Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Rachel Brignoni set out to write a book to help pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers think through what they want in life and then go out and get it. And she stayed true to that goal throughout this little blue-covered book.

I really like Brignoni’s premise, her goal. Pregnant and parening teenagers need all the help they can get in finding their own footing in this very anti-pregnant-and-parenting-teens society of ours. I was a young mother, although not a teenage mother, and felt some of the public disapproval and negativity that actual teenage mothers feel at very high levels. I feel for these young women, and I am absolutely compelled to cheer on anyone who works to help them gain self-confidence and self-efficacy in their parenting abilities. And so, in that vein, I am absolutely delighted by Brignoni’s book. She’s done a great job of encouraging young women to trust themselves to be good parents and to go out and create a good life for themselves and their children.

Nevertheless (and you just had to know that was coming, didn’t you?), I am concerned the book won’t speak to many teenagers who actually get knocked up and decide to keep the baby. It’s a good book - it really is - but it doesn’t speak a language that most pregnant teenagers have ever heard before. So I worry that there aren’t many pregnant teenagers who will spend enough of their very limited time to get past Brignoni’s language in order to internalize her message.

For example, Brignoni includes a CD with the book that has a very heartfelt, very sweet, soft rock tribute to teenage mothers. And, of course, teenagers’ music taste varies widely, so it would be hard to find one song to reach them all. But these songs sound more like a generic Celine Dion than anything currently popular (like Lil Wayne, for example).

This is the problem throughout Brignoni’s book. While she is always looking to engage teenage mothers in deep conversation that will allow them to see themselves and their goals more clearly, she does so with a marked inability to reach out to teenagers where many of them are.

So for a teenager who can relate to the language found in adult self-help books, I recommend Brignoni’s Hope…Joy (and a Few Little Thoughts) for Pregnant Teens. And indeed, this may be the best option out there right now to help and support a pregnant teenager in getting a grip on her life and moving forward in a positive way. I just wish I had another option to suggest that spoke a bit more directly and productively to today’s pregnant teens.

I am delighted to have been interviewed by Boinkology recently. Go take a read and read my (rather lengthy) answers to these questions:

• What got you interested in adolescent sexuality?
• In your writing, you stress the importance of parents talking to their kids about sex. Does it matter how parents address the topic, or is just bringing it up for discussion enough?
• When should parents start talking to their kids about sex? What kinds of messages should young children be given about sex and sexuality?
• If you could design a sex ed curriculum for America’s public schools, what would it look like?
• What’s the most common mistake parents make when talking (or not talking) to their kids about sex?
• In your opinion, has the Internet had an effect on how — and what — kids learn about sex?
• What’s the most important sex advice you can give someone?

Thanks so much to Lux for taking the time to talk with me! I look forward to catching up with her sometime soon, and picking her brain for an interview here.

There are lots of good things on Boinkology (in addition to me, of course), including a post from yesterday titled: Yes, You Tell Your Partners About Your STIs. This is just good, basic sexual protocol for teenagers to know, and it’s often easier for them to read it on-line rather than have their parent tell them - so go ahead and forward them that link. The comments are also interesting because they give a bit of a view into realistic expectations about STI prevention among young adults.

In other news, an incredibly brave and strong 8-year-old girl from Yemen filed a suit against her father for marrying her off to a 30 year old man. She showed up in court alone because she couldn’t find anyone who would agree to take her. Wow, what fabulous gumption!

And, finally, the Washington Post has done a relatively decent job of introducing the difficulties of talking with your kids and teenagers about sex in a world full of sexual mixed messages, ambiguity, and scientific amazement.

A teenager’s room is like their whole house, squished into a much smaller space.  This is where the teenager does pretty much everything - sleep, work, socialize.

Given how present the room is in a teenager’s life, it is important to let the teenager have ownership of the room.  This often means redecorating - maybe several times over the teen years because of the swiftness with which teenagers develop and evolve.  It’s good to let this happen, within your family’s financial and physical boundaries.

