The responsibility on who will teach and provide guidance for today’s youth is forever changing. Where everyone once contributed to raising a child such as parents, teachers, and society it seems now kids have become what we call “latch key kids” those of children coming home to an empty house. It is known that when kids come home to an empty house cause their parents are at work it leaves them at high risk for negative behavior. It leaves them to watch hours of television and play violent video games.
The importance of family time is no longer an important issue, remember times hen the whole family would sit down eat popcorn, watch a movie or play a board game? However realistically when does a single mother of three kids working two jobs have the time to sit down and enjoy family time with her children? There just isn’t enough time in the day. It is the norm for the majority of children to come from a single-family household, where 9 times out of 10 the father figure is missing. This can be emotionally dangerous for the growth of a young boy, especially a boy entering puberty.
Our children in today’s society are so jaded, they have devolution of morals and the importance of sex and intimacy has been diminished. Having sex doesn’t have the same stigma as it did, in let’ say the 1950’s. It isn’t very un-common nor does it leave a horrible stigma for a fourteen-year-old girl to be sexually active, and in no way do her fellow peers look her at as promiscuous. A smart way to climb the social status ladder in today’s school is to be sexually open to try new things. A girl who is known to openly “mess” around with the boys at school is the popular girl.
She is the girl the boys give all the attention to, and all it takes is for one girl to make a statement that stands out to the rest of the girls and with n a short amount of time the rest will follow, and I bet your little girl is one of them. Parents in today’s society are far to busy with work, bills, and their own adult social life to be as heavily involved as they should be in their children’s lives. Today’s parents put a lot of stress on their kids, they are left to raise themselves and make most of the decisions about life alone that actually the parents should be making for them.
With a large number of children being left unsupervised at home due to parents working outside of the house, and the percentage of single-family homes rising ramatically over the years is creating heaven of negative out comes for today’s youth. Parents seem to think that teenage pregnancy wont happen to their kid. One big mistake parents make is they don’t set aside time to sit and just talk with their kids. Kids will talk to you if they know you’re going to listen – whether they discuss heavy issues such as sex and drugs, or everyday things like schoolwork.
If your kids know you’re listening, they are more likely to trust you enough to talk about everything in their life. Kids need their parents to be a big part of their life, they need heir protection and assistance because they are not mature enough to take care of themselves and make mature decisions. But eventually kids grow up and become teens and start to mold their own identity, they will have their own thoughts, values and opinions about life. How much time parents spend with their kids creates a platform for this growth into adult hood.
A lot of the kids I talked to said their parents were not an active participant in their life. It isn’t easy for kids to go to their parents and talk about stuff, in fear of thinking their parents might think they are weird or will not understand. Kids don’t seem to understand that their parents were once kids to and everything that is going on in their lives has happened to their parents. Kids have and always will see their parents as parents. It doesn’t register that parents have been there and done that and know better then anyone else what it is like to be a kid.
This is where the parents need to step in and tell their kids, “Hey I know what its like, your not weird and this isn’t such a bad thing and together we will get through it” Every family is at risk for teenage pregnancy there isn’t a certain type of family this happens to. It’s a hard situation to deal with, a lot of egative attention will be brought on to not only the girl or boy who this is happening to but also the rest of the family. A majority of time the parents are stuck wide-awake in the middle of the night wondering what they did wrong. Maybe if they had done this or that, none of this would have occurred.
Its not worth beating yourself up about there is a lot of stuff in a situation like this that needs your attention. It seems that teenage pregnancy in today’s world is some kind of an epidemic I see more and more girls walking down the street pushing a stroller and sometimes with another one on the way. I constantly see statistic charts that say teenage pregnancy is decreasing, but I don’t see that same outcome here in society. I am a teenage mother, and I was not the only one in my school and I sure wasn’t the first. I wish I could offer this paper part of my story but in fear of making it bias ill steer clear of that.
Growing up today is hard, it sure isn’t how I see it in the old movies, on a date if a guy was to try and get to second base the girl would not hesitate to stop his actions right away. Today it isn’t like that, it seems that kids are looking for love in all the wrong places. People could say this is coming from parents eing so busy not to even notice their kid, or the media is placing such a intense impact of sexuality onto our kids through commercials and the box offices next big movie. I don’t think just one thing is true it’s a mixture of everything.
