Category Archives: Parenting

One Stop Shopping

This week, experts around the nation are convening in Washington, D.C. to review grant proposals submitted for federal abstinence education funding.  There are still many misconceptions about what students learn in abstinence programs.  This week’s column is dedicated to a consideration of what we teach our students and how we teach it.

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Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 8, 2005

Comprehensive sex education…it’s being sold all over America.  The best thing about comprehensive sex education, we parents are told, is that it teaches our children everything.   That’s right…everything.

It teaches children how to say no…and then it teaches them that they can pleasure each other with mutual masturbation.

It teaches children how to say no…and then it teaches them how to put on a condom.

It teaches children to ask their parents…and then it hands them the address to the nearest clinic where they can get birth control and abortions without telling their parents.

It teaches children that some people save sex until marriage…and then it teaches children that marriage isn’t for everyone.

What is the true message comprehensive sex education gives our teens?  This is only clear when put into context with a real child.

In my first interview with an expert who had been teaching comprehensive sex education for over thirteen years, I came to the end of the hour totally perplexed.  “Safe sex”, perfect use, neutral values, healthy attitudes?  In a moment of frustration, I asked this expert about “my Daughter Debbie.”  What if “Daughter Debbie” sat in on your sex education class?

It’s a simple question, and I have tagged it the Ultimate Test Question for all sex education programs.  If you want to know what all the fancy talk and clever rationales mean, just ask someone about “your own Daughter Debbie.”

13-year-old Daughter Debbie

OK, so, what do you really teach?

What if my 13-year-old Daughter Debbie sat through all of your lessons on sex education and came to you as you were packing to leave with this question:

My boyfriend is at the high school.  He’s 16, and we’ve been talking about having sex.  It seems like if we use a condom we’ll be safe.  I’ve talked it over with some of my friends, and they’re already having sex.  We’re mature.  We know what we’re doing.  Everyone says if we use a condom that we’ll be safe.  I’m thinking I’m going to go ahead…What do you think?

In every interview with every adult who teaches comprehensive sex education, I have concluded with this question.  Not one of these adults would express any opinion to Debbie in answering her question.

At best, several said they would do a quick re-run of all the lessons and options presented.  They might encourage her to talk with “someone she trusts.”  I suggested that Debbie had chosen them as a trustworthy person.  They said she needed someone else.  I mentioned her boyfriend and her girlfriends.  Well…they paused.  And silence set in.

Thinking perhaps I had caught them off-guard, I suggested a possible response:  “As gently and quietly as possible, what if you told Debbie that ultimately she would have to make up her own mind, but that since she had asked you, you would have to say you would not recommend having sex at this point in her life.  Could you tell her that?”

“No,” came the quick reply each time.  “We don’t teach values.”

Most of these educators had been in “the business” for more than ten years.

Consider this additional fact concerning Daughter Debbie.  At 13, she and her sixteen year-old-boyfriend are considering the kind of sex called statutory rape in many states.

Can we really call it conscionable sex education to deny her the wisdom of our counsel—especially when she asks us?  “No, Debbie, I do not believe it is wise for you to begin having sex with your boyfriend.  Can I offer you some help in dealing with this problem?”

One stop shopping that sells children anything they want at any time in their lives is the core of the problem with sex education in America.  If we fail to place a value on sex, if we fail to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate, if we fail to make value judgments, then we have no reason to be surprised when our children become pregnant and infected with STDs.

One stop shopping…educators who give our children a free pass to do whatever they want when they feel they are ready to do whatever they want…and educators who give them the tools to do it…are they part of the solution…or part of the problem?

One stop shopping…if we tell Daughter Debbie that she can buy anything in the store whenever she wants and that we will write the check for her…then we shouldn’t be surprised if she buys sex with her boyfriend.

 

One Stop Shopping was first printed April 16, 2004

See Archives for more past editorials.

Pelvic Thrusts

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

July 25, 2005

All around me, body parts are in motion.  From the moment I push open the giant glass doors, give my card for the greeters to slide through the computer and head to the locker room, the signs of body action are everywhere.

On my left, exercise clothes hang from racks and are piled on shelves.  To the right, through shelves of protein powder, I watch a tall tanned woman approach the juice bar. Wearing cheap comfortable clothes and expensive white shoes, everyone walks at a brisk clip, their bodies tired with sweat and faces flushed from action.