A friend wanted to paint his room an extremely deep purple as a teenager.  His dad said no, but let him put in a very, very purple carpet.

A teenage friend wanted to paint his room black.  Yes, black.  He and his mom agreed to paint it gray to look like a stone wall and putting up a few gargoyles.

These were both good compromises because the teenager was involved.  Another adult friend came home one day as a teenager to find that her parents had completely remodeled her room.  They had done it out of kindness, and she was able to admit years later that she actually preferred the room to her previous one, but at the time she felt like a visitor, a guest in her own room.

Teenagers have ownership of so few spaces - they need to feel ownership in their own room.  It is, in many emotional and physical ways, their cocoon and their sanctuary.  Let them fully own it while they’re living in it!  You’ll get it back eventually.

With every privilege should come increased responsibility.

For example, my 6-year-old daughter has increased freedom at every birthday.  She is able to stay up later or walk alone to our neighbor’s house.  But her responsibilities also increase at every birthday.  Last year she started getting ready for bed without our prompting or help.  Maybe this year she’ll start putting her own clothes away or rinsing her dishes.

Teenagers too often have an imbalance of privilege and responsibility.  What I mean by this is that parents are too often willing to provide their teenager with a cell phone or a car (a privilege) without requiring the teenager showing an equivalent increase in responsibility (like paying for a portion of the on-going costs or running household errands).

Sexuality is too often talked about with teenagers in terms that have everything to do with privilege and very little to do with responsibility.  In sex education classes, either at home or in schools, adults are far too likely to assume responsibility for teenagers’ sexuality decisions without putting the onus of safe sexuality squarely where it belongs: on the shoulders of the individuals availing themselves of the privilege of engaging in sex.

Next week I’ll write about what it looks like in concrete terms to ask teenagers to fully step up to the responsibility of safe sex if they are choosing to engage in the privileged activity of sex.

I am going to the Vagina Monologues in Austin this evening, and I am very excited about it!  This will be the first time for me to see the play, although I have wanted to for some time.  There are still tickets available, and at $15 they’re a great deal!  Eve Ensler will be there as well.  Fabulous!

And speaking of fabulous Friday fun, I like the Virtual Orgasm Simulator.  Hooray!

RH Reality Check has a recent post about two teenagers in Iowa working for comprehensive sex education. They are encouraging Iowa to reject Abstinence-only funding from the federal government. Here’s a portion of the post:

It isn’t unusual for Iowa high school students Stacey Hoch and Venessa McDole, both peer advisors, to speak with their classmates about sensitive subjects. Thursday morning, however, they took their advocacy one step further by speaking in front of policymakers at a meeting hosted in Des Moines by FutureNet, an Iowa network for adolescent pregnancy prevention, parenting and sexual health. The goal of their talk was to request that Iowa youth be given adequate information to make informed personal decisions about sexual activity.

“[It was important to come today] just so we could keep adults informed,” McDole, a junior at North High School in Des Moines, said. “There just aren’t very many teen voices. We don’t have a voice in the community. We don’t have a voice for anything. Adults go and make decisions for us. So, coming here gives us a voice.”

Hoch, a senior at Scavo High School in Des Moines, nodded her head as McDole spoke about the importance of allowing Iowa’s youth a voice in the sex education policies that affect them.

“Also, there is so much more than just teen pregnancy prevention,” Hoch said. “We also need to pay attention to sexually transmitted infection [STI] prevention. That’s something that abstinence-only sexual education doesn’t really cover, because it doesn’t cover anything except ‘be abstinent.’ It’s important for [Iowa teens] to know that there are STIs that can be really dangerous and really deadly.”

<snip>

McDole nodded in agreement before adding, “At my school, there are a lot of teen parents, there’s a lot of freshmen coming in and not knowing — there’s a lot of everything at my school. You have some kids that will shy away from [sexual activity]. But then you have other people who are coming into this new environment and it’s a big environmental shock for them. … Many of them end up doing what the crowd does without realizing that, as a teenager, they are making very crucial decisions. It’s a decision of whether or not you’re going to get pregnant, whether or not you’re going to get an STI, or even whether you are going to college or not.

