So guess what. That attitude of denial has come to bite authorities and all the abrahamic fundamentalist religionists firmly in the ass. Teenagers have rebelled against the just-say-no paradigm, which they (rightly) view as absolute hypocrisy. They can see for themselves adults or near-adults enjoying sex in TV and on the web.
We learn that the lowest recent teen birth rate occurred in 2005. In 2008 it was up an average of 7 precent. That may not sound like much--but it means over 40,000 extra actual live birth to teens. Nearly 90 percent of teen girls are now single mothers. Apocryphally, from talking with high-school teachers, we suspect that the birth rate will climb another 10 percent in 2009--meaning almost 100,000 extra teen births. Of course this does not include twice that many abortions.
You may not be aware of some recent trends in teen attitude to sex.
* Pregnancy parties - Groups of boys and girls meet and do all the sex they can stand. The girls' aim: to get pregnant without being able to attribute the pregnancy to a single partner.
* Sexting - The use of cellphones to receive and transmit sexually explicit pictures and to arrange copulation dates and pregnancy parties.
* Juicing - This expression may be less crude than the f-word; however, it has an additional dimension: It means totally unprotected sex. At today's teen pregnancy party, we are given to understand, the girls try to get juiced by several different partners.
Of course juicing also means that American teens have the highest level of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) of any developed country in the world. The rate is some 30 times higher than in Germany and 20 times the level of EU nations as a whole.
* Babydaddy - Today's expression for the unknown father of the child--not lover, not fiance, not even steady or boyfriend--and never by name. With this approach the pregnant young woman cannot tell Social Services who the father is. Everybody gets a free ride.
Questions arise. Why are teens engaging in these activities? What creates this mindset in them? They know full well that they can have protected sex and get most of the enjoyment without the resultant baby. It seems, though, that it is not raging hormones; instead
1. Many of the girls do it for simple and straightforward economic reasons. Their family, and they themselves, are often starving, or at least living on the breadline. Fortunately for them, many high schools are now running baby-sitting services; and HUD will provide an apartment, medical care, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--SNAP.
2. It may be also that some of the pregnancies are jailbreak pregnancies--anything to get out of the repressive family context. Even though they are in dire economic straits, many parents, including some who call themselves pagans, will have nothing more to do with teen daughters who have "sinned".
3. Sociologists tell us too that some of these pregnancies--pregnancy as revenge--are to shame the parents. Revenge for what? Maybe for perceived wrongs, or for the "gratitude" the daughters feel they have never received.
So long as there is stubborn silence, there can never be anything like a full and satisfactory resolution of the reasons.
The highest ratio of births is in the southern tier of "red" states, where fundamentalism rules. The top state, by the way, is Nevada, running 77 births per 1,000 teenage girls. These births are highest in non-hispanic whites.
The situation is dire. Apart from encouraging what might be called a French attitude to sex, in which contraceptive measures, abortion, and the morning-after pill are all available and free without tattling to parents, we can see that the situation will not improve if the root cause is economic. It looks as if we are going to have to face up to some kind of a federal allowance for teenagers.
Do you have feelings about these topics? We'd like to hear from you.
Yes, apple pie and motherhood are an essential part of the Norman Rockwell-type American dream. But (here comes Yvonne's reality smack--you knew it was coming, didn't you?) even when the babies have lost their entertainment value, even when the Cute Factor plummets to zero,
you can't take 'em to the pound.
You also may enjoy these free books:
Edwin Sidney Hartland - The Science Of Fairy TalesAndrew Lang - The Orange Fairy Book
Aleister Crowley - The Testament Of Magdalen Blair
Keywords: pagan gods black magic rituals japan religion heathen god magic rune the poetic edda anglo saxon culture old norse black magic rituals ancient scandinavia lucid dreaming wild the book of raziel
