This morning my roommate, JV, pointed out this article to me. Apparently, the New York Times decided to jump on the subject convergence bandwagon, and publish an article about a middle school in Portland, Maine that's going to offer birth control pills.
"The clinics at Portland high schools have offered oral contraceptives for years, said Douglas S. Gardner, the city’s director of health and human services. Health officials decided to extend the policy to middle school after learning that 17 middle school students had become pregnant in the last four years, seven of them in the 2006-7 school year.
'It brings home the fact that my 13-year-old daughter has friends and people around her who are sexually active,' Ms. Purington said. 'But at least it’s a good alternative in a not-so-good situation. No one is going to stand up and cheer that 12- and 13-year-olds are having sex, but it’s not anything new.'"
Ms. Purington doesn't think it's anything new that 12 and 13-year-olds are having sex. Maybe she's right. But if 7 middle schoolers got pregnant in the past year, shouldn't the school be teaching the kids about sexual health, and how to use a condom, instead of giving girls who probably just started their periods prescription contraceptives?
And when do these kids even have sex? Between home room and first period? My life in 6th grade consisted of school, soccer practice, and home. If I had wanted to have sex, which I really, really didn't, there wouldn't have been a place or time for it. My parents weren't cool with boys being in my room, much less my bed. Or maybe there are oodles of Humbert's out there, preying on little girls and impregnating them? 6th grade orgies posted on craigslist? What??
6 comments:
Once kids are old enough to be babysitters, they stop having their own sitters. School tends to end earlier than work. Otherwise I don't know how so many of my classmates back in 7th and 8th grade managed the, uh, social lives they did.
Yeah, I guess you're right. It probably depends on where you live, too. I went to middle school in a place where it was difficult to get to a friend's house without parental permission (and transportation). If you live in a place like New York (or, presumably, Portland) it's probably easier to have, uh, alternative after school hobbies.
Well, is administering the pill so different from teaching them to use condoms? Or is the problem that it's unhealthy to put such young girls on the pill?
And I do think it's new and bizarre that 12-year-olds are having sex. Other than instances of molestation and sexual predation, I can't imagine that this occurred in the past, b/c if you think you had problems finding the time and place, how were 12-yos 100 years ago going to find them? Out in the cow pasture?
I don't know if it's unhealthy, but I feel like it might be. And aren't you the person who endures writhing pain every month rather than regulate, um, "things," unnaturally? Just saying...
Actually, the cow pasture would be a great place. And the barn, or any isolated spot in the woods. Kids in cities must have had it rough, though. You can't have sex in a tenement building without everyone knowing about it.
I would guess it's probably unhealthy too, but I don't see how the rationale is that different from teaching kids how to use condoms. If the problem is only that birth control might be dangerous to young girls, is that more or less dangerous than depending on 12-yos to regularly and correctly use condoms?
But I also don't think that tons of 12-yos are having sex, and I think those who are are doing it more out of culturally-generated curiosity than actual libidinous desire. I understand that schools do not necessarily generate these cultural signals, and it's not their fault that their students aspire to be fornicating monkeys, but I still don't see why the existence of such aspirations should lead them to throw up their hands, chalk this up to nature, and distribute birth control to their students. Doesn't that undermine any effort they might make to argue that such behavior is bad? "Don't do this, but since you're going to do this anyway, the pills are in the nurse's office"?
Also, I thought school nurses weren't allowed to give students any medication except maybe tylenol that wasn't directly prescribed to them? Is oral contraception the new tylenol?
Well, condoms protect against sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy. Birth control does not. This indicates to me that rather than educating kids about sexual responsibility, they are simply encouraging them to fornicate like monkeys, as you put it.
And I have no idea what nurses are allowed to do. We didn't have a nurse at my school. But we did have sex education.
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