile endeavours that I don't do often enough (calling babysitter right now ...).

Here's Why You Don't Have Sex

Madeline Holler — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:46:00 GMT

Sexless marriage got you down? Don't feel alone -- apparently 40 million Americans are in a hands-off relationship, getting it on fewer than 10 times a year.

Here's CNN's fix just in time for Valentine's Day. So quick! Take the TV out of the bedroom. Lay off the Viagra. Up those antidepressants. Forget about your thunder thighs.

The tips:

Make the bedroom a no-tech zone. Well, THAT kind of technology is OK. But no laptops, cellphones or Blackberrys. And no TV. Law & Order's Sam Waterston doesn't like threesomes.
Change your meds, including birth control. They could be zapping your sex drive.
Oh, but wait. The next tip is to take more meds. Because you're depressed. Or you have a thyroid problem. That's why you're not having sex.
Settle down. Your hectic life is zapping your will to love in addition to your will to live.
Quit aging -- the hormone shifts are wrecking your sex drive.
Quit being self-conscious (because you can do that on command ...)
Quit taking Viagra -- if you don't need it, don't use it.
Enough of the resentments! Talk about your problems. Get it out in the open. Then take off your clothes.

Anyway, happy Valentines Day!

Miley Cyrus Turns 15, Gets Birthday Wish, Still Isn't Pregnant

Kelly Mills — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:38:00 GMT

Miley Cyrus, star of the show Hannah Montana and idol of screaming girls everywhere, turned 15 on Friday. For those who don't know, Miley is the latest child star from the Disney "build-a-child-pop-phenom-make-big-bucks-and-then-watch- her-implode-by-the-time-she's-18" machine. Brit and Lindsay may later teach her how to crash a car and snort blow off a college kid's booty, but for now, "I'm staying pure" Miley celebrated her big 15 with, well, 15,000 of her hometown "friends." Yes, I suppose the result of money and sold-out shows and hordes of rabid pre-teen girl fans would be about 15,000 friends. Who I'm sure all continue to stand by you when you go into rehab.

Miley got a cake onstage and her birthday wish--~~a childhood~~ to be in Nashville with her peeps, working the crowd on her birthday. Her dad may now be stripped of his mullet glory but at least he gets a chance to bask in his kid's limelight glow. Miley brought him on stage for her encore, saying, "I'd like to bring out my best friend -- that just about says it all -- my daddy." I've never been into the whole 'parents-as-friends' thing but I suppose when you have 15,000 friends, you sort of lose perspective.

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Miley Cyrus Turns 15, Gets Birthday Wish, Still Isn't Pregnant