And HERE'S WHY.
A "father-daughter PURITY ball?" Ick. Ick. Ick.
I want my adolescent kids (one is, two are not yet) to know what they need to know about sex and their own values and staying safe. I want them to respoect their own bodies, their own emotional needs, and be kind to others. I want them to be safe, healthy and happy. I do not want sex to be a big, scary, secret something to them.
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32 comments:
When I was growing up, 16 was considered a good age to begin letting your teen start dating, in the small town where I lived. My mother had this great idea--which I think she heard somewhere--that the dad should be the first one to take the daughter out on a date. So, that's what happened. But since it was my mom's idea I don't think my dad was all that crazy about it, but he was the passive type who did what she thought they should do. But he couldn't even bring himself to "ask me out"--he sat there hemming and hawing and drawing pictures of the restaurant he wanted to take me to! This idea was supposedly to show me the way that a date was supposed to treat me. I can think of LOTS of better ways to do that.
In retrospect, perhaps having a date with my dad was a good precursor to my first real date, whom I found out later is my 3rd cousin. :-P Really, dating and me didn't mix well until I went away to college.
Don't misunderstand; I'm all for very involved fathers. I think dads are very important, particularly in helping teenage girls figure out how they want to relate to men. But the whole "purity pledge" thing - a girl making a formal vow to her father to her father is all a bit too Talibanesque to me.
Let me get this straight...
Jesus holds my hymen's ownership papers.
BUT, Daddy can watch over "it" for "safe-keeping" until he passes the proverbial paperwork to my husband?
Leave it to The Religious Right to find a way to make sex creepier and more distubing than most any porn site.
becky
PS Even if there was a mother-son purity ball, I don't think I'd subject Willie. It seems a good way to create a 21st century Norman Bates.
Ew!
The whole Purity Ball thing seems incestuous and a way to set up girls to think that someone else has to be in charge of them, which seems to me to be a prelude to accepting abusive relationships down the line.
Sounds like one of those weird Waco-esque cult traditions.
I do remember reading an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow, where she said that her father took her to Paris because he wanted her to first visit Paris "with a man who would always love her." I think that's sweet. Making a virginity pledge to your father? That's creepy.
With over a million abortions each year, schools flooded with pregnant girls, some as young as 12, what is your suggestion for stopping it. At least this is an effort to halt the ruination of young lives. If you are so damn smart, give a better way to at least recognize and make some effort to halt this, instead of smart ass remarks.
The rate of teen pregnancy is lower now than at any time in the 20th century. Did you know this?
I think sex education that gives young people facts, not fictions, would work, for starters.
Be open. Be honest. Explain to them why they have sexual feelings and give them practical advice to how to deal with those feelings. Do some role-playing where the kids talk about a dating or other scenario where they might be tempted.
Parents need to start teaching their sons that girls are not there for the purpose of having sex with them.
Parents, stop your kids from listening to misogynistic music.
When you watch TV with them, talk about the values presented in the programs, and whether or not they match the values you want your child to learn from you.
Parents, teach your daughters their existence is not based on pleasing men.
That would work for starters.
I am a Christian, I am a mother of teen girls, I am a high school teacher. Purity pledges are great, but not functional. I always teach abstinence is best until marriage, but I also arm my children with FACTS. I know as an educator that teens are experimenting; I do not want my teen to learn about sexual details from Avril or Britney Spears, or Ms Popularity of the high school.I know that I will not be with them when it comes time to make this decision. And even though I hope they choose to wait, I can't make that decision for them. I have always taught them that sex is a gift from God to bring a married couple as close as two people can be. But it is not dirty or a big secret.My husband makes certain to take the girls out to eat, to ball games, and buys them flowers. He made the decision long ago that "no 16 year old boy is going to be the first to say I love you or give them flowers". But I think it would be embarrassing to pledge their virginity to their father until they get married. They don't want to discuss sex with him at all.
Hey, if it feels good .... Do it.
YUCK! Christian Propaganda at its worst.
This notion that sex is something only boys want and girls have it to give, so the girls need to fight off and slap down the boys until marriage doesn't work. It messes up girl's heads about sex and desire.
Pledging purity and virginity to daddy (ecch!) is an unrealistic message to send to girls, it keeps them in the dark from the their real sexual feelings that biology provides when we are attracted to each other as adolescents, and how enjoyable sex is for both genders.
