Category Archives: Sex Education

Abstaining from Failure

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

February 7, 2005

There’s no better time of the year to look at what makes a winner than at SuperBowl time.  New England made it look easy. But Philadelphia gave no easy ground, and to the very last second on the field, and in the minutes following in the locker room, both teams showed us the character of champions.

We can take a lesson from the big league winners when it comes to teaching our kids about life and success.  Players like Bruschi, Owens, Branch, McNabb and Brady don’t rise to the top by accident.

1.  Game Plan for Winning.

Any good game plan is based on the fact that you want to win.  You don’t build success on a plan that says you plan to lose gracefully.

You make a plan to win.  You study the plan.  You analyze and revise and execute and analyze and revise and execute…according to the plan!  Winning is not an accident.

2.  A Coach for Winning.

Winning teams are made of people who want to win.  Top on this list is the Coach who inspires with leadership, encouragement, correction, and celebration.  Sportswriter Vic Carucci gives them proper credit, “Bill Belichick and Reid are two of the finest football strategists to ever don a headset.”

3.  A Respect of the Rules for Winning.

Belichick and Reid plan their strategies around the rules of the game.  They know football backwards and forwards.  They earn the “highest respect for their depth of football knowledge.”

4.  Heart on Fire for Winning.

Winning is the goal.  It is not a suggestion.  It is not something that happens because you hope it will happen.  Quarterback, lineman, receiver, defender or kicker…your heart is on fire for winning.

5.  A Team United for Winning.

Every winner stands on the shoulders of people who made it possible.  In three years, the trophy for Most Valuable Player has passed from Jackson, Brady, to Branch.  Each MVP stands on the shoulders of unmentioned yet dedicated players who blocked, received and kicked.  They play as a team. They win as a team. They celebrate as a team.

6.  Practice Unending for Winning.

Winning teams are built with players who show up for practice…on time…ready to work…day after day after day.

7.  Imagination for Winning.

Practice on the field is not enough to win.  Tom Brady is reported to call in the middle of the night, “Can you come up to my room? I’ve got a couple of things I want to go over with you.”

“I promise you while everyone else is enjoying Super Bowl week,” said outgoing Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis before the game, “two nights I’ve been sitting in my room between 10 and 11 going over the game plan per his request.”

Good players exercise the body.  Winning players exercise the mind.

8.  Accepting Personal Responsibility for Winning.

Brady is being compared to the great quarterbacks.  “He’s poised. He’s accurate. He responds to pressure. He deflects praise in victory as eagerly as he absorbs responsibility in defeat.”

9.  Regrouping from Failure for Winning.

A good team doesn’t always win.  But it knows what to do with losing.  When asked about their slow first half in SuperBowl XXXIX, Deion Branch said. “We went inside and regrouped, and figured out what we were doing wrong and had to capitalize on a lot of things.”

Winning comes from knowing what makes you lose. Winning teams learn and grow from each defeat.

10.  Accepting the Hard Work of Winning.

The Patriots are being billed as a Dynasty.  But they know they cannot rest on past success.  Sportswriter Pete Prisco sums it up.  “[Y]ou can bet the Patriots will forget any mention of [dynasty] by the time they report for offseason work in March…. Remember, this is a team to a man that doesn’t allow itself to look back.”

Football…or life…winning requires more than a game plan and practice.  Winning is a team affair, a plan to win, fueled by a burning desire to win, supported to the max by every single person:  player, coach, trainer, wife, and friend.

If we want our kids to succeed, we need to take a lesson from the pros.  Whether it’s drugs, tobacco, alcohol or sex, we need to create a society that takes winning at life seriously.  Our game plan must be fixed on a plan to win.

Winning in life is also a team affair.  It’s long past time we built a culture of support for our kids where the media, teachers, and parents are unified as part of the solution and not part of the problem.

The rules for winning make one thing crystal clear.  Our kids fail…because we fail to lead.

July 30, 2004  James Bond in Danger…For Real 

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I Think I Can’t….I Think I Can’t

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 24, 2005

Her question stopped me in my tracks.  “So why can’t you have a baby and go to college?”

I opened my mouth to speak, “Because….”  I stopped.  “Well, it….”

The modern proscription for a successful life in America is rigid.  You graduate from high school, you go to college and graduate, you get a master’s degree, and you begin your career.  Only then are you given permission to settle down and consider having a family.

The promise of “success” hangs in front of our nose, like the hare racing in front of the greyhounds at the track.  We have our life mapped out, no time to waste, and no room for detours.  But why?