This is not a world where I belong.  I am more at home walking down a dusty road looking for lizards darting through clumps of grass.

But I live in the hottest zone on the weatherman’s map…a red zone at this time of the year.  Not only is it scorching outside, but my body is doing things I used to see happen to other people…older people.

This is the year I must deal with the boxes in storage.  Either I get my body back into the work skirts and favorite designer jeans, or I pass them on to smaller, younger people.

Over the months I have found ways to delight in this stainless steel and polished glass playground.  Parents come with their children in tow because there is something for everyone: swimming pools, tennis courts, basketball, rock climbing, yoga and kick boxing.  In the weight room, there is a machine for every muscle I have.

I started simple.  Walking.  My pace is 2.9, my daily routine 30 minutes.  All around me, bodies are walking, running, climbing, rolling, pushing and pulling.  To pass the time, I close my eyes and imagine my blue mountain lake with clouds rolling in.

Time passes quickly today.  Finally finished and showered, I sit in the MegaGym lobby, waiting for my husband.  A big screen television entertains us.  Or should I say…Sean and The Babes entertain us.

Sean struts and bobs across the television screen, pointing and rapping.  Behind him the Babes gyrate.  Rap and gyrate, bodies in motion, bobbing and pointing and thrusting.

Honestly, I sit in a MegaWorld of body parts thrusting, and not one of them is a pelvis.  Except for Sean and his Babes.

A mother walks over with her young son, and they each settle into a brown leather chair.  Clearly, like me, they are just passing time.  For lack of something to do, their eyes turn to Sean.  He gyrates with a Babe.  He gyrates with another Babe.  Two babes at once.  And then they do a round of pelvic thrusts.  I want to cover her son’s eyes.

Sean bumps and grinds while his ten Babes get in a tight chorus line.  In time with the music, in unison they do pelvic thrusts.  A mother and her two toddlers walk behind me heading for the family locker room.  I am embarrassed for them.

I want to go to the Customer Service desk and ask why we are not watching a basketball game.  Or what about ballet, Nureyev or Baryshnikov doing power leaps across the stage?  Or swing dance?  Or ice skating?  Of all the wonderful things we humans can do with our bodies, in a MegaWorld that exercises every muscle known to man without needing one pelvic thrust…why are we subjected to big screen Sean and his Babes?

They lick their lips and shoot us sultry glances.  She against him, him against her…and her…and her.  A chorus line of pelvic thrusts, and I suddenly want this song to end.

Was it only half a life ago that Elvis provoked national outrage with one twitch of a nervous leg?  Yet, with a career built on body motions, I never remember Elvis doing one pelvic thrust with a babe onstage.

Pelvic thrusts are common fare in America these days.  Most people would consider them no big deal.  MTV and Internet porn have given us bigger things to worry about.

But, if little things don’t matter, I wouldn’t be here in the MegaGym trying to undo the damage of an extra ten calories.  Big things are grown from little things.

Elvis certainly knew what we used to know…this kind of body motion is a private thing.  On stage, performed by a crowd of people we don’t know, it degrades the very essence of what makes human beings special.

Customer service needs to hear from us.  We need to restore our sense of propriety that has been dulled by years of pelvic thrusts set to music.  Reshaping the soul of a nation, like reshaping the body, comes from attending to what matters…every little thing.

May 7, 200:   Thank You, Janet

July 30, 2004:   James Bond in Danger…for Real

NARAL: The Finer Points of Vulgarity

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

July 18, 2005

You’ve got to hand it to NARAL.  They really know how to get their point across.

NARAL Pro-Choice Washington wants to make it clear.  No ambiguous, vague, uncertain, unintelligible, nebulous, amphibological message from NARAL.  Absolutely none!

Do you want to know what the leading proponent of abortion thinks about healthy sexual behavior?  NARAL wants everyone to know!  Screw Abstinence. 

Just to make sure you don’t miss it, they scream at the top of their voices.  Throw your hands up and say it loud: “Screw Abstinence!!!”  They tell us at the bottom of their e-mail flyer to let everyone know:  Print Out Flyer & Help Promote Screw Abstinence.

