When Good Kids Have Sex by Katherine Gordy Levine Page A

doing should probably think again. Your watchfulness cannot ensure
     pregnancy prevention.
    Now, more than ever, the facts of life are linked with a fact of parental life:
     your control is limited and is, in some areas, nonexistent. You might be able to
     influence your child's decisions about things sexual, but you cannot reasonably
     hope for more than influence.
    Was life really easier, once upon a time? That's the myth, at any rate. Sex education,
     especially for girls, could be summed up in one word: Don't. Boys were supposed
     to try; girls earned respect by saying no. Then, according to the myth, everything
     changed, and virginity became an embarrassing burden, to be shed as soon as possible.
     Suddenly, the girl who said no was suspect. Then along came AIDS, so that even in
     the fast paced new century, the good girl vs the bad girl has not changed much.
     Girls who do still are seen by many as what were called in my day "Sluts" and boys
     doing the same as "Studs." Being a stud was an accolade.
    Boys are not so damaged by the double standard that sees girls as fallen and boys
     as doing what boys becoming men are expected to do. Sexual freedom has its hidden
     dangers for boys as well as girls.
    Fathers Don't Always Know Best
    Kelvin, with his red hair, freckles, and snub nose, looked like the kind of kid
     who gets caught stealing apples in a Walt Disney movie - mischievous, but good as
     gold. When he asked to speak to me privately one night, however, I learned that
     he'd been tasting another kind of forbidden fruit. His thirteen-year-old girlfriend
     had just told him she thought she was pregnant, and I was about to learn another
     lesson: new meanings of the old Double Standard.
    "What do I do?" he stammered, unwittingly asking a question guaranteed to irk any
     woman.
    "You do nothing," I snapped, "except help your girlfriend decide what she wants
     to do."
    "But she wants an abortion," he whined. "In fact, she says she's getting an abortion
     no matter what I want. But abortion's murder. It's a sin."
    "Kelvin, not everyone would agree that an abortion is murder, but you don't have
     a say in this. It is up to her." His eyes widened as if I had begun to molt. "Nature
     set it up that way. The baby is in her body, not yours."
    "It's not fair," he said finally, and he stomped out of the room.
    Thus was opened the door to many heated discussions in our household. Boys and girls
     alike had strong and diverse opinions about boys' sexual responsibilities. Some
     of my foster sons would say, "It's her problem," if a girlfriend's period was late.
     Some would affect indifference: "It's probably not my baby." But the majority worried
     just as much as their partners did about the possibility of pregnancy.
    Just worrying, though, was not enough, in my view. The boy ought to be willing to
     do something about the problem. That became one of my criteria for helping a youngster
     decide whether or not he was ready to become sexually active. Here's how I put it:
    "Most teenagers get more pain than pleasure from sex. Don't laugh. Just look around
     you. But if you really think you are old enough to have sex, I think you ought to
     prove it - I mean, get birth control, and use it!"
    Personally, I don't think the majority of teenagers are mature enough to handle
     sexual intimacy and its consequences. Certainly Kelvin and his girlfriend weren't,
     although he gradually learned to face the reality of his personal situation. For
     the record, he came to understand that he had to become sexually responsible if
     he didn't want to be partner to an abortion. He decided that obeying the dictates
     of his religious belief probably meant that he had to abstain from sex before marriage.
    Most of my foster kids were not eager to choose that option. And I myself do not
     believe that sex, however immaturely handled, is bad. Having sex is not on my list
     of the bad things good kids do, unless it is irresponsible sex.

Double Messages