It wasn’t always this way.  There was a day not so long ago when diversity was more than a political slogan.  It formed the very fabric of life, a patchwork of possibilities, a life of beauty designed around the varied circumstances of men and women.

Once upon a time, we took life as it came.  We planned.  But we also made allowances for the turns in the road, the detours and side trips that inevitably occur.  They were not evidence that life was over.  They were moments of creativity, unbidden opportunities to incorporate the unexpected into life and call it success.

Love wasn’t rejected until we had our college diploma framed behind the leather chair.  It came in joyful moments of surprise, and it was received as a gift.  Students in love got married.  If children came along, life wasn’t over.  It was extended.

Married students moved into married housing.  And if they became pregnant, the children were welcome.  Life was big enough to have it all.

Not so today.  For all the pride we have in our ability to plan the perfect life, we have created the ultimate rigid path that rejects life’s diversity.  If success is only possible as single men and women without children, then our fate is sealed.  Sex is recreation, relationships are void of commitment, and babies are unwelcome.

Thus, it is quite an easy matter for clinics on college campuses to sell young women the solution to unplanned pregnancies.  Abortion in college is just one more part of the so-called prescription for success.

Abortion counselors don’t counsel.  They simply latch onto our fears and reinforce them.  “Oh, my dear,” they tell young women, “you don’t want to drop out of school.  You’ll never be able to do it.  Here let us fix it for you.”

Sealing their fate, reinforcing the promise of failure, we withdraw support from pregnant women.  If they want acceptance, love, careers, and a future…they have only one path, one narrow path, just big enough for one person to walk alone, no babies allowed.

As a nation we are all caught in the fear of failure.  Parents push their daughters to abortion.  Boyfriends expect abortions.  And women have bought the lie.  They can’t be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a student…because we tell them they can’t.

When did we decide that the best life to be had is the life of a sterile woman?  What justification do we have for preaching the Mother Goddess in feminism even as we demand that she sacrifice the joy of mothering in order to move ahead?

Do you plan joy?  Or does it flow from your ability to accept the unexpected treasures found along the way…love, commitment, marriage, and family?  If humans were created to be parents, what kind of happiness will we find by denying our creation?

Babies are not the enemy…but only if we are willing to believe in the value of life and all that it brings.  What joy have we lost today by pretending that the best of life can be planned?  When did we give up on ourselves?

 

June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

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The Pregnant Elephant in the Room

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 17, 2005

It was a shocking statement to hear my friend Joan say, “I personally don’t think sex education is comprehensive enough.”  But she made perfect sense.

“Comprehensive” has come to mean “condoms and birth control” in debates about sex education.  Comprehensive sex educators insist on the necessity of demonstrating condoms and instructing students on birth control.  But condoms and birth control were the last thing on Joan’s mind.

She has spent years counseling women who sought her out to deal with the negative consequences of their abortions.  Their pain is easy for her to understand.  At the age of 19, over twenty years ago, Joan had an abortion, too.

“I was a college freshman when I got pregnant,” she recalls, “and my boyfriend insisted that I have an abortion.  He wanted to finish school and we would get married after that.  I gave in to his desires.”

Like so many young women today, Joan thought love was the focus of their relationship.  “I thought we were in love….I wasn’t disturbed by the pregnancy at all.  I was excited about it.  I really wanted the baby, but he put pressure on me….I didn’t want to lose him.”

Isolated at the time, relying on her boyfriend’s advice, Joan had the abortion.  Only later, after severe medical complications arose, did her parents find out.  But more important to Joan were the severe emotional consequences.

Her boyfriend was unable to handle her emotions and took Joan to see his family psychiatrist.  “His psychiatrist told me that he couldn’t see any reason for my depression and my grief and my regret…that I had done the right thing and I needed to get over it and get on with my life.”  Only two months after the abortion performed for his sake, her boyfriend left.

Not a religious person at the time, and unaware of fetal development, Joan still felt extreme shame and guilt.  “I knew that I was pregnant with a baby I wanted.  And immediately afterwards, I knew that that baby…I would never hold that baby.”

Eventually, Joan married and became the mother of two children.  Her life then was filled with “triggers,” moments when her abortion would come to life, and emotions would flood her.  “When our son was born, I just looked at him and thought, “He’s not your first child.  He’s your second.  And your first you gave back.  You don’t deserve this one.”

