i overheard a discussion between a few of my children today. and that's what they are: children. most of them are only 14 or 15 - which is why it bothered me so much to hear this conversation.
one of the girls was telling another that it had been 3 months since she last had sex. the other girl replied that it had been 2 weeks and 2 days for her. one of the guys threw in his stat of a couple of months.
wow, really? i remember being in 9th grade. i remember being 14 or 15. i don't remember discussing casually in a classroom the last time i had sex. in fact, the couple of girls who were rumored to have slept with someone (at least the ones not in long-term relationships) were gossipped about mercilessly. the guys too, to some extent. there's always been a double standard there, but for the most part we seemed to understand that something that big was a little beyond what we could deal with emotionally. i think that what bothered me the most today was not the topic, but the blase way they talked about it. it was no big deal; clearly, everyone around them had had sex, so it was an easy choice for a topic.
i wonder if it has to do with sex education, or lack thereof. in the 5th or 6th grade, the girls and guys were separated and explained the basics of puberty and periods and whatnot, but in jr. high - in our gym classes - we had a whole unit on sex education. we're talking a 6 week, in-depth, mortifyingly detailed unit. we learned how and why people have sex; we learned the pros and cons; we learned about std's and issues that people have dealt with; we learned about disease and problems that can lead to death; we learned about birth and how it works and how a baby grows. basically, we learned that it was an important subject, one that had weight and needed to be thought about. i asked some other teachers at lunch (who used to work at k-8 and elementary schools) what kind of sex ed kids get now. apparently, they just get the hormone talk. i truly wonder if this lack of detail is part of what leads them to take sex so casually. i'm sure media and adverts don't help; and compounding these images on top of not taking sex seriously make for a very dangerous lack of morals. or even the concept of what morals are and how to uphold them.
two students i had two years ago are now pregnant. they're 16. there are at least 4 other girls i know of at school that are pregnant. it's not even a big deal anymore. a girl in my class got pregnant my junior year - it was a big deal. her parents had to agree to take care of her son while she was in school, and to support both of them. It was something that was taken seriously, whether or not you supported her. Now it's just casually mentioned. "oh, you remember sabrina from last year? yeah, she just had her baby." "hey, kelly's pregnant, did you hear? she and jorge are moving in with his parents." and it's not that there's a 40-year gap, either; it's less than 15.
are we really raising a generation of kids that have no concept of consequence? that scares me a little.
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