In message , Leslie
writes
I know you won't agree, but I firmly believe in the inherent connection
between sex and babies, and as long as there is no 100% way of
preventing contraception, I don't think anyone, married or not, should
have sex if they aren't prepared to deal with the natural consequence
of a baby.

I once read a magazine article about a couple who actually tried
abstinence as a way of preventing pregnancy, since they'd had one
contraceptive failure and were not at all in a position to have another
baby at that point. They kept it up for months. It put a terrible
strain on their marriage during that time, and there did eventually come
the night when they'd had a couple of drinks at a party, lost their
inhibitions, fell into bed together, and ended up with another pregnancy
that they weren't really in a position to deal with.

No, it's not impossible for a couple to remain abstinent for huge chunks
- or all - of their married life. But it strikes me as a huge thing to
ask. So the problem I have with the "Well, don't have sex unless you're
potentially prepared to deal with a baby" attitude is that, while it can
work fine for people who already want several kids and feel that having
one more than expected, or sooner than expected, isn't really an
insurmountable problem, it's just not that simple for people who either
don't want kids at all, or are just not in a position to have them right
then for whatever reason. For people in that situation, that attitude
can get perilously close to an attitude that thinks of children as a
price that you have to pay for having sex. And _that_ isn't something I
find terribly appropriate, personally.

[...]
Still, I don't think asking them to wait until they are out of high
school is an impossible dream, either. I just think they have to have
to proper foundation laid in advance.

I don't think it's an impossible dream to expect some, even many,
teenagers to wait, but I _do_ think it's an impossible dream to expect
that they all will.

More to the point, I think it's unrealistic to feel that just because
they do wait that long, the problems of sex are going to go away. I do
realise that this isn't at all what you were saying, but it's something
that seems to me to be inherent in the whole attitude of "We expect you
to wait until X age." I don't want to bring my children up to wait until
X age, because the other side of that coin is an implication that once
you hit X age, well, that's OK, then. And I just don't think a
particular age or graduation ceremony is what we should be looking at
here in terms of when sex is OK.

What I want to teach my children is "It is your responsibility to think
about when sex is OK for you and when it isn't. It is your
responsibility to think about whether you've protected yourself against
unwanted pregnancy and against infection. It is your responsibility to
think about how you would cope with a pregnancy if one occurred in spite
of contraception. It is your responsibility to think about whether
you're doing this for the right reasons - is it because you really want
to do it and feel comfortable with the idea, or is it because you're
feeling pressurised by your partner or your friends? And it is your
responsibility to recognise when sex might _not_ be a responsible
decision in a particular situation, and to abstain from it if so." A
teenager who actually sticks to that probably is going to remain
abstinent during school days, and possibly for longer - but I would not
want to say categorically that there are no school-age teens out there
mature enough to deal with those problems and go ahead and have sex
responsibly.

I dated my husband for three hours,

Long-distance relationship, speedy relationship of all time, or typo?
;-)


All the best,

Sarah

--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley