Category Archives: Parenting

Stay the Course

September 26, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

New reports have been released, and the news is good for teens, their parents and our families.  The teen pregnancy rate in the United States has declined by 36% between 1990 and 2002.

Since 1990, when the teen pregnancy rate peaked at over 115 pregnancies per 1,000 females aged 15-19, the rate today has fallen below 75 pregnancies.  More good news follows.

While many preach the hopelessness of teaching abstinence to sexually active teens, the statistics prove otherwise.  Hopeless?  Among sexually experienced teens, the rate for teen pregnancies declined 28% during this time period.  It is concrete validation of what other research has shown…when teens reflect on their choice to become sexually active, they are more likely than not to regret it.

We have turned the tide in America.  We are on a new course, moving in the direction of healthy teens and a healthy future for our teens.  Yet, much work remains to be done.

Today, still, there are about 750,000 teen pregnancies annually.  The costs are staggering.

Sarah Brown, Director of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was in Phoenix this week to present an analysis of those costs.  For Arizonans, teen childbearing cost taxpayers at least $268 million in 2004…or $3,822 per teen birth.

Importantly, most of these costs are associated with negative consequences for the children of teen mothers…our next generation.  High costs for public health care, child welfare, incarceration, and lost tax revenue are all associated with children born to teens.

Add to this economic analysis the well-known costs of teen sex related to sexually transmitted diseases and the emotional and social consequences of being sexually active, and we know there is more work to be done.  The news is good.  It must be better.

When asked by her audience why other countries are more successful than the United States in preventing teen pregnancy, Sara Brown’s answer was straightforward.  In Asian countries where the rates of teen pregnancy are lowest, there is a strong cultural taboo against teens engaging in sex.  Not surprisingly, as these cultures begin to adopt western sexual standards, their teen pregnancy rates are rising.

Ms. Brown also expanded upon the need to restore cultural norms supporting sexual abstinence for teens.  She explained the importance of linking babies with healthy marriages.  The body of research today documents that healthy outcomes for children improve when they are born into families where mothers and fathers work together to raise them.

Can single parents be successful as parents?  Absolutely!  But when we consider society as a whole, we all reap the benefits of encouraging teens to delay sex…and childbearing…until they are ready to commit to a healthy, happy marriage.

Parents and educators are on a positive course correction.  Working together, we are restoring a common sense approach to sex, love, marriage and families…rebuilding a personal and cultural expectation that once was common place.

A lot of work has been done changing the course of behavior for teens regarding sex, but more has yet to be done.  Our message is on track.  Sex for teens is a risky behavior that produces unhealthy outcomes.  Or…said another way…for teens, sexual abstinence until marriage secures the healthiest outcomes for them physically, socially, emotionally and economically.

Our message is on track…our results are on track.  Now, we must stay the course.

 

June 5, 2006 – Kaiser Embraces Abstinence Education?

October 24, 2005 – TEENS AND SEX: How Many? So What?

 See Archives for past editorials.

Political Cures

September 18, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

There’s nothing like a political year to bring every possible cure out of the woodwork for every social and economic ill that befalls American society.  If America has a problem, there is a politician promising us a political cure to fix it.

Children in America are going to school without breakfast.  So politicians fixed this problem years ago by funding a national breakfast program, a fix that only works, as school nurses can tell you, for the parents who manage to get their children to school early enough to eat before the bell rings.

Children in Arizona today are waiting for taxpayers to vote on funding free pre-kindergarten health screenings for children up to the age of five.  Backers of this ballot initiative “contend that they are only responding to the reality of inadequate parenting.”

A current gubernatorial candidate proposes to fix high dropout rates…with a law extending the dropout age to 18.  This supposedly will fix the problem of aimless young people who lack the education and skills to help them become productive citizens.

At the other end of the spectrum, the same candidate has already put into place full-day kindergartens that keep young children away from home…and their mothers and fathers.   This is supposed to fix the problem of parents who do not have the time, money or interest in teaching their children the basics of learning and living that used to be taught…and learned…at home.

Around the country, mandatory sentencing laws have been passed to hand out stiff penalties to criminals, restoring safe streets and neighborhoods.  But this week in Hamilton County Juvenile Court in Ohio, Judge Thomas Lipps is delaying sentencing of a 15-year-old bank robber.  The “child” was convicted of aggravated robbery with a gun that netted $5000 used to buy drugs and toys for her and her adult companions.