We need to send a better message to both our sons and daughter that there is nothing wrong with girls wanting sex as much as boys do.
I do not believe there is anything ***DE FACTO*** wrong with "teens" having sex. A 13 year old is a teenager, but so is a married 19 year old.
And then there are many, many shades of gray in between.
Should 13 year olds be having sex? Nope. But what about a mature 17 year old in love with someone she's been dating for a while? That one is less clear. But they are both "teens."
Becoming sexually active is a big decision, but it's a positive one when the time is right. That time is different for different people at different ages. There is no magic date at which people are suddenly "ready" to have sex. Turning 20 doesn't automatically make you more or less emotionally mature.
"Teen sex" is a pejorative term without any basis.
However:
"Unready for sex" is no good.
"Unsafe sex" is bad.
"Pressured into having sex" is really awful.
By the way, the age group with a really skyrocketing STD rate these days is.... old people. The elderly. Maybe all those old folks need to have a purity ball.
(Which reminds me, the word "purity" in this context suggests that there is something dirty or unclean and "impure" about sex. That's just wrong.)
I don't want to see anyone, of any age,
Katie, you are absolutely right; the term "teen" is misleading. A 13 year old is totally different from a 17 or 19 year old. I also don't think just because the 20th birthday is crossed a person is ready to start having sex. I think it is just plain wrong to teach girls that it is up to them set the standards, and that they shouldn't be sexual beings. We are all sexual beings who recognize pleasure as very young children but are taught to push those feelings down. Instead, we should teach children when and where and when those feelings are acted upon.My brother's then two year old discovered that it was pleasurable to play with his penis. But he was doing it at the dinner table. My brother told him,Kevin if you want to do that go to your room; if you want to eat stay at the table. He went to his room! I just about died laughing when he told me this story.But I was proud of my brother for not making this a big deal or punishing his boy for a natural behavior.
But Mia, for millenia, the standard for marriage has been stuff like when the 14 or 16 year old girl's father wanted her married off.
Feelings are a perfectly reasonable standard for when to have sex, as long as the feelings are accompanied by the knowledge and ability to protect one's sexual/physical health.
But Mia, for millenia, the standard for marriage has been stuff like when the 14 or 16 year old girl's father wanted her married off.
Feelings are a perfectly reasonable standard for when to have sex, as long as the feelings are accompanied by the knowledge and ability to protect one's sexual/physical health.
I must really be overworked today because my first thought was that this Purity Ball was a Magic 8 ball spinoff.
Should I have sex? Ask again later!
The idea of a father owning his daughter's sexuality is medieval.
Katie,
You want your kids to be "safe, healthy, and happy." So do I. And you don't want sex to be a "big, scary, secret something." Nor do I. I don't see why you think encouraging abstinence is contrary to those goals.
I think the purity ball idea is creepy too, but I still hope my kids will wait until marriage, as their parents did. There's nothing secret or scary about sex in this house. My 11, 12, and 15 year olds can and do ask their parents anything. Because we have always responded candidly and without embarrassment since they were very small, they aren't self-conscious about these topics. I spent an hour recently telling my two boys the changes they can expect from puberty, at their request.
We also talk about why our faith teaches that premarital sex is wrong, and we talk as well about the practical reasons that it is a bad idea (e.g. disease, pregnancy). I don't think promoting abstinence has to involve secrecy, embarrassment, guilt, ignorance, or fear.
Leslie-
It sounds like we pretty much have the same views on how to approach teaching our kids about sex except I don't care if they wait until marriage. Marriage isn't a benchmark for me or our family's values when it comes to sex. Other things are those benchmarks for me.
But I think the way abstinence teaching is described in the article to which I linked is creepy, sexist and dishonest. That doesn't mean the way YOU teach it is necessarily that way.
:-)
PS: Do you know my new neighbors?
I think that it's the father/daughter aspect of the whole thing that bothers me.
While I firmly believe that a father can and should have a part in every aspect of a child's development, I believe that this notion that a girl's virginity is not a decision made unto herself, but involves not just her parent, but her MALE parent, is harmful, scary and wrong.
Doesn't it, just on the surface, smack of a whole Humbert/Lolita thing? It's not that a father should not be privvy to the choices that his young daughter makes, but don't these "purity pledges" encourage a preoccupation with the girl's interest in sexuality? It just seems inappropriate to me.