This is not just political rhetoric and subtle behind-the-scenes lobbying.  They are throwing a party.  They are raising money.  And there is something for everyone at NARAL’s funfest:

  • A sex ed class for adults performed by Seattle theatre’s hottest sketch comedy group
  • Tips on Sexy Sex by Sex-positive purveyors of adult toys
  • A Screw Driver drink ticket
  • A Screw Abstinence T-Shirt

If there is anything good that comes from vulgarity in your face and over the top, this must be it.  We now know for sure and without a doubt, what NARAL values and elevates as their ultimate ideal for healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors.

For the past thirty years parents and health experts have agonized over the high rates of unwed teen pregnancy and the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).  Untold hours have been spent debating how to best educate young people on healthy choices related to sex.

Abstinence…purity…chastity…modesty…concepts of self-control and restraint have made a comeback.  But it has been a hard fought battle.  At every turn, there are opponents to abstinence.  Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and NARAL have worked hard to convince us abstinence education won’t work.

Now, thanks to NARAL, we know one of the major reasons abstinence education struggles.  It is mocked and ridiculed and rejected by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

The finer points of NARAL’s Screw Abstinence party are these.

They trivialize the very essence of healthy choices based on self-restraint and the medical realities of sexual behavior.

They flaunt the outdated term “Safe Sex,” mutating it into “Safer Sex” without one shred of proof that sex toys are harmless games in the hands of promiscuous people.   Safer sex?  Safer than what?

They model for adults over the age of 21 the foundations of mindless, medically illiterate objections to abstinence education.  NARAL doesn’t need a reason to object.  It’s enough to “Come, laugh, learn, socialize and buck the system at NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s Screw Abstinence Party.”

And perhaps the finest point of all in NARAL’s attack on the healthy attitudes toward sex by America’s young people is this.  When over twenty percent of children relying on the promises of “safer sex” get pregnant this year, NARAL will be there with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU to defend their right to sneak to the nearest abortion clinic without parental consent.

If abstinence education is challenged in its efforts to educate young people about healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors, we finally have the answer…in our faces…over the top…and without a doubt.  Thanks to NARAL.

February 5, 2005:   Sex Without Value

June 6, 2005:   Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

Love Affair with Failure

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

June 20, 2005

As big as it can be, a building size mural on our baseball stadium features four young kids suited up for a game.  It preaches success to every driver and the youngsters riding with them.  Get Active, Stay Tobacco Free.

MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving founded a campaign in the memory of a mother’s young teen killed by a drunk driver.  Schools post crumbled cars in the middle of high school campuses.  Youth clubs and police visits to schools carry one unshakable message to students.  Don’t drink and drive.

Drugs?  Teens are told in no uncertain terms.  Don’t do them.  Radio commercials not only preach to young people, they preach to adults.  Talk to your kids, ask your kids where they are going, accept nothing less than success.  What if a parent did drugs in their past?  The radio exhorts parents to separate past failures from teaching success.  To help teens get over their problems, you have to get over yours. 

Tobacco, drunk driving, drugs…we have no problem preaching success.  And then, of course, there is sex.

Medical realities have created the necessity to lead children to healthy sexual choices…abstaining from sex until marriage.  We are in the midst of an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, STDs.  One in five people over the age of twelve…the age of twelve…has genital herpes, a lifelong incurable disease.

Statistical proof has been offered demonstrating we can lead children to successful lives where they abstain from sex.  And students are showing that even when they have had sex, given truth and encouragement, they can redefine their lives with sexual abstinence.

During the course of ten years with abstinence funding and growing educational programs, we have seen teen pregnancy rates decline.  This should be good news and inspire us to be more determined in our efforts and more clear in our message…leading teens to success.  It should make television producers more responsible for showing the consequences of teen sex and for leading the effort to show sexual promiscuity as irresponsible behavior rather than the great American pastime.

Instead, PBS is spending American taxpayer dollars to preach failure.  It has ignored the hundreds of teens in the Louisiana’s Governor’s Program for Abstinence. Instead, looking for a preacher for failure, it has chosen one teen in Texas who actively opposes the abstinence curriculum in her school.

Shelby is a Christian teenager in Lubbock, Texas.  At age 13, she pledged abstinence until marriage.  But at the ripe old age of 13, Shelby doesn’t believe in abstinence programs.  She is the perfect person to preach failure to America.

Abstinence…it’s the healthy choice.  It is a message that is working, against all odds, against the rampant sexual filth promoted by television and movies, encouraging teens to make the healthy choice.