Deliberating over “what is best for society and what is best for her,” Judge Lipps may choose for the “child” either prison time, remanding to the legal guardian, her grandmother, or assignment to a mental-health program.  Each of these options has been carefully crafted by politicians over the years as a “fix” for out-of-control teens.

And when these out-of-control teens graduate to being out-of-control adults, an entire system of prisons and third-strike-you’re-out no-release jail sentences attempt to bring a final solution to the whole mess…

…the whole mess, that is, except for the young children left behind, with fathers and mothers in prison.  Returning full-circle to where we began, these children will receive the dollars raining down from social programs intended to fix the fixes that didn’t work for the parents they don’t have because there’s a hole in the dike.

It might be hopeless except for the dedication of a class of politicians who understand that fixing the problems of society must go deeper than throwing money at the results of the problem.  We must look to the roots of the disease and plant our trees in better soil.

The once common understanding that secure homes are best built on the healthy, caring marriages of mothers and fathers rearing children together to become healthy, productive adults…this understanding is now being reinforced with a wide body of research that should be a wake-up call to politicians and voters alike.

We improve the lives of children when we build a social structure that reinforces healthy marriages.

We improve the lives of children when we teach them that the sex that produces babies belongs inside a healthy marriage where a mother and father are committed to each other and to their family.

We improve the lives of children when they understand that long before teen pregnancy becomes a problem, teen sex is the bigger problem that threatens their health and well-being…physically, socially, emotionally, and financially.

In every way that benefits children, programs and policies that support a restoration of healthy marriages and sexual abstinence for adolescents need to become the measure of a good politician with a plan that will truly make a difference in breaking the cycle of “problems that need fixing.”

Before you vote, be sure to ask your politicians…what problems are you fixing…and how?  If they cannot give enthusiastic support to policies aimed at strengthening marriage and promoting sexual abstinence, this is a sure sign that your hard-earned taxpayer money will end up hanging on the dead branches of a tree with rotting roots.

 

May 14, 2004 – Order in the Courtroom!

April 3, 2005 –  How’s It Working for You?

See Archives for past editorials.

Poisoning Childhood

September 11, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

She stands with her arms folded resolutely across her chest.  In the background of the photo, you can see playground equipment.  She is the mom protecting our children in this lead magazine article about the dangers of pest control spraying in the nation’s schools.

On the Internet, a website tracks reports of school pesticide exposure incidents.  In 1995, case #94415050501, records parents’ complaints that their children had been exposed to pesticides on the school playground.  One child in 5th grade broke out in hives.  However, medical reports did not substantiate any claim that the child’s hives were due to pesticide exposure at school. Investigators also documented chemical applications on a neighboring farm the day before.

Another website links dangers from pesticides to “hazardous environmental exposures” in general.  Their “Guiding Principles for Children’s Environmental Health” is a model of militant insistence on the right of children and adults “to know about proven and potential hazards to their environmental health and safety.”

This type of advocacy related to health issues, especially where children are concerned, has become commonplace.  In the 1950s no cigarette smoker could have envisioned a complete city-wide ban for smokers in public buildings and restaurants.

Food police are building campaigns to crack down on fast food establishments…in spite of the fact that no one is dragged through a drive-in against their will and forced to order a fat-laden super-sized order of fries.  If groceries go the way of cigarettes, one day we might be buying cookies with bold warnings from the Surgeon General printed on the side.

Thus, it is no surprise to read a top story this morning about a group of renowned psychologists, academics, teachers’ leaders and authors who say that “action is needed now in order to prevent the death of childhood.”

The 110-strong lobby group has written a letter to the Daily Telegraph asking that the Government intervene.  Without immediate action, children will “suffer irretrievable psychological and physical damage.”

The letter insists that children “still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed ‘junk’), real play (as opposed to sedentary screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.”

It is no surprise that they point their fingers at marketing forces for making children “act and dress like mini-adults.”  Sue Palmer, former head teacher and author of Toxic Childhood passed the letter.  “I think it is shocking,” she said.  “We must make a public statement.”

The news story headline pounds in the message…”Poisoning Childhood.”  It is reassuring to see the experts calling adults to account for the welfare of children.  Then, again…

With health at the top of every agenda in public policy and the media, one must wonder why there is one health epidemic that is being shoved under the rug as part of a campaign of political correctness.

A child chooses a snack food laced with trans fats, and we call for the jailing of corporate executives.  A child chooses to have sex, with or without a condom, and we herald her as a “responsible” and “mature” person who is “finding her sexual identity.”