One action gets you pregnant… ex, but a lot of situations lead up to a kid having un-protected or pre-marital sex. Teenage pregnancy still happens for many reasons. Kids that feel they do not fit in, do poorly in school, or have trouble at home are more likely to have unprotected sex. Some kids have sex to feel loved and to fill an emotional void or to be rebellious. They all honestly believe that pregnancy could not happen to them. And many are not educated enough about all forms of protection against pregnancy in the first place. Other kids have sex because of peer-pressure. It seems to many kids that they are the only virgin left in their peer group.
They do not think before they have sex to finally become a “non-virgin”. They think sex will somehow make them become more mature. Some girls actually believe they cannot get pregnant the first time they have sex but before they realize it, they are pregnant. Girls that use drugs or alcohol also have a higher chance of either being raped r having sex without their consent and that may lead to an unplanned pregnancy. Girls forget that even though they may have said yes once before, it does not mean they cannot say no the next time someone wants to have sex.
Drugs and alcohol also sometimes make it harder to use protection because when one is under the influence, they cannot think clearly. The feelings afterwards are shame and embarrassment and they can lead to denial if a girl finds out she is pregnant. It should be obvious that parents play a huge role and have a great influence whether their child becomes pregnant at an early age. It is very important for parents to be as up front as blunt about what they talk to their kids about when it comes to sex education.
Most teens (69%) agree it would be much easier for them to postpone sexual activity and avoid teen pregnancy if they were able to have more open, honest conversations about these topics with their parents (2002 survey of young people aged 12-19) It is very important to not push your values and your opinions about sex onto your children. This might push them away, having the talk about sex with your kids should be as easy going as possible. Be open and honest; don’t think that your child is too young to now all that pertains to sex.
When you decided to talk to your kids about sex try to make it as comfortable as possible for both party’s involved. One mistake parents make is making a sex education talk with their child a one-time thing, sex education is something your child should be taught through out their life. Everyone learns something new everyday even when they think they have been there and done that already, this goes the same with sex. The majority of kids who partake in premarital sex thing it is ok because they are in love and many parents dismiss teen love as love that’s ot real, but all feelings are real.
Some feelings of love are infatuation, some are immature and some signal a mature love. People of all ages can feel any of the above, and teens especially need to know the difference. Teens need to know that a mature love takes time to grow, that trust and love evolve, that mature love isn’t love at first sight, but well worth the work and the wait. Kids will not understand this unless someone tells them, not only will they not understand this but they will not take in the information if it is forced or dealt out in and uncomfortable way teaching ids about sex takes a lot of planning.
Our government spends the most money on programs promoting contraceptive use 2. “In 2002, the federal and state government spent as estimated $1. 73 billion on a wide variety of contraception promotion and pregnancy prevention programs”. “More than a third of that money ($653 million) was spent specifically to find contraceptive programs for teens” By contrast, programs teaching teens to abstain from sexual activity received only an estimated $144. 1 million in the same year. Overall, government spent $12 to promote contraception for every dollar spent to encourage abstinence.
In addition, most contraceptive promotion or comprehensive sex-ed curricula contain material that is alarming and offensive to most parents. This all seems backwards to me, we should be spending more money on early sex education to reach out to the kids and make them understand that pre- marital sex or sex at an early age can have a significant effect on their overall life. I found a lot of information on what our government spends on sex education but a lot of it was for services or programs that assist our kids after it is all to late.
Their needs to be more money spent on sex ducation programs that are directed towards sex education and simply that. We can just sit these kids down in front of a public speaker and go ” Ok kids, this is a condom and it is used so lower your chances of getting pregnant” NO! this is not the way to go. We need to sit these kids down and tell them what sex is about, what affect it has on their life both emotionally and physically not just how to lower their risk of pregnancy. Lets lower their risk of pregnancy by first lowering their chances of having sex in the first place at all.
The question is no longer should sex education be taught, but rather how should it be taught in our kids chools. There is mainly two different kids of sex education in today school system one is called Comprehensive Sexuality Education, this way of sex education is taught by sectioning off important sex education points and teaching them to age appropriate groups of kids currently attending certain grades. It can start as early as kindergarten and continue up into High School It covers a broad spectrum of sex education, including safe sex, STDs, masturbation, etc.
Another form of sex education that is being taught in today’s school is called Abstinence-Only-Unit-Marriage Programs, his way of sex education is being taught to inform kids to stay away of all forms of sexual activity and in no way covers anything about pregnancy, STDs, masturbation, etc. In my opinion I think both of these programs offer a good start to what needs to be taught to our kids. I think it would be more logical to section off important issues of sex education and teach them to appropriate age groups but go into more details rather then just the common sex education.
