The most-powerful lobbying group in America is the Writers Guild of America. By determining what we watch on TV and in the movies, these writers help shape America's views and set the standard for what is acceptable, normal and right. You probably saw your first interracial or same-sex kiss on a screen. What is put out there by Hollywood is a responsibility that shouldn't be taken lightly -- and one that "Modern Family's" writers and producers blew for me big time in this week's episode, "Virgin Territory."
For the record, I love the show. I love its smart humor and characters. What I didn't love in the episode "Virgin Territory" was the discovery that the character of Haley, a high school senior, was sexually active and, according to the story line, has been for a while. The revelation that ditzy Haley has been having sex with her even-dumber boyfriend came out of the blue. She's in high school, and the story line centered on how her dad Phil wished he could be a "cool dad" and accept this news but can't:
Phil, I feel your pain. But I'd also like to take whoever wrote this plot line and poke out their eyes with hot poker sticks. Seventeen and sexually active? Really? This isn't the same as the show's toddler letting loose with an F-bomb in a prior episode. (Don't they all do that at some point?)
The problem I have with this is that I don't believe that every high school senior is out there having sex, is ready to have sex or needs to feel that 17 or 18 is the appropriate age to have sex because he or she saw it on prime-time TV.
Go ahead and flame me, all you parents who justify your lack of parenting with lame lines like "All the kids are doing it." Here's a news flash: They aren't. And maybe yours wouldn't be either if you had taught them about responsibility and consequences and not gone belly-up on doing your job.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 13 percent of teens have had sex by age 15 and 30 percent -- of both male and female teens -- still haven't had intercourse by the time they turn 19. Let me say it again: Not everybody is doing it.
The Institute found that teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. From 2006 to 2008, about 11 percent of unmarried females aged 15 to 19 and 14 percent of unmarried males that age had had sex before they were 15 years old, while in 1995, those percentages were 19 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Read that: Not only isn't everybody doing it, more kids nowadays are not.
But those teens who do have sex may face serious consequences. The Guttmacher Institute reports that each year, 750,000 teenage girls between 15 and 19 in the U.S. get pregnant. In 2008, those between 13 and 24 years old comprised 17 percent of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. The Institute also reports that while "15-24-year-olds represent only one-quarter of the sexually active population, they account for nearly half (9.1 million) of the 18.9 million new cases of STIs each year." These numbers reveal that some sexually active teens are taking serious risks, making responsible coverage of the issue even more important.
But numbers aside, there is a larger issue: the emotional land mines that sexual intercourse plants. Seventeen-year-olds may be physically ready to have intercourse, but emotionally they are far from being able to handle it. Unless you depersonalize sex and turn it into a sport for physical release -- in which case, may I suggest you just buy a vibrator and avoid the risk of HIV and pregnancy -- intercourse is something more, something bigger. It's an intimate expression of love between two people, not something you do just to feel good. Fundamentalists might go a step further and say it's something you do to procreate; that's their view, not mine. But I do believe that the intensity of pleasure that comes from having sex should be followed by something more than "I have to go home now because I have a science test tomorrow and Dad gave me a 10 p.m. curfew."
I'm not saying that sex outside marriage is a bad thing; I actually don't think it is. But I do think sex involving high school seniors is a path to emotional letdown, disappointment and a self-esteem battering similar to tossing Christians to the lions.
Maybe the writers of "Modern Family," which has been ground-breaking on so many other worthy fronts, could have skipped the low-hanging fruit on the ratings tree and instead shown us a Haley who surprises us all by announcing to her boyfriend that sex will just have to wait until college?
Follow Ann Brenoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AnnBrenoff
__________
OK. I get it. Only 70 percent of 17-18 year olds are having sex, therefore we should hide our heads in he sand and pretend it's not happening. (rolls eyes)
Many are doing it, enough that a plot line like this has value. I'm okay with you not agreeing with it. I'm not okay with you deciding it shouldn't be on TV because you don't agree with it.
I agree that the writer has a the right to their opinion, I disagree with the writer's premise that only bad or lazy parents would disagree with that opinion.
Haley turned out to be one of those who didn't wait.
It's not a conspiracy to teach teenagers that they're emotionally ready for sex. it's just a choice a character on a tv show made.
Personally I'd be much more worried about Suburbatory and the on-line virginity calculator.
I was madly in-love when I was 15 + it was great - best time of my life.
Sex is a part of that.
I was about 15 when I started + I knew I was ready - it just felt like the right time for me + I was with somebody I/mutually cared about.
