Gov. Palin's Success with Sex Education: Is It Really Any Different from Any of Ours?

Sara Palin's impending grandparenthood is an unnerving reminder to every one of us who has daughters (and not to be sexist, sons) that sex education in the current climate is like trying to run up a steep mountain of sand. It is exhausting, we slide backward and some of us never quite make it to the top without giving up. Trust me. I know. I am a sex educator, teen advocate, pediatrician and mother of three unmarried daughters in their twenties.

So before we pounce all over the woman, blaming her parenting technique (supposedly she taught sexual abstinence to her daughter) for her daughter's pregnancy, let me remind every one of us parents (and you who have never parented a teen daughter shouldn't enter the debate) that influencing teen behavior is at best, well... daunting. We who love teens have our hands too full when it comes to convincing them that pregnancy isn't such a great idea at 15.

As one who spent years standing on my head trying to get girls to swallow birth control pills (they wouldn't because they said the pills made them fat) or demand that their partners use condoms, and feeling like a failure when many of my patients returned either pregnant or having any number of the 30 sexually transmitted diseases out there, I, like Governor Palin switched to teaching abstinence. Do I fail? I sure do at times. Did I fail when I begged girls to use birth control? Yep.

Here's the reality: sex is very complicated stuff for kids. That is what every one of them, from the Gloucester girls, to Ms Palin's daughter, is telling us. Somehow, in their own way, they are giving us the proverbial finger. They are telling us, that they will do "as they please" regardless what we say to them. In fact, the publication Internal Medicine News printed an article on the front cover of their magazine lamenting this very phenomenon. Why, oh why won't kids just use condoms?

I have a few theories which I'm sure won't sit well with either parents or journalists. But, since what I really care about is getting to the bottom of this very disturbing trend of too many girls having too much sex too soon, I'll give it a go.

First, I think that girls are extremely lonely. And, sex with boys fills that loneliness (albeit only temporarily.) Research shows that most young girls (contrary to boys) don't really enjoy the act but they engage in it in order to garner male attention. I get that. So the next reasonable question is, why do young girls crave so much attention from boys? Here's where the road get sticky. They may not be getting enough touch, affirmation, love or respect from their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, etc. Whether they mean to or not, often the significant men in girls' lives pull away from them when they hit puberty. This phenomenon we can amend. That's why I wrote Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters -- to get fathers to move forward into their daughters' lives, not retreat. We women need to encourage our daughter's fathers to do just that.

Second, and this is no insignificant factor: we are living in a climate that trains our girls to be sexual at very young ages. I have 6 year old girls come in for their kindergarten physicals with training bras on. Around every corner looms another message reinforcing the one from an hour earlier. That is: what really matters is how sexy you are. (And for the record, let's throw in skinny.) Your intellect, artistic abilities, character qualities, athletic accomplishments don't rate. Sexiness does.

I have never met a mother in my twenty something years of practice who doesn't writhe over this fact. The problem is, every one of them (myself included at times) feels defeated in our ability to "train" this belief out of our girls. After all, we're just middle aged Moms who don't understand. No mother wants her daughter to go to prom looking like a high-class call girl, but at the same time, who wants their daughter to feel like an outcast when all the girls are wearing tea-length skirts with tops that look like fancy bras?

I do believe that Oprah gets this. Look at her magazine. It doesn't reek of tawdry ads displaying gorgeous women sprawled across a bed wearing black stockings held up by garters. And Katie Couric gets it as well. When her oldest daughter reached junior high and disclosed to her mother what many of the boys at the boys school across town were doing with some of the girls at their all girls' school, she just about flipped. She did what any famous single mother of two daughters would do. She did a show on teens and sex.

That's where I came in. We sat as two concerned mothers, talking with teens from all over the country trying to find "the solution" to the problem of kids having too much sex. No solution came, but we learned a lot about kids -- not the least of which was the repeated truth that they all felt enormous pressure to have sex. Where did the pressure come from? Did the boys pressure girls or vice-versa? No, it was just pressure -- nothing direct, nothing forced. They just felt that sex was something they were expected to do. Bingo.

If we are honest, you and I know exactly where the pressure comes from. It comes from everything around our kids. Sex has become their culture. So, while we lament which choice of sex education, abstinence or comprehensive safe sex is best to teach in the classroom, let me propose something a bit less profound. Mothers and fathers (who are, studies tell us, the most profound influencers of behavior change in a teenager's life) had better step it up three or four notches. We mothers have to teach our girls why life is more than being sexy. They must have a real reason to get up in the morning, so we must begin to teach them that their lives embody deeper meaning.