“Teens are making these very important decisions. When a wrong decision is made, unfortunately, they usually can’t go back and reverse it. For instance, if you contracted HIV, you can’t just go back and say ‘Well, I shouldn’t have done that and I take it back now.’ So, when adults make these decisions for us, when they think they know what is best for us without asking us, it doesn’t make any sense. We’re the ones who are going through this. We want our own voice.”

During their public remarks, the two young women encouraged adults to trust Iowa students with the truth about a wide variety of topics.

“We deserve to have all the information we can,” Hoch told those in attendance. “We need that information — all of that information — if we are going to be able to make appropriate and good choices.”

I am so proud of these two teenagers. It takes such strength and courage to stand up and speak publicly about sex and sex education in a social and educational environment that encourages quite the opposite. Empowered teenagers who not only take a stand for what they believe in, but do so in a way that is effective and influential, are wonderful. I would love for more teenagers to get active in these ways, either independently like Hoch and McDole, or through organizations like Advocates for Youth.

Some time ago a teenager at the church where I worked approached me and asked if I would take her shopping for a vibrator. (Although she didn’t know the word for a vibrator, she alluded to it with a bright red face…) I thought it was great, and so took her (with her mother’s explicit permission and money) to a local store to buy a vibrator. These stores are now legal in the state of Texas. That is to say, in addition to being able to sell educational aids, they are also able to sell sex toys.

I’m sure some of you are somewhat horrified at my openness in helping a teenager obtain a vibrator. However, with her mother’s permission, I think it turned out positive for everyone. This young woman was particularly sexual. She wanted desperately to engage more sexually. But she didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t have any prospects for one, and she acknowledged that even if she did, she wasn’t sure she was emotionally ready for sex.

So what’s a sexually aroused teenager to do? Well, masturbate. And I am all for encouraging safe masturbation among teenagers. It keeps them off the streets and off each other.

However, it can be hard for a teenager to obtain a vibrator. Teenagers generally feel far too awkward to ask mom or dad, and who else can a teenager ask, really? There just aren’t many adult/teen relationships where sex is talked about enough and openly enough to encourage a teenager to reach out and ask for help at obtaining sexual satisfaction. (This, of course, leads to lots of household items being used for masturbation instead, including the old standbys, the hairbrush handle and the cucumber.)

So what to do? Well, broach the subject. Let your teenager know that you’re happy to help them buy (or help them find someone else to help them buy) a vibrator, a dildo, lube, whatever. This offer will not turn your child into a sexual deviant, it will help them become sexually happy so they don’t feel the need to go searching for sexual happiness.

If you need more convincing, come back for tomorrow’s post…

I have been thinking a lot recently about teenage moms.

I wasn’t a teenage mom myself - I was 21 when I got pregnant - but I looked like a teenager, and was often treated like a teenage mom. In other words, strangers felt they could make derisive comments about (a) my assumed inability to parent, as attributed to my age, (b) my assumed lack of responsibility, as evidenced by inability to use birth control, and (c) my assumed poor choice in a job as a nanny, because clearly I was too young to have my own child.

The thing was, I knew I could parent well, that I was responsible, and that I wasn’t too young to have my first daughter. I had an inner core of strength and belief in myself and my little family that I’m not sure many teenagers have.

The way to help families, even families with teenage parents, is to hold them, strengthen them, support them. Negative and assumptive comments by strangers, acquaintances, or friends do not support families.

I am reminded of a book I like, You Look Too Young to be a Mom, by Deborah Davis. It’s a collection of writings by teenage mothers and adults who use to be teenage mothers. Here is one poem that I think expresses teenage pregnancy well:

#9 Bus by Caitlin Crane

He unfolds like a Japanese fan

and I can feel his slippery feet

kicking my ribs like fence posts,

his head growing between my bones,

jumping with hiccups.

I can feel where his heart is beating

and where his fists, juicy plums,

beat out moon-music.

I want to move my swollen feet,

dance,

brave and hysterical,

down the narrow aisle.