Instead of telling a kid this is what sex is about and this is how it’s done, rather add in the emotional level of maturity that comes along with that. Tell them about the physical issues that comes along with it, I highly agree with a scare tactic approach to teaching kids about STDs show them pictures so they can see for themselves the physically ailments that come along with sex and why it is very important to not engage in sex or the importance of the use of a condom.
Parents and the school systems should unite together to form a program that just doesn’t start at school and end at home with a small talk when the parent feels that sex might be becoming an issue in their child’s life. Both parents and teachers need to make sure that their own opinions on sex hould not becoming an issue when teaching kids about sex education. The last thing a kid wants to hear is what you think, cause we all know kids always think what they know or what they have to say is always.
If parents and teachers can both learn and understand not to do this the whole confronting the issue about sex education wont be such a scary or nerve- racking experience. Before you get to sit down and have the sex talk with your kid good chances are they already know pretty much everything you decided to talk to them about. Kids see sex everywhere on T. V, walking down he street on billboards, advertisements on the sides of buses on buses there is no where your child could go and sex not be shoved in their face. They may hear it from your older kids, or from their friends at school who heard it from their older sibling.
You don’t want kids finding out the basics of sex education from these sources this is why it is so important for parents to talk to their kids early and often. When children are left to other devices to learn about sex education it’s a problem waiting to happen. They may find out the wrong information and negative stuff such as teenage pregnancy could happen. Teenagers who watch a lot of television with sexual content are twice as likely to engage in intercourse than those who watch few such programs, that’s a problem in today’s society sex is everywhere!
Children are growing up in an age of information saturation, and the subject of sex comes up as often as any other. Even if you have screened for suitable TV shows with that neat little V-chip and age- appropriate movies, it’s not unusual for movie previews and TV commercials to feature women and men doing the nasty. Lets talk about M. T. V, oh wow does that channel have a lot of sex. Kids love music and they love to see their favorite singer dance on the T. V but today’s music is filled with sex, and drugs. Since when does women in bathing suits dancing on top of a car have anything to do with a love ballad?
And in all honestly who really cares how many hoes you pimp last night at the club while getting tipsy on a fifteen hundred bottle of champagne, good question huh? Well guess what kids today do, why I don’t know. This is where kids are learning about themselves, the media is putting images of sex and how glamorous is it and how it sells and makes you a “bling bling” rock star. There is even sex in commercials, simple ones like Herbal Essence shampoo to be exact, it shows a girl in a shower shampooing her hair and getting such a intense feeling that she has to moan like your average porno star.
What about the scandalous billboards of half naked women showing off guess new low-rise butt hugger jeans? That’s a pretty image for your average boy to take a glimpse at on his way home from school. With these images all over the place everywhere kids today go it is so very important for parents to help them understand that life is really not like that. There is only so much arents can do because they can’t find the media, it’s the freedom of press.
In conclusion: It is so very important for parents to educate their kids about sex, there is so much bad stuff out here in this world and our kids will fall victim to circumstances if we do not do something about. We cannot let them learn about their bodies or sex from the media or their peers. The information they will get will most likely be wrong and confusing. Kids need their parents to play an active role in their life, be there to talk about anything with out it being an issue. Parents need to be more open minded oday’s society is not like theirs was when they were growing up.
Time is forever changing and with the change parents must change the way they confront issues like sex. Parents need to be more understanding, kids are faced with some much now-a-day and they fear their parents do not understand so they don’t bother going to them and this is very harmful in shaping the kind of adult they will grow to become. Our schools need to reform their sex education make it more broad and tap into deeper teachings of sex rather then just the common couple of things like this is a condom, his is a penis, this is a vagina, and this is sex.
Kids need to be made aware of sexually transmitted diseases and the stigma that leaves of the rest of their lives. Kids need to know just how stressful and life changing being a teenage parent. The stuff they will lose out on and the risk factors their life will face being a baby trying to raise a baby. They need to understand and learn how to differ the meanings and feelings between sex and love. Our government needs to spend more money on early sex education, and not spend so much money trying to prevent teenage pregnancy, spend the oney on trying to prevent pre-marital sex.
The media is the media and that is never going to change, from this day on their will always be un-needed sex in simple shampoo commercials. M. T. V will continue to place half nude women dancing on cars in their new big rock stars music videos. The importance of a fast car and lots of cash is the only way to go; none of this will ever change. If you don’t want your kid to fall victim to such a lie that this world has become be an important figure in their life. Understand what they are going for and try to remember what it was like to be a kid.
