"What Parents Need to Know"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
May 17, 2009

“Mom, when did you first have sex?”  Ah – the dreaded question.  At some point, parents of teens and tweens – tweens are halfway between childhood and teen hood – are pretty likely to have to answer that question or a similar one like: “Dad, didn’t you ever get drunk in high school?”  Or “Dad, I know all you old hippies smoked marijuana – how come if it was OK for you it’s not OK for me?”  Our children want to know their parents’ values and what we do speaks louder than our words.  If you are lucky, you can answer your child’s question with, “My first time to try that (sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.) was after I had left home and was in the Navy, or college, or wherever you were.  However, if you are like me, I can’t truthfully give that answer.  Like many baby boomers, I tried a lot of things, regret some of them, and want my kids to be smarter and safer about those things than I was.
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Is it more difficult to be a parent in the 21st century?  Parents have always worried that their children’s generation was going to… - well was going to disregard their parents’ advice and get into a lot of trouble.  Parenting is by nature a worry producing endeavor; the biggest difference today is the constant barrage in the media of so many new ways for kids to get into trouble.  News stories abound of teen obesity and anorexia, drug use, suicide pacts, and more.  Lately we’ve heard about sexting – teens sending nude or semi-nude photos on their cell phones.  Are stories about middle school oral sex parties true, or just another urban legend that won’t die out?  Hearing these stories on the nightly news disturb us all.

Part of what I want to do this morning is to give parents and all of us some perspective on what’s really going on today, and the truth is, children today are doing the same or better than recent generations in many ways.  For example, maybe because they grew up during the societal turmoil of the fifties and sixties, parents of late Baby Boomers and early Generation X children, were much less likely to set limits on them.  Today’s norms for teenage sexual and dating behavior were pretty much set by 1970s teenagers.  Today’s parents are much more likely to pay closer attention to their children and to look for ways to be engaged in their children’s lives throughout the teen years and beyond.  This probably explains why teen risk taking began rising in the 60s, then leveled off by the late 70s, and is now going back down. 

Even in the most challenging of family circumstances, firm and affirming parenting can make a difference.  It is important to remain connected to our children and to be nurturing parents no matter what comes our way.  Over-reacting to media reports of tween and teen-age risky behaviors can reduce parenting effectiveness.  We don’t need to let our anxieties make us become either too controlling or to back away from the job of parenting out of frustration.  I am indebted to Rev. Haffner’s book for much of the information I will present in this sermon, and I recommend it to our parents.  It is wonderful to have her UU perspective on parenting to balance James Dobson’s authoritarian advice.
Haffner’s book doesn’t claim to have one strategy or technique which will work for every child or with the same child in all circumstances.  However, she gives evidence which provides hope that progressive parenting can have good effect.  She says, “The vast majority of children, tweens, and teens like and feel close to their parents.”  Young people want to know and live up to their family’s values, they thrive within a framework of limits and consequences for their behavior, and they can do amazing things when coached to make their own decisions.  Often when a parent tells someone they have a child in the tween or teen years they hear a warning about the troubling times they’ll be facing.  I like to counter the impression that the tween and teen years are bad news.  My children, while not perfect, were delightful people in their teens.  I encourage parents to look forward to remaining actively involved in their tween and teen children’s lives and to know they can enjoy parenting all the way through to adulthood.
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It is not only my own children and the wonderful kids here at Northern Hills who have made me optimistic about the possibilities of successful parenting.  As you heard in our reading “our children are healthier than any previous generation of young people.” Although youth continue to take risks that can negatively impact their health and future, in a comparison of teens from 1991 to those of 2005 public health research shows:

1. Alcohol use and binge drinking is down
2. Cigarette and tobacco use is down
3. Rates of teen pregnancy, births, STDs, abortions, and sexual intercourse are all down
4. High school dropout rates are down, and
5. Teen crime rates are down.

“In fact, on almost every indicator of risk taking behavior, tweens and teens are behaving much more conservatively.   Most of them feel good about themselves, get along well with their parents, and trust their parents to be there for them.  My point in reporting these hopeful statistics is not to say there is nothing to worry about, but to encourage us to learn the difference between which fears about our children we truly need to be concerned with, and which may have been overblown by the media.

At the opposite end of the behavior spectrum we hear about the over-scheduled, over-stressed children, the kids who are so focused on success and getting into the very best schools that they have no time to enjoy themselves.  Parents, who are often over-busy themselves, may be over-involved with their children, hovering on the periphery of their every activity, earning the nickname, “Helicopter” parents.  Conversely, some parents feel enrolling their kids in many programs makes up for under-involvement in their children’s activities.  Media reports make it seem like these parenting styles are the norms.  Again, the facts belie this portrayal of either overbearing or under-involved parents and stressed out kids.
In a 2000 poll of children in grades 6 thru 12, over 80 percent:

1. said parents told them they loved them in recent days
2. said they had recently told their parents they loved them
3. said they would go to parents with a serious problem
4. said their parents were generally supportive and
5. would grade them with an A or B in parenting

Tweens and teens certainly experience a lot of stress, but research shows involvement in a variety of activities can be beneficial.  “After school activities help them develop social skills, improve their relationships with peers and adults, and improve academic scores.  They lead to higher self esteem and lower alcohol and substance use.”     The kinds of activities children spend time on makes a difference on specific indicators of success.  For example, reading more improves achievement test scores.  Some parents worry about kids spending too much time in competitive sports.  However, as long as the emphasis is not on winning at all costs, organized sports can be good for young people.  “For most young people, the more active they are the better.”
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So, if we encourage our children to get involved with after school programs, to learn social skills, and to form supportive relationships with their peers, what do we do when they get interested in sex?  How much freedom should they have to explore their sexuality; when the consequences of sexual activity can be enormous, how much are parents willing to risk? 

