Love
U 2 By Julie Baumgardner
September 2005
LOVE U2 By
Julie Baumgardner September 2005
Next month is Lets Talk month. Nationally, this month is
celebrated as a call to parents to talk with their kids about
sex and healthy relationships.
"Young people are seeing and hearing about sex
everywhere," said Marlene Pearson, author of the
four unit Love U.2: Getting Smarter about Relationships, Sex,
Babies and Marriage, a comprehensive relationship curriculum.
"In far too many instances, it is not being talked about
in the home where we have the potential to make the biggest
impact. Research shows that 45 percent of teens said
their parents influenced their decisions about sex most
strongly. How strongly a teen feels connected to his or
her parents is the key protective factor. If parents
want their young people to know how to approach relationships
well we need to be engaging teens in conversations about
issues that go beyond body based sex education."
Ms. Pearson believes that we need to shake things up a bit and
talk more to kids about the context for sex, and that is
relationships.
"I teach criminology at a two year technical college in
Wisconsin," said Ms. Pearson. "I have seen
many young people come to us with their lives thrown off track
early pregnancies, failed relationships, and so many young,
single moms. They get help in so many areas, but the one
area where they werenıt getting help was with their love
lives and those failed relationships have the potential to
derail everything else."
According to Ms. Pearson, we have separated sex from
relationship development and made it a health issue. She
believes we have to ask ourselves the question, "If we
could take away all of the health consequences of being
sexually active, would we still want our teens sexually
active?" Many would say no. There are so many
social, emotional and ethical reasons for teens not to be
sexually active, not the least of which is sex can always
create babies and teens are not ready to be parents.
A survey conducted by International Communications Research
showed that 93 percent of teens believe it is important for
them to be given a strong message from society that they
should abstain from sex. Almost 8 out of 10 girls and 6
out of 10 boys state they regret being sexually active and
wish they had waited.
"I see a lot of young people wandering without a whole
lot of guidance,² said Ms. Pearson. ³I believe we
havenıt even begun to help teens understand infatuation, the
purpose of dating, the benefits of going slowly or what to get
to know about somebody. Most have no idea how to gauge
whether a relationship is healthy and what it means to be
sexually active. I think we have to pump meaning back into
sexuality. If anything, the sexual culture has
emotionally downsized sex."
According to Ms. Pearson, we need to move from a narrow
health-based approach to talking with kids about sex by adding
a heart-based approach as well. All teens should know
some of the basics:
* Talk with your kids about the health aspects as well as the
heart aspects of sex. That means addressing social and
emotional dimensions of sexuality along with the health
dimensions.
* Place the discussion firmly in the context of relationship
development, love and commitment. Remember, this is
precisely what teens want to hear.
* Let your teen know that only 47 percent of teens are really
doing it, according to the Center for Disease Control.
Teens tend to overestimate the numbers of sexually active
young people.
* Share the experiences of other teens who ³have been there
and done that² and wish they had waited. Some of these
testimonies are the most powerful deterrents. It would be one
thing if teen sex was bringing teens everything they wanted,
but in light of the statistics above clearly it is not.
* Many parents have done drugs, shoplifted or had sex in their
teen years. Just because you did it doesnıt mean you want
your children to do the same. Our goal should be to help our
kids do better. Parents have to recognize that today it
is a totally different ballgame with regard to STDs.
* We need to do more to help teens understand what makes sex
beautiful and wonderful. It is more than a physical
connection. We need to help our kids understand it is an
emotional, social, trusted and committed relationship it is
fully developed intimacy. Quite frankly, those types of
relationships just donıt typically happen in high school. Our
goal is to help young people understand what true intimacy is,
how it develops and how that ultimately leads to great sex in
a married relationship. Sex too soon just simply doesnıt
deliver.
* Parents need to teach skills to negotiate the natural
pressures toward greater physical involvement. Help them
think through the many steps between the first kiss and
intercourse and what they want each step to mean and where
they will draw their boundaries. Talk with kids about
the pleasure and enjoyment of staying in the early steps of
attraction.
* We cannot forget about those teens who may have had sexual
intercourse, but are open to changing their behavior and doing
something different. Be supportive of them in their
efforts to change their behavior.
"Helping kids possess a compass values, goals and
vision for the future is one of the best things we as parents
can do to assist them in navigating the choppy waters of
adolescent relationships," said Ms Pearson.
Julie Baumgardner is the Executive Director of First Things
First, a research and advocacy organization dedicated to
strengthening families through education, collaboration and
mobilization. She can be reached at julieb@firstthings.org.
Julie will present several times at the Dallas Smart Marriages
Conference including a two-day post-conference institute that
will teach the Chattanooga First-Things First model for
Community Marriage Organization. > 911 Two Days
- Monday & Tuesday, June 27 & 28 > First Things
First: Community Organizing Certification > For anyone
working to create a community marriage initiative. Learn to
> implement educational, collaborative, media-savvy
strategies, change attitudes > and behavior and reverse the
epidemic of family breakdown with approaches that >
include: coalition building, research, fund raising and
marketing your > initiative. Receive a community organizing
certificate. $100 spouse discount. > For more info: http://www.smartmarriages.com/baumgardner.html
FAIR USE NOTICE: This e-newsletter contains
copyrighted material the use of
which has not always been specifically authorized by the
copyright owner. We
make such material available in our efforts to advance
understanding of
marriage, family, couples, divorce, legislation, family
breakdown, etc. We
understand this constitutes a 'fair use' of such material as
provided
for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance
with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed
without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more
information go
to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
|