I grew up in rural Indiana, so I feel comfortable in making this statement: the fundamentalist girls that I grew up with all took some variation of this "purity pledge." Some had the ring and the whole bit, like Jessica Simpson did. And without fail, those "purity girls" were those who were very wild, sexually speaking. There were teenaged pregnancies, hushed-up abortions, STDs, date rapes...it would have been funny, had it not been so tragic.
I always thought, even when I was a teenager myself and becoming into my own sexually, that "purity" was a pretty stupid thing for a father to be worried about when it came to his daughter. How about an "intelligence" pledge? How about "sincerity," or "charity"? How about a pledge to be the best person that she knows how to be? To live her life without prejudice or racism? To live a life where education is valued, and muddle-headed voodoo isn't?
Of course, it also underscores the notion that, when all is said and done, women are chattel to be "given away" by the one male to the other male at the wedding. I was always uncomfortable with that idea. When I myself got married, I didn't want to be given away, until I realized that my father would have been heartbroken if he didn't walk me down the aisle. I'm glad I agree...Dad died three years later, and very suddenly at that.
Still, even being his "chattel," I am quite certain that my father truly did believe that ours was a "white wedding," and that I had no plans to consummate my relationship with Ken...ever. Sure, he knew that wasn't reality...and he would always be there for me...but he would have never been interested in one of those little pledges. I think it's because my father respected me far too much for something like that. I didn't need some stupid meaningless pledge to be responsible. I was responsible because he raised me right.
Katie,
Yes, I do know your new neighbors quite well! We go to the same church and we were in a family prayer group together for over two years. So we are pretty close. :-)
I'm looking forward to seeing the inside of the new house--I've already driven over to see the outside and to figure out how far away it is from here (exactly one mile). I know they were really hoping it would be a friendly neighborhood so they are happy you and the kids are there!
I must admit that I am surprised by the narrow minded liberal bias exhibited by some of the posters here. It is the parent's duty to protect children from the dangers of society. Sex or marriage before the age of 20 is, except in very, very rare instances, a dangerous situation. It exposes children to incremental risk in the areas of mental, physical and emotional health. We can't stop our teens from having sex but we should always encourage them not to. Why not? As a strong Latino woman, I feel it is my duty to step in where my men (there have been several) have fallen short. This is one way I can do that.
you go girl!!! I like what you have to say Lydia. it is extremely faulty logic to go from "some teens will not heed the abstinence message" to "well we need to assume none will and behave in ways that send the message that sex is expected"> I grew up in this type of uber liberal environment and you know what? i did NOT want to have non marital sex HOWEVER I got the message, perhaps not spoken but implied from all angles, that there was something seriously wrong with me if I wasnt out "doing it". now you want to talk about "leading to disaster..."
Given the fact that 50% of all marriages in the United States fail, I cannot see how anyone could use it as a benchmark for anything.
I say this as a woman who just celebrated her 10-year anniversary, by the way.
It's ridiculous, I think, this idea that a woman must "wait before marriage." It's antiquated and sexist. Of course, anyone who supports these so-called "purity pledges" will *claim* that they promote abstinence to men, too...but let's be honest, here. These programs are geared primarily toward women.
My parents had their faults, believe me, but I will credit them for giving me the freedom that I needed to make informed choices about my sexuality. They never rammed that "nice girls wait until marriage" stuff down my throat. This was primarily because they didn't believe it to be true. Mom always did say that if I chose to be sexually active, I should always be smart about it: the Pill and a condom.
These programs also imply that every single girl in the United States has a sterling relationship with her father. That, of course, is simply not the case. It's another indication that these "purity pledges" are yet another attempt by a certain segment of American society obsessed with the idea that we should all return to a time that, in fact, never existed. An idyllic America that flies in the face of the actual facts, should you take the time to sit down and educate yourself about them, instead of clinging to scare tactics and half-baked theories about how "dangerous" human sexuality is for women.
A million abortions each year? Think of what a million condoms, at the expense of the taxpayer, could have done. We have no trouble spending billions subsidizing murder over in Iraq. Why aren't we willing to pay what is necessary to protect our children from unwanted pregnancies?
Well said, Laura.