Just a year ago, we saw the headlines, “High School Pregnancy Pact,” when 17 girls in one Gloucester, Massachusetts school were pregnant and their principal told a Time magazine reporter “nearly half the girls made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.”   Do you remember hearing that?  The media descended on the small fishing town en masse, and every commentator hyped her or his favorite cause of social disorder.  The pregnancies were because the state rejected abstinence only sex education; no, it was because the school wouldn’t dispense condoms.  It was because the economy was in the dumps; no, it was because the school had day care.  Then, just when conservatives were ready to declare the whole country was having a complete moral collapse, the poor mayor told a news conference that the facts didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and then some of the girls spoke up, and soon the Pregnancy Pact story disintegrated.  There was no coordinated mass rush into motherhood.

We might have said, “What a relief,” but really, do we feel OK just because this story proved to be another urban legend?  Probably not.  The story, true or not, was enough to scare parents.  It brought up the reality that we don’t control when our kids have sex or even when they become parents.  When a story like this gets our attention, hooks our emotions, there is a “teachable moment.”  Instead of relieving our anxiety by railing about our least favorite politician or bemoaning the state of society, parents can use these opportunities to talk to their kids over the kitchen table about sexuality and their sexual values.  It is true we can’t decide for our children when and what they will do sexually, but we should not let our fears keep us from doing what we can do.

Parents must face the possibility their children will likely become sexually active at some level in their tween or teen years, and start educating children about sexuality early.  Educating about sex is not the same as giving your permission to have sex.  Parents should make their values clear to their children through explicit discussions over a period of time.  Children need more than just one talk on the birds and the bees.  Use teachable moments to open discussions to cover a little bit at a time.  “Studies have shown, where parents and teens talk openly about sexuality, the teen is not only more likely to wait to have intercourse but more likely to use contraception and condoms when he or she does become sexually active.

Of course it is important to set limits and to monitor your child’s behavior.  Allow them to be in their bedroom with the door closed with their friend, and you can bet something’s going to happen.  If you don’t want your children to have intercourse until they are out of high school or until they are married, by all means you should tell them.  But since we really can’t totally control what they do, it is also important for us to help our children know how to judge when they are ready for sex.  We should also talk to them about alternatives to intercourse, such as oral sex and masturbation.  I know it can be very hard for parents to talk to their children about sexual pleasure and sexual response, and we may need some help with this.  Our UU sexuality course, called Our Whole Lives, or OWL for short, gives excellent guidance on these issues.  OWL emphasizes that for a sexual relationship to be moral it should be consensual, nonexploitative, honest, mutually pleasurable, and protected against pregnancy and disease.  Rev. Haffner also advises teens to meet three conditions before moving beyond kissing with a partner.  1) Has there been time enough to get to know the other person? 2) Has there been communication about sexual desires, the relationship and protection? and 3) Does each partner share the same values about what it means if sexual activity occurs? Taking time to evaluate relationships is likely to reduce a lot of ill-advised sexual encounters.  And oh, by the way, my answer to the question I opened with, “Dad, when did you first have sex?” would probably be, “In high school I had some relationships with girls that got too sexual too fast for me, and often led to confusion and stress between us.  This was not something boys were supposed to admit to other boys back then.  The relationships I had when I was older, especially the ones where I loved and respected the girl, were much more satisfying and fun for both me and her.”  That’s just my answer.  Your family might have different moral values you want to give your children, but the point is to convey them clearly and help your children make better decisions.
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We want our children to be happy, healthy and safe; we feel responsible to help them, and we know we can’t protect them from every risk in the world.  We want more than security for our children, we want to raise thriving children, children who individually do well and learn to contribute to their families and communities.  Our children want us to be involved in their lives helping them accomplish these things and guiding them with significant issues.  Parents can give their children the underpinning to develop a self-confident, stable and joyful approach to living by helping them answer the big questions they have about life.

We can raise respectable, dignified children with strong character by:

1. Modeling ethical behavior – children are keen observers – to encourage their moral and spiritual development.
2. By talking with them about social issues –  we need to treat their questions seriously, think through our own positions on issues, and engage in dialog – not lectures.  We can learn as much from our children as they learn from us.
3. And, by treating all people with dignity and respect we can help our children learn empathy for others, appeal to their compassion, and help them find spiritual grounding for their relationships.