We pinch out cigarettes across the room because we don’t want junior to be brain damaged by second-hand smoke.  Then, at school, as part of a liberated sex education program, we hand out the address to the local abortion clinic where kids can get tested for one of the 25 rampant sexually transmitted diseases, some of them fatal…all under the shield of confidentiality…out of the purview of parents.

Go figure.  Poisoning childhood?  Maybe if someone could link trans fats to sexual dysfunction, our children might have a fighting chance at entering adulthood with their health and well-being in tact.

On the other hand, perhaps it is time for adults to attend to teen sex with the same intensity they give to cigarettes in the next room.  We are poisoning childhood, and it is time to stop.

 

July 10, 2006 –  How Young Is Too Young?

 See Archives for past editorials.

Fear-Based Sex Education

September 4, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Much has been said about fear-based sex education in the past few years.  And I finally think I have figured out what they are talking about.

Yes, there is a lot of fear out there in the world of sex education.  It literally leaps off the pages of newspapers as editors willingly print the sound bites fed to them by people who are afraid of abstinence education.  One gigantic fear, built on lots of big, big fears:

  • Fear of admitting to differences between men and women…hormonal, physical, and emotional differences.  Any hint that men and women see sex and relationships from different perspectives is denounced as stereotyping the sexes.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on fetal development.  Any hint that students might think the “blob” inside the womb is a baby…this is denounced as teaching a moral value.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on failure rates of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.  This is denounced as too much information.  Fear-mongers prefer to wrap up all this information into one vague promise called “protected sex.”
  • Fear of typical use rates about the real failure rates of condoms and contraception.  This is denounced is the wrong type of information.  Fear-mongers prefer teaching the laboratory rates of failure which occur when a stainless steel machine wears a condom installed carefully by a dispassionate lab tech under bright lights.
  • Fear of defining sex as absolutely inappropriate for youth.  Instead, fearing to set a line in the sand, these “sexperts” have decided to let children decide for themselves when they are ready for sex: “Are you ready to have sex, dear?  Go ahead and think about it.  You decide.  Don’t ask me.  Are you mature enough?  You are mature enough when you think you are mature enough.  Don’t ask me.”
  • Fear of scrutiny on sex education lessons such as those that promote mutual masturbation, redefined as outercourse (as opposed to intercourse)…fear of parents and medical experts exposing this type of “education” as a violation of sound judgment and medically accurate truths about its high-risk nature.
  • Fear of concrete language which sets unambiguous standards based on unambiguous information about healthy sexual behaviors.  Instead, fearing fear itself, they prefer to hide behind vague, undefined terms such as saf-er-er-er-er sex…and “protected sex”…and the all-important “responsible sex,” terms that children, once again, are left to define for themselves.
  • Fear of letting parents have control of the health and well-being of their own children, these advocates of saf-er-er-er-er sex prefer to hide behind “confidentiality”.  This conveniently allows them to provide STD testing and abortions to students, without the knowledge of parents, never having to deal truthfully with what happens when saf-er-er-er-er sex is not saf-er-er-er-er sex.

And finally…when all else fails…the champions of fear can scrape all the way down to the bottom of the barrel of their fears and dredge up fear of religion.  They make sexual intercourse into a religious value.  They make marriage a religious issue.  They make everything a religious issue.  And not just any religion.

Tapping into the deepest fear of Americans, these fear-mongers promote the idea that supporters of abstinence education are members of a draconian conspiracy conceived by Catholics and adopted by Protestants to teach religion, to have kids genuflecting before they graduate.

Yes, fear is rampant in public discourse about sex education.  Afraid that their version of liberated sex will be revealed by medically accurate information as a threat to the health and well-being of young people, fear is the major tool used by those who spend every waking and sleeping moment figuring out ways to derail, disembowel, and disenfranchise those who support abstinence education programs.

The greatest fear of those who promote fear-based sex education is that the truth will get out.  Waving their arms, like scoundrels crying “fire” in a crowded theater, they are hoping parents and legislators will close their eyes and run away from abstinence education, in a mindless panic.  But, in the light of thoughtful discourse, truth will endure.  It always does.

Abstinence education promotes healthy attitudes about sex for young people, attitudes and behaviors founded on medically accurate information about sex and healthy relationships.  Abstinence education advocates that sex be reserved for a time in life when it will produce the healthiest outcomes for our children…and their children…sex at the right time, for the right reasons, with the right person.