Fathers, uncles, older brothers need to give more affirmation to the daughters in their lives. Love them, spend more time with them when they are teens, not less. This feels intimidating, but overcoming discomfort and fear may just well (and this is no exaggeration) save a girl's life.

We can no longer wait and wonder, look to teachers in our school to bend our daughter's ears about whether to use birth control or abstain altogether because what really matters is communicating to our kids what we think about our kids and sex. That's what really makes the difference. And then we must provide an alternative voice to the predominant one that being "sexy" is the beginning and end of life. And any one of us parents can do that.

I've worked in teen -- and -- tot clinics, attended weddings of patients who waited until their wedding night to have sex and I've sat with girls who have been raped. One thing I know for sure is that every single girl in America now needs our help to learn to navigate a sexually complicated climate. Will our words matter? I know they will, because I've seen your words matter in the behaviors of some of my patients. Your words bring sanity, encouragement and affirmation. But we must know that there is a price to the words and that price is inexhaustible energy.

I'm sure Governor Palin feels like a failure as a mother. She, like all of us mothers who have daughters (and sons) has charged the sand hill alongside each one of us. Sometimes we win and make it to the top, other times we collapse in the middle. But in the midst of our hyersexualized culture, every one of us adults who loves kids must keep on trying to reach them. Then, we must wait. For in the end, every girl ultimately makes her own decisions about her sexual life.

Comments

[GOP4MoreTears]

By David Goldstein a must read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-goldstein/dear-gov-palin_b_123804.html

[indy100]

Yes, it is complicated because teenagers are complicated and hormonally a disaster! As a mother of 3 daughters, one of whom got pregnant at 17, and living in the seriously uptight state of Utah I'm here to tell you that abstinance only DOES NOT WORK. Never has, never will. Should abstinance be taught? Yes. Should we teach more than that? Yes, much more. Kids need to be educated about STDs, how they are transmitted, the possibility of pregnancy, all the facts.

If you think all it takes is "supervison"; you need to realize that you aren't with your kids 24/7. It's not possible. If you think because you all attend church your kids would never have sex, you're completely out of touch with reality. I grew up in a family that attended church and had sex at 16, as did many of my friends and cousins, who also went to church. I used to take my kids to church. My oldest daughter had a baby 1 month after her 18th birthday. In fact the teen pregnancy rate in Utah is legendary.

Sarah Palin's failing is assuming she can control everything her kids do. It's also in assuming that if you don't teach kids about sex they won't be interested. Please! Teenagers are 90% hormones. Bad enough she was wrong about her own kid, she wants to expand that ignorance to everyone else's kids as well. One more reason to vote for Barack Obama.

[SethBLiNK]

HuffPost's Pick

A very well thought out article.

However, according to most people I've heard from at the Republican convention, the mere inclusion of Sarah and Bristol Palin's name in this piece is a rude invasion of privacy.

While I agree that Bristol deserves some privacy, her mother's decision to accept the nomination for VP has thrust her in the public eye. Can't we at least use this unfortunate confluence of events to engage in thoughtful discussion of an important topic.

When attention became focused on Rev. Wright, Obama used the opportunity to mount a larger discussion about race in America. His speech was incredibly inclusive and given the topic and the timing, quite courageous.

By contrast, here events have put teen pregnancy in the spotlight McCain, Palin and company want to take the fifth. For thirty years, our politics have been ruled by the issue of abortion. Presidents and Supreme Court judges have been chosen on that issue alone, yet so many want to avoid thoughtfully discussing the core issue that most affects the abortion debate.

[lewes17266]

Nothing can take the place of supervision.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Especially in the back seat of a '57 Chevy.

Puleeze.

[drblack]

Those under 18 can't buy condoms in Alaska. Birth control has to be available to all in order to work.

[PaxChristi]

What exactly don't you understand about "abstinence ONLY" ?

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

What exactly don't YOU understand about FAILED POLICY?

[vew]

The key to the whole thing is in your last sentence- the girl will make her own choice about having sex. And that is what we have to explain to our children. As the parent of both a young adult daughter and son, I am very thankful that neither of them brought a child into this world while in their teens. And that occurred because of their decisions, not mine. I believe that our family made it through the teen years because my children received the same message from us, the extended family, the school, and the church. And that was, "Wait. But if you have sex do it responsibly." And their dad and I started talking about the issues of sex while both were in elementary school using appropriate conversations for their ages. We discussed the values found in TV shows/movies, the problems that teens had when trying to parent a child, and the values of waiting until marriage. So if anyone thinks you can begin talking about sex and values when kids are in high school, then you are very mistaken. It's a whole lifetime of talk, and talk, and talk, and giving kids the respect that says to them they are valuable and can make wise decisions even when young. When a child feels respected by their parents they respect themselves.

[JoeAnt]

Is Palin a parent with good communication skills or is she just too busy to keep a close eye on her daughter? I mean her own mother-in-law, when pressed to cite Palin's best quality, could only say that she was very "focused." Does this really mean that she's just a career driven woman who can't make enough time for her kids?

[LeftRight]

And one more thing. Dr. Meeker, you claim that the numbers were the same whether you were teaching comprehensive sex ed or abstinence only sex ed. I would like some hard number for that one. The school district that my children attend used to teach comprehensive sex ed, and the percentages were pretty good. Less than 50% were having sex before junior year of high school. Less than 10% were getting STDs. Only 5 girls (out of more than 2,000) got pregnant in the last year before bushco got ahold of the education system.

Since then they've switched to abstinence only sex ed so as to keep their federal funding. The numbers are staggering. 45% of ENTERING freshmen are having sex. STDs are now present in about a quarter of the high school population. And last year there were almost 100 pregnancies (out of a population of 3600 students).

[GOP4MoreTears]

Yeah right, like you'll get any hard numbers, all you'll get is "Enron" accounting numbers. (whatever #'s work-out best to suit their needs)

[LeftRight]

I know, but I want to see how she'll spin them!

[Dap]

1 of 2
I was at first excited to see this post, after reading it (although I would support some of its argument) found it to be shallow, especially for someone that makes a claim to be fully aware of that to which is argued within the essay. The approach is very short sighted and is narrowly focused from a personally point of view, and is absent with regard to the cognitive science that must be done to improve our knowledge on this subject,

Because of that or for that reason, this is just an opinion piece from someone promoting abstinence only sex education, due to a personal believe system. It is no answer to the problem just more of the same old approach nothing new.

[Dap]

2 of 2
Why one may ask,what the fallacy in the opinion?Adults that are not educated proper from an early age and are not comfortable with speaking about sex and or are ignorant themselves are supposed to educate their children? Have not parents sent their children to school to learn that which they themselves could not teach their children? Are not properly trained educators better equipped to enlighten the children, and is it not a fact that the children are more likely to accept and be more comfortable with a teachers instruction?

Dr. Meeker, please excuse me if you find my tact lacking, but I also have my educated opinion, and good reasons to ask these questions. Seems to me far too often, we keep doing the same things over and over, expecting a different outcome. Agape (Love in fellowship of our shared fragile Humanity)

[NatteringNabobs]

I never considered her a failure or blame Sarah or Bristol. The issue is that Sarah Palin's stance on only teaching abstinence in school is harmful and could be fatal in some cases.

In my opinion the baby was not the worst thing that could have happened to Bristol. She could have contracted HIV or Herpes or many other kinds of sexually transmitted diseases.

That's why just abstinence is not enough. We're suppose to protect these children. Having a baby is not a scandalous thing at 17 (Well if you're currently a republican in a fierce campaign its really NOT a problem at all, lets see how they feel in 4 months from now.) But please admit that a baby skews a woman's life in most cases. Sadly the men aren't as effected.

So although I agree, I disagree that there's not more to it.

[Dave24]

Every child is different. It's important for parents to judge the maturity level of each child, and then to educate relative to that level. But at some point, comprehensive education is the only way to make sure responsible choices will be made.

Pardon the oversimplification, but I see it as this: It's easy to tell people not to go out into the Sun, but it makes practical, and realistic, sense to teach how best to apply sunblock - so too with sex and sex education, respectively.

[Dap]

Eloquently expressed, and spot-on.

[YellerDawg]

Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion.

[LeftRight]

Of course, you can look at it like my wife and I did. We recognized that they were going to feel pressure to have sex, and that when the time came for them to WANT to have sex, they would do it, no matter what we said. We explained to them what the feelings are like, so that they wouldn't be surprised when they felt them. We explained to them that when they made the decision they wouldn't feel any pressure from us. We made sure that when they came to us (BEFORE the decision!!!) that we honored that promise. Did my teenage daughters start having sex earlier than I would have liked? Yes. BUT they were at least on birth control, and using other forms of protection. Not only that, but they KNOW that when we tell them that we don't like a boy that they are with, we have our reasons! We've actually saved my older daughter from rape by explaining that we were uncomfortable with her (now) ex, who is currently in prison for raping his next girlfriend.