There are four child characters on this show. You take any four children and it's statistically almost impossible that all four of them will grow up to still be virgins in their late teens. If over the next decade, (should the show run that long) ALL of those child characters grow up to become sexually active teens then yeah, I'ld call foul. That's also really not realistic.
It seems pretty obvious that the shy and sensible Alex will wait. That fits her character.
Luke isn't likely to even get a date until he's 30.
Manny on the other hand is a romantic so who knows what his character will be up to in seven years. He could be married!
But of all four of those characters it's not even remotely surprising to discover that Hayley isn't a virgin. Given the character as she's written (thoughtless, secretive, trying to look and act older than she is, DATING A 21 YEAR OLD!) it would be much more surprising to discover she was one.
Also, these are characters. They aren't real teenagers. They are written to be a certain way and the choices that they make on the show are firmly based in the kind of choices their characters would make.
No one ever said Hayley was a role model.
Regardless of whatever statistics tell us a lot of teens are not having sex, other statistics tell us that plenty of them are. And it is boorish and condescending to say that the parents of the teens that are, have somehow fallen down on the job.
I thought it was fine Haley had one parent to go to in case of need. I thought having one parent who was semi-devastated was fine, too. I liked the way that Haley talked about her cool dad but in the midst of it, it seemed to get through to her that he was upset and it made her think.
Since these are fictional characters why not use the opportunity to demonstrate some of the more subtle changes in family dynamics when this occurs.
You should be more pi$$ed at your parents than TV, they are the ones who have given you this unhealthy attitude about sex and sexuality. It feels great and human teens, surging with these new feelings and growing bodies are going to do it; love how it feels, and do it some more.
Here is a question for you, if God did not want humans to have sex at this age or that, why does he permit a woman to get pregnant at 14, 15 and so on?
People used to get married at 17 and start families in this country genius, were they to young, or was it ok because God blessed their union in his house and the magic of marriage suddenly makes you mature and responsible.
But you see, now we've gotten too big for our bloomers, and we want things like a future, higher education, self-determination, and control over our family destinies...and early sex does not support that for young women, and overwhelmingly, it's the girls and young women--and their children-- who pay that price, generation after generation.
Encouraging, through society, education and culture, an older age for the start of an active sex life, benefits everyone, society at large, young people, individuals, men, boys, women, girls...even the economy, so it's a massive win-win-win-win-win all around.
We are no longer only simple creatures of nature, we have now re-made, and re-imagined ourselves in our own image...young people of both sexes need the guidance to reach for the real prize, not the obvious.
Better they all have bright futures and control over childbearing as well as their emotions, than the current "gotta have it all now so I can discard it in 15 minutes" mentality we are encouraging in our culture currently.
Most of what is discarded is people. So sad.
I've raised my kids to know their choices, know the consequences, and know prevention. I also live in reality where I know that despite the best efforts of our generation, as well as the previous 5 generations, many teens have still chosen to have sex. I hope as much as anyone that teens will wait, but history tells us that not all will. I'll go with education AND prevention.
If you didn't get that, you're too hung up about one person's sexual behaviour and you missed the real point of that plot line...which by the way, was brilliant.
Note to you: Lots of kids in Grade 12 are having sex. Wake up!
And it's everything you red staters and R politicians rail endlessly about.
Interesting.
Look, I realize that a TV critic has to have a really over-inflated opinion on the importance of TV. But this episode didn't say that "every high school senior is out there having sex.." Any more than if Haley was still a virgin it would be saying that "No high school senior is having sex." Its a fictional character on a TV show, and being sexually active is NOT out of character for this one.
Here's an idea: If you don't want kids to live their lives purely the way its depicted on entertainment TV, then don't act as though the way life is depicted on TV is guaranteed to be the way they live. Network prime time TV is fast becoming a smaller and smaller influence on kids anyway.
You probably should stay away from the internet and youtube, or you may have a stroke. But it will probably give you a few more column inches on HP.
But that wasn't really my point. The author extrapolated one example, very realistically and non-glamorously done example of teen sexual activity into an 'every teen is sexually active' conclusion. Which is just plain wrong. And as I said before; If the situation was reversed, and Haley was still a virgin, would the author accuse the show of implying that 'every teen is a virgin'? If not, then the author IS making too big an indictment of this episode, or ANY TV show. Even allowing for some kind of untenable responsibility of TV to live up to its role as a child rearing vehicle, the author got this one wrong.