When I was in high school, my mom was realistic about premarital sex. Her best friends, a minister and his wife, were not, and they advocated abstinence only. So guess whose 15-year-old daughter ended up pregnant? It wasn't me.
Laura Linger said:
"It's ridiculous, I think, this idea that a woman must "wait before marriage." It's antiquated and sexist."
Laura - we are not talking about women. We are talking about children. And we are not talking about preventing them from having sex. We are talking about encouraging and guiding them into not having sex. That is not sexism. It is responsible parenting. How about some common sense here!
I wish I had not had sex when I was a teen. Except one time. I really liked one time because the boy was really cute and nice to me and I did not get pregnant or catch anything. But other than that, I wish I hadn't.
Lydia:
Point well taken. I heard an appalling comment the other night. Apparently with young girls in America today, "blow jobs are the new Kiss Goodnight."
Of course, that's fifty shades of wrong. Children having children is wrong. Parents refusing to give their children the guidance that they need to make informed choices about sex.
Wrong, too, is this notion that some pledge is going to make things all magically better. To me, it smacks of a lot of lip service to circumvent the very real issue of teenaged sexual curiosity. If you make it about "purity," if you make it about God, you make it less about the girl, and less about learning to make smart decisions for herself. More about making human sexuality into some sort of forbidden taboo, and less about the pleasurable gift that we human beings have been given.
Because, after all...sex is not just about making babies. Do these "purity" pledges ban masturbation, too? How about everything leading up to intercourse? Or is it simply a delineation between Madonna and Whore?
If you want your child to take a "purity" pledge, good for you and good for your child. Just don't make parents like Katie feel bad because they choose to raise their child another way as it relates to sex. I grew up around girls who took these pledges. I didn't take one. I can tell you with absolute authority that I made much smarter and more informed decisions about sex than the lot of them all together.
The Christian conservative fanatics enjoy controlling there older adolescents sexuality should not impose their narrow antiquated ideas about marriage and sex on the public. Keep it in your church.
The whole world in not Christian and we do not share your narrow male centered guilt ridden views on sexuality.
Anonymous
How have Christian conservative fanatics imposed their outdated views on sexuality on teens by holding a voluntary purity ball. Parents who do not wish to have their children attend should simply not attend. It is you who are trying to impose your values on the Christians and other cultures with conservative values. Let them have their ball and neither attend it or judge it. My culture (Latino) has conservative values regarding sexuality. Who are you to say that we are wrong and that liberal promiscuity among children is right?
anybody want to "get busy" tonight? Let's get it on! I wonder if any of these "EXPERTS" on sex are even having any?
D.E.
I have had several conversations with my 14yr old daughter about oral sex and she and her friends STILL don't believe that oral sex is actually sex!!! I am appalled that they refuse to believe that this is sex!Thanks Bill Clinton...
This is in response to what Laura said: "How about an "intelligence" pledge? How about "sincerity," or "charity"? How about a pledge to be the best person that she knows how to be? To live her life without prejudice or racism? To live a life where education is valued, and muddle-headed voodoo isn't?"
This is probably a horribly inflammatory thing to say, but that doesnt make it any less true, but I'd say a good 98-99% of the staunch virginity pledge crowd doesnt really think there's anything wrong with prejudice or racism, and consider the difference between 'muddle-headed voodoo' and 'education' to be whether its practice by them, or those loincloth wearing brown people across the sea.
I think what people viscerally react to in this debate is the term 'abstinence education'. When you go to war, you have to demonize the enemy--this makes it easier to kill them. What most people disagree with is education that teaches 'don't do it before marriage, if you do, you deserve what happens to it.' and when people dont follow this directive, they're ill equipped to mitigate the risks involved. THIS is the type of education that has been thoroughly discredited in scientific studies, and that many people on the other side of society object to.
Most people, I would guess, fall into the middle, pragmatic category: "Wait until you're married, or at least in love and ready. And whenever you do it, here's how to be safe." The conservative crazies try, with a surprising amount of success, to bring these people onto their side by painting the opposition as a bunch of amoral hedonists, who want to hand out condoms and kama sutras on the playgrounds. But the truth is, most people who oppose oppose "abstinence only" education belong to this same pragmatic group--they may hold a variety of views about the morality of sex, but they're smart enough not to let their views color their perception of reality: that abstinence only programs dont do enough to stop teen pregnancies and the spread of VD, both of which have tangible social and economic costs.
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