I want to say to

this woman sitting next to me,

watching rain from the open window drip onto her sweater,

“My son is signing, can you hear him?”

To the bus driver, who has never heard of reggae,

who spent the seventies in a cathedral with Elvis,

I want to say,

“Listen, he is singing God songs.”

To the pretty girl with red hair and two babies,

who drinks orange juice out of a water bottle,

and coughs into her fist

I want to say,

“Why are your eyes apologetic?”

But when I turn to speak,

my mouth open and half a word hanging out,

I can see it in their skin.

Their faces thin over hard lines,

over, “Get her out of the welfare office, get her out of my wallet.”

Over, “Another one.”

And, “Poor baby, poor girl. She doesn’t even have a chance.

My son is coming,

And I don’t have the time to wait for you.

My son is coming

and he will dance to your echoes of injustice,

his face to the sun.

So who are you going to vote for?

Here in Texas, we’re just over one week away from our primary/caucus, and everyone is going crazy. This is the first time I’ve really experienced such craziness in a presidential race. Generally, by the time the Texas primary/caucus roles around, the candidates have been defacto-chosen. Then, in the general election, everyone just writes Texas off as Republican. So we don’t get much attention either time.

But this time…boy, Texas is big stuff! And even more astounding, Texan Democrats are big stuff! Big fun for all!

So in the even that you haven’t decided who to vote for yet, or your teenager hasn’t decided who to vote for yet, here are some links that might help you figure your way.

• Students for Barack Obama
• Students for Hillary Clinton
• Students for McCain
• Students for Ron Paul
• Students for Huckabee

So that’s it for the candidates. Now, you ask, but what do these candidates have to say about sexuality education, reproductive rights, and more? RH Reality Check (Information and Analysis for Reproductive Healthcare) has you covered! They have a complete section of their website devoted to the 2008 presidential election, with lots of useful information. Take a look! I can’t recommend this page highly enough.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. To honor the work that Dr. King and so many others have given their lives for, I would like to talk about the Jena Six.

This is an on-going story of racial tension in Jena, Louisiana. The short version that has received national attention began with black students asking permission to sit under a particular tree at the local high school. White students hung nooses from the tree. Black students beat up white students. The black students were arrested and charged, many say excessively. You can read the whole story on Wikipedia.

This little snip-it of a story is not, of course, isolated. For whatever reason, this part of the story has grabbed national attention, but actually exists within a complex web of racism among adults and teenagers in Jena. However, it is the teenagers who brought this undercurrent of local racism to the extreme.

Teenagers are in a place of developing who they are and what they believe. As they work to understand the morals of those around them, and how they relate to their own morals, teenagers often feel and express extreme passion. The teenagers’ actions in Jena, Louisiana typify how this deep passion and commitment can go terribly array if it is not respected and directed by a moral upbringing and by caring, present adults.

(I speak, of course, about the actions of all of the Jena teenagers who have been in the national news, not of those of one race or the other. The beatings and the nooses were both devastating, as I am sure were many smaller, less well-known actions from both sides.)

Many adults are not sure how to guide teenagers towards appropriate actions. Teenagers’ fierceness and passion can sometimes overwhelm the slower, more thoughtful process that adults tend to favor. Dr. King’s message is one way to talk with teenagers about appropriate actions in the face of the truly inappropriate.

Dr. King’s message was one of peace and love. His commitment to taking only appropriate actions while fighting the inappropriateness of others is astounding and has the potential to be deeply meaningful to teenagers.

Teenagers can have the tendency to get very, deeply upset about injustice. This is right, and as it should be. We should all be very, deeply upset about injustice. Nevertheless, teenagers need to be taught that one’s own conduct must continue to be just in the face of injustice. Saying something like this has the potential to be of great value:

In the fight for right, you must always be sure to be on the right side yourself. Others can and will learn more from you when you live and demonstrate the values you preach.

Teenagers can hear this message, and can lean to respond to injustice with dramatic acts of justice rather than dramatic acts of injustice.