Just imagine what teens could do if PBS producers, parents, educators, movie actors, friends, family, and legislators actually believed they could succeed.  Just imagine what teens would believe about sex if they could hear adults in leadership roles mentor and encourage them to succeed.  Just imagine for one minute that there existed a PBS producer who believed that teens deserved the truth about premarital sex and used all their resources to encourage them to abstain from sex.

Preaching failure…letting a 13-year-old student speak for them…producers are taking the easy way out.  Success, they are teaching, is not for everyone.  It may work for Shelby, but it won’t work for her schoolmates.

Focusing on failure…letting a 13-year-old student direct their cameras…producers are pointing out how easy it is to fail.  And if failure is inevitable, then why bother exhorting students to succeed.

If students have trouble succeeding in maintaining sexual abstinence, we have no further to look than to the mentors who lead the way.  Why would teens have any chance for success if we found our message on failure?

August 20, 2007:    Happy Teens

September 10, 2004:    Duh

Recipe for Families

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

June 13, 2005

Growing up as a city kid, I lived on dreams of life on a farm.  Those farm kids were the luckiest.  They had everything!

Not until my thirties did I have a chance to learn about farm life from an expert.  Pauline, my co-teacher, had grown up on the picture-perfect Iowa farm.  Her strawberry blond hair was set in tight curls that bounced when she laughed.  And she was always laughing.

I loved to hear about cows covered in snow and five brothers always up to mischief.  But the best talk of all was food talk.  Her mother was the proverbial “best cook.”  We always looked forward to Mom’s treats arriving with Pauline on Monday mornings.

Pauline had had it all, living on a farm.  But, I soon learned that the trick of having it all was figuring out how to do without…when you didn’t have it all.  Living miles away from town, if you ran out of buttermilk, it was no quick trip to the store.

Smart cooks knew how to grab a lemon and squirt it into milk.  Or if no lemon was on hand…then vinegar.  If no vinegar…then cream of tartar.  And if no vinegar…well, maybe there would be a box of yogurt tucked in the back of the refrigerator.

It turned out that the best farm cooks knew how to make everything out of anything.  If you didn’t have it…then find something else…and substitute.  There was no end to what Pauline’s mom could create.  “Yeah,” Pauline laughed.  “She can even make apple pie without the apples!”

Apple pie without apples?  Pauline shared the secret with me over twenty years ago.  And I still can’t believe it possible.

Sure, I love Ritz Crackers.  The commercials are right, “Everything tastes good on a Ritz.”  But I would never grab a Ritz when I had a craving for an apple.

But, yes, there it is.  Online at AllRecipes, there they are…recipes of crackers, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Apple pie?

Now I can truly understand how a lot of sugar and cinnamon held together by wet crackers and baked hot on a cold winter night could taste good in the middle of Iowa.  And I can truly understand how a mother could dream up a quick answer for six children, when Dad asks, “What is this?”

Mom could tell them the truth, “These are cracker crumbs buried in sugar…Cracker Pie.”  And the kids would still probably eat Cracker Pie.  But oh, the creativity of that brilliant farm mother who looked at the row of eyes staring up at her and elevated the simple cracker.  Maybe her strawberry blond curls bounced and most likely her eyes twinkled as she answered Dad.  “This is Mock Apple Pie.”

Recipes give us what we want.  But no matter how close to apples one gets with 30 round crackers, if I want an apple pie, I will make it with apples.

Substitutes are good when we need them.  But they are still substitutes.  A serving of five-star Mock Apple Pie has 503 calories, 24 grams of fat, and 448 mg of salt.  That is a poor substitute for 255 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 132 mg of salt contained in a hot steaming slice of five-star real apple pie.

Substitutes may be just what we need to make it through the tough times.  But if we want a recipe for success, the best way to get apple pie is to buy apples.

Another Father’s Day is here.  I think of how important my own father was in shaping our home.  I am grateful for my husband’s part in guiding our children through the hard times and laughing with them in the crazy times.

Most of all, I pray for my son and daughter, that they will value the role of a father enough to build their own families with Dad in the recipe.  There is no substitute like the real thing.

Happy Father’s Day!

 

Mock Apple Pie:   http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mock-Apple-Pie-III/Detail.aspx

Apple Pie:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Pie-by-Grandma-Ople/Detail.aspx

June 18, 2004:   Me Jane…You Tarzan