Not sure I can agree to that. It skates too close to "blaming the victim" and piling on after the fact, for my taste. (Not that they are victims, really, but.....)

I think we tend to find fault, rather than find solutions, too much of a "you made your bed, now you lie in it" mentality, which is great for a while, and might make one feel righteously smug, but ultimately doesn't actually solve anything. I suspect the new teen mother is already feeling about as bad as she can, without the angry pointing, yelling, and mocking.

Societal shunning and social reinforcement isn't as consistent in our culture as it was in 1645. Every other commercial sells sex, we're absolutely obsessed with it. Pills, jellies and pumps being sold on TV. Some shows' whole focus is on the Quest To Get Laid. I'm not saying that's bad, per se, I'm just suggesting that those kids that DO abstain are doing so despite overwhelming messages.

Sex ed, like religion is another one of those things we've basically pawned off onto the schools for responsibility for. They're caught between half of us wanting the schools to completely take care of it for them so they don't have to and half of us demanding all sex ed be stopped entirely.

We have to figure out what the hell we want, I think, and get a bit more consistency on the issue. Either this needs to again become the sole responsibility of the parents, OR they need to stay out of it and let the schools do their jobs. We can't hamstring the schools with mixed messages, and them blame them for teen preganancy rates.

I will say to those that argue that sex ed "teaches" you......I don't recall anyone needing that to figure it out. I think I had a sex ed segment on "health" class when I was 14 or 15, and by that time it wasn't exactly new info.

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Unfortunately, the Founders did not address the possibility of this nation becoming populated with obnoxious twits.

12 or 13 seems young as an average even to me but to assume that most kids aren't having sex before they're legally allowed to (16) is ridiculous.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

Legally allowed? You're kidding me, right?

What hyper-naive PM pushed that legislation through? Do they imprison some 14 year old for getting felt up at a school dance?

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Unfortunately, the Founders did not address the possibility of this nation becoming populated with obnoxious twits.

16 is the legal age in most of the world, certainly around Europe.

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Viva Fidel

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Yes I know it's stupid but that's the law, not that anyone pays much/any attention to it.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

Fair enough. And don't get me wrong, it isn't that I really care that teenagers are having kids. If that is how they want to run their lives then I say let them have at it. I just threw the idea out there because it seems to have worked in a situation that I did care about. And it isn't so much that I care if my room mate is a homophobic, racist A-hole, because I don't. I only care that he was making dumb *** comments in public while I was there.

I just think that regardless of any emotional side effects, this approach might work. It may at least work better than the abstinence message, mainly because of what you say below.

This is what kills me about our society, especially with parents. Here we have adults telling kids to not do this and not do that. This is right, this is wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't have sex, it is bad. Then they turn around and let the kid watch all the dumb, sex driven crap that is on TV. Hell, a lot of times the parents watch that retarded crap too. There is a big disconnect between how people say they think society should behave and the way they behave as individuals. Its like they want everyone else to get their **** in order, then maybe they won't have to. This is why I can't really take anything seriously anymore. Your comments below also hit on this.

Man, as much as I hate the idea of the government getting involved in teaching children this sort of thing, specifically sex (you had mentioned religion, but there's no way I'd sign off on having that stuff in public school), I don't know if the majority of parents are competent enough to handle it on their own. Its the craziest **** I've ever seen. We have all of these people railing about pre-marital or teen sex and then they turn around and dress their daughters up like the insipid air heads on MTV (man I sound old). Everyone wants their daughter to be the popular girl in school who all the boys want to screw, they just don't want the boys to screw them. When I was in high school I dated a girl who had really strict parents. If they had found out the stuff we did, I might not be around today. But they damn sure let her dress up in a way that made me want to do all the things that they were afraid we'd do.

Like I said before, I don't even really care what the kids do. You gotta grow up sometime and everyone picks a different path in this life. I just get tired of hearing the same groups say that we need to do more of this or more of that to stop kids from doing what ever taboo activity is being discussed, when it seems to me we've been trying those methods for a while now and they don't seem to be working. All the while the people screaming one thing or another never look at themselves and say, you know what, I'm going to do what I can do to make sure my kid grows up the way I think they should and I'm not going to worry about the others.

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Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. ... I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask no one to live for me, nor do I live for others. I covet no mans soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

Ayn Rand, Anthem.

If you mean in the sense that adults can legally boink a 16 year old, that's one thing, and that makes sense to have some age limit, sure.

But, in the context of underage kids fooling around, the "legality" of it is immaterial. Like their going to wait? And, when we're talking about sex ed, we aren't talking about adults, typically.

I thought you meant kids were supposed to adhere to some age law.

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Unfortunately, the Founders did not address the possibility of this nation becoming populated with obnoxious twits.

Its not really stupid. If you're old enough to join the army, smoke and get married, you really ought to be old enough to have sex.

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Viva Fidel

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Okay, i just meant that is the legal age. Obviously, like so many things the law doesn't even come into it when you're a kid, it sure didn't when i was growing up. it's just not a law that can be particularly enforced, you cant really criminalise two 15 year olds if they choose to do the deed.

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Viva Fidel

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

I don't know, either. This is why I always rant about our inflexible policies getting out of lockstep with society. A lot of folks seem to want to pretend nothing's changed since 1923. And when it's about a 50/50 split,what do we do about school policy? It's not fair to bludgeon the schools like we do.

You, unlike many of these abstinence-only agitators, remember what being a 15 year old boy was like! I am not saying "do whatever you want, kid", but I am trying to be a bit more realistic than some of the talking heads are.

Well, there is a tendency for parents to be rather myopic about their kids. This probably isn't a situation that gets addressed solely by individual efforts, which, as we know, is very inconsistent.

Parents need to parent, I agree. I know plenty of "parents" who are so busy with their careers and whatnot that their kids are rather an afterthought. I see a lot of things being pushed to the schools to have responsibility for, and then people screech that the schools are doing a horrible job, and how dare they do what they do?

EITHER we need to have quality, consistent, unabashed sex ed in all the schools and the parents need to quit interfering with it, OR have none, and leave it to the parents for sole responsibility. This half-arsed battleground is not helping anyone.

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Unfortunately, the Founders did not address the possibility of this nation becoming populated with obnoxious twits.