If this is a message that generates fear, then you have to wonder if these fearful “sexperts” deserve the right to teach our children.

 

July 17, 2006 –  Curing a Disease that “Wasn’t”

 See Archives for past editorials.

Starting With the Back Page

August 28, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Two and a half inches, the letters on the top of the front page reach out and grab passers-bys on the college campus. NEW TIMES.

Although it proclaims its Times as NEW, the paper is actually over 35 years old, a living legacy from the Age of Aquarius when I used to grab copies on my way to Psychology 101 on the campus of Arizona State University.  Back then, the cultish paper made its name as a counter-cultural option to the staid, traditional big city newspapers like The Arizona Republic.

Now, just one more cultural mainstay, the New Times holds onto its liberal traditions while setting standards of journalistic excellence envied by the mainstream press.  This week, the cover story is about a Phoenix cathedral built by nationally-known Pentecostal preacher Neal Frisby.

Sarah Fenske’s story on the stunning Capstone Cathedral belies the newspaper’s reputation as a stronghold for liberal politics. From page 14 to page 33, Ms. Fenske details a 30-year history of family, fortune and religion, with the thoughtful journalistic judgment needed to tease out truth from interviews with a series of rivals in religious conflict, fueled by family strife and hidden in sealed court documents.

It’s the kind of story that might earn Ms. Fenske a well-deserved award.  The NEW TIMES boasts its share of coveted awards in journalism won through the years.

Still, respectability is married to the avant-garde.  This is the Back 2 School issue.  A special pull-out section targets the nearly 60,000 students who inhabit the 700 acre Tempe campus of Arizona State University.  College coeds are told to “forget all that ‘The Wall is Your Canvas’ crap.”  Dry erase boards on dorm room doors are clearly “childish and unattractive and frankly very 1967.”  Opposite the article, an ad by Vince Lentini screams from the top, “Make Sure Your Stuff is Insured!”

Under Vince, a female beauty is tightly laced up in a red bustier.  Holding a slice of watermelon, she winks at the reader.  Bold font tells you It’s Just Sooo…Juicy!  Only a careful reader who can tear away from the buxom beauty will be able to tell that this is an add for Juicy Jav’s flavored rolling paper available at “your local Convience [sic] Store or Smoke Shop.”

Triangles is “your one-stop bikini shop.”  One page over, an apparently serious article on Higher Education quickly launches into its real topic…reading, writing, and (hic!) drinking games.

The article’s intro makes it plain.  “Some people actually attend college to learn something, to ensure their future and advance their eventual careers.  For the rest of us, college is all about cocktail hour.  Here, then, are lesson plans for the serious-minded drinker: a primer to the hottest drinking games being played on campus this semester.”

Games called Movie Star, A**hole, Name Game, Fuzzy Duck, and Quarters rely on hooch, rotgut, filthy language, scotch, wine and tequila.  Make sure you have a couple of college coeds.  Victory comes when the winner, depending on the ‘game’ ends up vomiting, passing out, or barfing.  Winners in the Name Game are announced the following day, depending on who has “the worst hangover.”

Appropriately, burlesque lingerie is advertised on the facing page…with a dancer discount!  Turn the page, and the full page Bud Light ad seems incredibly tame, two brown bottles… splashes of icy cold water…Always Worth It.

If one makes it through 140 pages of the New Times, they may not be sober enough to read the back page.  But will they care?

After all, there are no buxom beauties, and all of the 85 adds on the back page are written in small font.  Marijuana Lawyer, sympathetic expert trial attorney, Cocaine Anonymous.  STOP Foreclosure!  Don’t WAIT!  WITHDRAWAL…FREE DETOX…FROM ANY ADDICTION.  Bankruptcy 4Less.  $200…and more… 

Paternity and Infidelity Testing…30% discount with this ad.  HIV 10 Minutes♦$69.  STD Doctor-Viagra-Cialis-Levitra.  Criminal & DUI…Little or $0 Down.  Vehicle Cash Loan.  All Accidents & Serious Injury. 

The times are not really new.  And neither are the consequences of bad choices.

If your student is entering college this year, it might be worth getting a copy of the college newspaper to read with your precious child.  Just remember to start reading from the back page.

 

September 5, 2005  – The Gift of Fear

August 27, 2004  – Is Your Child Ready for School?

 See Archives for past editorials.