Striving to become the perfect, loving mother and to reclaim the pain of her abortion, she began working at a local crisis pregnancy center.  It was there where, working over eight years with pregnant moms and women who had had abortions, Joan found healing.  She learned she was not alone.  Her experiences of abandonment, shame and guilt were common among other post-abortive women.

Joan looks at sex education today and criticizes the failure to discuss the obvious…the pregnant elephant in the room.  “I don’t believe they talk about the consequences strongly enough.”  Condoms have a pregnancy failure rate for teens of approximately 22%.  “I believe,” Joan says, “that if abortion is talked about as a possible consequence to sexual activity. Kids might make a different choice about becoming sexually active.”

Even when abortion is discussed, Joan points out, “It’s been sugar-coated… ‘This is nothing more than a very simple, quick medical procedure, probably not as traumatic as having a tooth pulled.’”

While some educators have begun to change their rhetoric, Joan is quick to challenge their fence-sitting.  “Either it is a horrible heart-wrenching difficult decision with all of the implications of that, with the emotional damage and the reality of what it does to the child…or it is simpler than having a tooth pulled.  Which is it?”

Coupled with the lack of comprehensive discussions about abortions, sex educators offer almost no information on fetal development.  Over 138,000 abortions were performed in 2001 on women age 19 and under according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Often facing an abortion decision in isolation, teens may lack true knowledge about the stage of development of their baby.  Years later, when pregnant with a child they will keep and with intimate knowledge of fetal development, they often experience a delayed and traumatic reaction to their abortion.

Joan speaks openly about abortion these days.  And she calls others to do the same.  There is a pregnant elephant in the room, and we need to start talking openly about what to do with it.

The next time an educator promotes comprehensive sex education to you, ask them if they present the harmful consequences of abortion to young people.  Ask them if they teach young people about the development of a baby in the womb.  And if they don’t, ask them, “Why not?”

Joan is right.  If we’re going to be comprehensive, it’s time to start discussing the pregnant elephant.

 

 June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

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Condoms: Context Counts

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 10, 2005

Condoms have made front page news again this month.  They have been tested.  They have been ranked.  They have been inflated and burst and charted, from high risk to low risk.

Once again, our discussion of condoms is boiled down to a statistical “failure rate” expressed as a measure of “strength and reliability.”  These tests by Consumers Union will be reported February in Consumer Reports.

But buyer beware.  It’s not the condom we must worry about.  More important than the statistical reports of failure is the report of how…and where…these tests are conducted.  Context counts.

In a well-lit laboratory, one by one, a laboratory tech unwraps each condom and follows a well-rehearsed, methodical, and uniform procedure to place the condom on sterile lab equipment and inflate it with air until it bursts.  No STDs are present.  No sperm, no emotions, no shadows, and no youthful inexperience will cloud the results.

Using the context of controlled laboratory “perfection,” some educators want us to believe we can rest assured that condoms will save our children from the consequences of sex.  Touting statistics from laboratory tests, they say condoms “only fail” three percent of the time to prevent pregnancy.

If our children were stainless steel robots living in a germ-free laboratory, they might have a point.  But they aren’t…and they don’t.

In the context of real life, measuring the failure of condoms in the shadows, in the heat of the moment, to prevent pregnancy, the statistics demonstrate time and again that context counts.  Condoms fail to prevent pregnancy 13-15% percent of the time for real people outside of laboratories.  And if the real people are teenagers, the failure rate can be as high as 22%.

In the context of germs…bacteria…and viral infections without cure…condoms are a veritable catastrophe waiting to happen.  In the context of the real world, there are now over 25 different STDs, each with its own peculiar way of attacking the human body.

Speaking of only one of the 25 STDs, the virus that causes genital herpes lives on the body outside of areas covered by the condom.  It can be present on the body even when no symptoms of the disease are present.  This may help to explain why a disease largely unknown to the general population in the 1960s today infects one out of five people over the age of 12.

The context for condoms, considering genital herpes…and each of the other 25 STDs, is not mentioned by Consumer Reports.  It’s not their fault.  Real life doesn’t happen in a lab under bright lights with reliable machines and technicians.

The context for Consumers Union’s chart on condoms…in a magazine generally devoted to toasters, automobile radiator caps, and power drills…clouds the truth about condoms and why they fail.  Condoms are not mechanical devices submitted to uniform stress.  And when they fail, you don’t get to return the toaster for a refund.

