TJ climbs up on his Internet Pulpit: My Space, or My God

I'm with ya man. We really failed our kids. We let "T and A" rule the top 40 - it's much easier for the music business than having talented people that can craft real music. Let the computer make the music and have tramps make it appealing. Video really did kill the radio star. The music industry wonders why their sales are falling and then decide it was peer to peer file sharing. The truth is there is nothing worth buying. Meanwhile we allowed a whole generation of kids to think its ok for them to be sexualized by this hollow culture of bling and booty and for young girls to be exploited in the name of twisted "girl power" feminism. I recommend for anybody who knows a young girl, to give her this book: Girls Gone Mild

 

Hey! I like yeast. I can assure we would not be having this discussion without Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

But seriously, I am less concerned with the sex as I am with the pregnancy itself if it was unintended.

Sex is good. Can we agree to that?

The failure here is sex education and the lack of prophylaxis. Teen pregnancies were previously reduced but are again on the rise due likely to abstinence education which has been shown not to work.

 

TJ: For a little while now, all your posts show up on my screen right justified. I don't know if this is something at my end or yours, or if it is intentional, but it does make your posts harder to read for me. I just find standard left justification easier on my weak, old eyes.

Now to the substance of your post:

There's nothing new here: Men and boys of all ages have been getting very young girls pregnant since there have been men and boys and girls and women. And mothers have run the gamut from very responsible to very irresponsible. And while I dislike the kind of popular culture you are lambasting in your post, the problem is that censorship leads to abuse of government power, and "morality" imposed from the pulpit leads to pogroms.

On the other hand, kids provided with good solid sex education and access to birth control, on average postpone their first sexual activity to a later age, and are more likely to use birth control when they do have sex.

A consumer-based economy, which requires people to buy stuff they don't need with money they don't have in order to continue functioning, is going to promote the kind of businesses that push damaging and unhealthy products on the public, from gas-guzzling SUVs to music videos praising lifestyles of greed, sex, and violence. Advertising is scientifically designed to foment desire and impatience. "You need this NOW!!! Not tomorrow. Don't wait! You need it NOW."

I don't think the issue of teen pregnancy and irresponsible parents can be separated from our national state religion, which is greed.

 

Much of society's problems stem from bad parenting and we have too many (probably about 50%) of our births are unplanned by unprepared people. That's no way to run a civilization. Fertile people shouldn't be having sex period, unless they are willing and able to properly raise the child that might result from it. Contraceptives can fail and a human life is too precious to gamble with, in my opinion.

Public abstinence programs have little chance of working when music videos, magazines, and movies aimed at our tweenagers have strong sexual themes. I won't be relying on public abstinence programs - my kids will be able to lecture on the subject by the time they are ten. Thank goodness we'll be homeschooling our kids.

 

Right up until your last sentence, I thought this was a very good, well-thought-out message of your personal views...
You start talking about "cleaning house," however, then you've stepped over into imposing morality as law, and punishing [or killing?] those that do not abide by your rules.

I'm with Daniel on this one... education, information, and recognition that sexually mature people have sex, regardless of their age, and making the appropriate choices concerning that.

It might be better if more parents got their heads out of the sand and paid attention to their own kids, and listened to them.

 

My bother articulated an interesting observation:

Our parent's generation (raised in depression era) did not have many things they needed (including food).

Our generation (baby boomers) had the things we needed but not everything we wanted.

The present generation can have the things they need and want.

 

As a parent of two teenage girls, yeah, I see a problem. But, bad examples can be just as instructive as good examples. I'm not sure the behaviour is all that different, really, but the exposure certainly is. What used to be hushed is practically an industry unto itself. Sadly, the last forty years of hard-fought women's liberation is not exactly well-appreciated. And, why is it easier to bring people in to the world than it is to get a driver's licence?

 

Last week I caught an 10 year old girl giving oral to a 13 year old boy in a local park. I thought they were more of the 14-16 age, I got a sick feeling when they told me their birth dates..

I had their parents come pick them up, while waiing for the parents the girl said she didnt see what the big deal was she and her friends do it all the time to boys.

I explained this to the parents who seemed unfased and where more disgruntled at me for interupting their day..

I took down the nessary info and turned it over to DCF. as there may be a problem in the home..

So yes I see it every day, todays parents are not being like their parents. but are letting the child run their own lives.

On another board I was adding my 2 cents to a senceless blog on lowering the drinking age to 17 blog, when it dawned on me the author was a female aged 16, pregnant, married to a 20 year old and had a 2yr old child.!!! I thought OMG, where were the parents?????

She explained that her mother had her at a young age too. Then it "clicked" she was just following her examples. The girl said she was an adult because she was married, I told her NO she was still a child..

This stuff just Blows me Away..!

 

Becides, Myspace is the internet shooping place for Pedephiles.. You see and hear it all the time on the News.

 

This is an interesting discussion. Not only do we have the pop stars glorified at an obscenely young age, but reality television sure does its part to glorify not only the young girls getting pregnant, but also the young men who are getting girls pregnant left and right with little/no regard to the child's future. Occasionally I come across the Maury Povich show and am always disgusted when some young girl is on there for the 20th time checking to see if some dude is the father of her child, with the audience clapping and cheering, and the dude all macho and proud that he's got a dozen other offspring, all by a variety of other girls, like it's some kind of notch in the belt that makes him a 'real' man. These are not celebrities, but regular people from regular cities across the USA, learning that they can be a star for a day. It's sickening, but I feel like it's so far out of control, like hycamguy said, these kids are just following their example.

 

if we permit it on the tv, that's a major step toward permitting it in real life. like it or not, tv/the media is the director of our culture.

stupid decisions are portrayed and GLORIFIED on tv for the sake of ratings, not for the sake of the people watching... it's the well known car crash effect. as humans we tend to gape and stare at people who made major screw-ups. even if it's a fake storyline on the idiot box and nobody's future is really in jeopardy.

kids are all in a hurry to grow up. nobody seems to want to tell them that being an adult isn't all that great sometimes, that [provided the right circumstances] childhood is far more fun than facing real life's trials and tribulations. and that looking before you leap can make those trials and tribulations far harder than they need to be if you're just patient.

time gives you perspective. these kids don't have that time yet, and the people- supposedly the parents- who have the time/perspective don't share it. and here i thought the job of a parent was to properly prepare their children to be functional adults the best they could. a half hour open conversation about sex could cause an otherwise peer-pressured misinformed kid to think twice or at least protect herself. a half hour of everyone's time can make an entire lifetime- no- multiple lifetimes much easier.

it's a huge disconnect where i see the tv raising kids more than parents. i was pretty much left to myself to figure things out as a kid... i'm fortunate that i didn't make too many colossal mistakes that would affect me for the rest of my life. really, at 25 and nearing the end of my to-date-lifelong quest for a comfortable quiet life... i wonder what the hell i was thinking seeking out the things i did at 15.

and yet, it's the kids who have it the best with parents who care for them, that seem to piss and moan about it the most... isn't that ironic...

 

Wow Galaxy very well said!!

I was just talking to a GIRL, shes 19, has a 4yr old son & another on the way, she's been married for 3 yrs and her husban is 21.

When I asked her about her age she became defencive and started explaining why things ended the way they had. And that there was nothing wrong with being married and young after all her mom married at 15, and her older brother was a year old at the time of the wedding....

I just thought to myself you poor child...

 

What's with so many people spelling "defensive" with a "c" all of a sudden? I know the spelling here on PC is atrocious, but this seems to be a new one.

 

feel better first, TJ, we can discuss more later