The context for condom failure is magnified because it is the context of our life, here and now, and into the future.  Twenty percent of our adult population now lives with genital herpes.  Infertility now prevents couples from having the babies they desperately want, the result of STDs attacking the reproductive system.  And each year, in numbers equal to death from AIDS, women die of cervical cancer which is linked to an STD at least 97% of the time.

The context for condom failure is magnified because it is the context of human hopes and dreams.  Toasters don’t rejoice when they make perfect toast.  And they don’t care if they explode and burn up.  They are things.  Their failure rates are cold numbers without feeling.

Failure rates for condoms touch the human heart.  The context for condom failure, most especially for teens, is a crash and burn world where relationships last for months, weeks, days…or minutes.  If love was never present, we have taught them sex is sport.  And if love was present, it was the fleeting passion of youth that vanishes at the first sign of trouble or boredom.

When February comes and Consumer Reports hits the stands, step back a moment and remember.   Condoms that fail in the lab are one thing.  Condoms that fail in real life…that’s another thing.  Context counts.

April 2, 2004:   Sex Education: Spinning the Truth

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Teen Pregnancy: What’s the Problem?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 3, 2005

“Did you know? The only 100% foolproof way to prevent pregnancy is not to have sex?”

This is front page news heralded by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on its website home page.  Recognizing the significance of America’s problem with teen pregnancies, they have set a goal to “reduce the rate of teen pregnancy by one-third between 1996 and 2005.”  This is the final year…a time to measure success…or failure.

The National Campaign website goes to great lengths to explain the urgency of this goal.  “A basic tenet of the Campaign is that reducing the nation’s rate of teen pregnancy is one of the most strategic and direct means available to improve overall child well-being and, in particular, to reduce persistent child poverty.”

Connecting cause to effect, their website points an official finger at the cause of teen pregnancies…having sex.  Ah…well…yeah…mmm…but…well, then what?

So…you don’t have sex?  And you don’t get pregnant?  This is news?

Ah…well…yeah…mmm…but…sex…well…then…what?  You don’t have sex?  Forever?  A lump forms in our throat.  Forever?  No sex?

The problem with the problem of teen pregnancy in America is our reluctance to deal with the solution.  We get as far as telling teens to not have sex…telling them this will prevent teen pregnancy.  But we have yet to settle as a nation on the time when they get to have sex.

If teens are going to be willing to abstain from having sex, we owe them a standard for the defining time when having sex is OK.  When can they start having sex?

There is a long list of answers that have been trotted out over the years…you can have sex…

…when you’re in love

…when you’re responsible

…when you’re mature

…or my favorite…

…when you’re ready…to have sex.

For thirty years, giving teens approval to have sex at the moment when they felt responsible and mature and ready, we pushed teen pregnancy rates to an all-time high in 1990 of 117 pregnancies per 1000 girls ages 15-19.

Then a change began.  In the early 1990s, maverick trend-setting teachers, bucking the “truisms” of sexual “enlightenment,” began to teach students the truth.  Sex causes pregnancy.  And if you take this truth seriously, the only time to begin having sex is when you are ready to bear the responsibilities of being pregnant…giving birth…and raising a child…when you are married.

Doctors and legislators began to connect the dots between the cause and the problem of teen pregnancy.  In 1996, Congress allocated its first small sums of money to encourage innovative educators to find effective ways to teach this truth to students and to help them achieve success in remaining sexually abstinent until marriage.

In 2000, the last year reported on the National Campaign’s records for teen pregnancies, we can be heartened by signs of success.  From the high of 117 pregnancies per thousand in 1990, we achieved a low of 84 pregnancies per thousand in 2000.

Teens are getting the message.  They are responding.  But is this enough?

It is 2005, and we are reaching for the prize.  If we are to reach the National Campaign’s goal of a reduction by one-third in teen pregnancies from 1996 to 2005, we are looking at fewer than 65 pregnancies per 1000 teen girls.

If we truly desire to reach this goal, we must reflect once more with urgency on the messages we give teens about when to not have sex…and when to have sex.

When do we want them to have babies?  When do we want our children raising our grandchildren?  How many of us will feel blessed if our children are lucky enough to be unified with a spouse…together as mother and father, husband and wife…two parents who love each other and are committed to building an enduring relationship for the benefit of their children?

If we want to solve the problem of teen pregnancy, we will have to do more than tell teens when not to have sex.  We will have to set the standards for having sex…abstinence…until marriage…a good choice for this generation…and the generation of babies they will bring into the world.

August 13, 2004:    Only

October 22, 2004:   Bringing Poppa Home

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