BENEATH THE SKYLINE

THE ENCHANTED FOREST

Deborah Good

I have had babies on my mind. This is not, mind you, because I am thinking about having one myself, but because a number of very good friends of mine are starting to have children—while I spend three days a week in middle schools helping young teens think about not becoming parents themselves.

That’s right. As a social work intern, I spend Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in Philadelphia middle schools talking with 12- and 14-year-olds about, among other things, healthy relationship skills, self esteem, sexual harassment, reproductive anatomy, sex, disease, and (yes) birth control and (indeed) how to properly use a condom.

There are those of you whose minds are beginning to sound alarms. I can hear them. Middle school?? Why are you teaching middle-schoolers about birth control?

I was asked to explain myself recently while spending an evening with friends I don’t see often. After I described my role as a counselor and sex educator in middle schools, one friend looked me in the eyes with earnest conviction and genuine curiosity. "I don’t understand," she began. "Why wouldn’t you just teach abstinence?"

I responded with what I hope was a thoughtful and honest explanation of why I do what I do. I was glad she asked. And even though you didn’t, I will try to explain myself here, too.

Abstinence. The word really sounds more like a chemical compound than a healthy, solid lifestyle decision. Perhaps churches and health curriculums nationwide should first work on spicing up the terminology. Still, the word is highly popular and controversial, especially when it is embedded in phrases like "abstinence-only education" and funded over the past decade by more than 1 billion dollars in federal funding.

But before I move on, let me be clear at the outset. I fully, 150 percent, support teens who decide not to have sex until they are older or even until they are married. These teens take on the challenge of adolescence without needing a condom, even while this particular period of their lives is often accompanied by hormones gone berserk and friends who talk casually about sexual escapades (both real and fabricated). I was one such teen: I did the abstinence thing myself.

For me, however, this is not simply a conversation about when, at what age, or with what marital status it is moral to have sex. When I dig, I discover that at the heart of this conversation is my belief that all of us—men and women, girls and boys—deserve to understand the basics of how our bodies work and choosing if and when we want to become parents. We should be given the tools—and the accurate information—we need to make those decisions.

"What do you want to do before you have children?" I sometimes ask my students. I want to graduate from high school, say some. From college, others. One girl said she hopes to be 28. Most say they want to be married.

The fact is, more than 700,000 teenage girls become parents every year, before they graduate from high school. It is harder to track the boys, who are often absent and even when not usually shoulder far less responsibility. "If men were the ones getting pregnant," I observed to one eighth grade girl, "I bet they’d think twice about having so much sex." Our two smiles were like strands of yarn, linking us to women and girls the world over.

Kids are having both wanted and unwanted sex—well over half of them (varying depending who is counting) before age 18. And if we don’t teach them about it, their friends, their boyfriends, and even MTV will.

There is no better place than middle schools to learn of the myths and inaccuracies kids learn outside the classroom. Can men get pregnant? (I’m serious. I’ve been asked this more than once.) Isn’t it true you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex? (Not true. Anytime you have sex, you risk pregnancy.) My boyfriend says I can’t get pregnant if I’m on my period. (Wrong.) Isn’t it better to wear two condoms instead of one? (No, no, no. They are more likely to tear.)

I believe in informed decision-making. Kids who choose abstinence should do so out of knowledge, not ignorance. And those who choose otherwise have even more important decisions to make about preventing the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

What I am about to say is not earth-shattering news: Sexually active teens who use condoms and contraception are far less likely to contract Chlamydia, get pregnant, or end up at abortion clinics.

Yet the current federal policy around sex education supports exclusively "abstinence-only" programs. They focus on waiting until marriage—often trying to incite fear in students—while teaching nothing about safer sex practices like condom-use or birth control.

Several recent studies, including a 2004 government-sponsored investigation, have found abstinence-only curriculums to be not only ineffective but also scientifically inaccurate. Sixteen states now refuse federal funding for these programs to support comprehensive sex education instead.

Am I losing you in policy and politics? Am I being too argumentative? Let me stop for a moment so I can tell you about my good friend, Charity, whose rounded tummy moves with life. She’s due within the month.

Recently, a small crowd of us got together to celebrate the coming birth. We gathered around Charity and her partner, Steve, bringing with us baby wipes and onesies, all wrapped carefully in shades of pastel. All evening we joked and prodded and bribed, hoping we’d trick them into revealing the baby’s gender and chosen name. They’ve chosen to keep these two secrets to themselves and have so far succeeded, despite our efforts. We women huddled around Charity and took turns placing hands on her mountain of belly shrouded uterus, gasping at any movement we felt beneath our palms.

Experiences like this reach down to that awe-center within me, that place of untethered wonder at how new life comes to be. That story, hands down, tops the delivery-by-stork version every day of the week.

I like to imagine puberty as an enchanted forest. Our kids stand at its edge, some tiptoeing and others ready to charge through the brambles. The forest is zany, uncomfortable, and scary. As they enter, we should be doing our best to feed their fascination and provide safe places for them to explore and ask questions. And because we cannot always be by their sides, I vote (and yes, I do mean vote) that we give them all the guidebooks and maps we can get our hands on to help them find their way safely through.

—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Master of Social Work student at Temple University, can be reached at can be reached at deborahagood@gmail.com. She wants kids and teens to be safe and would like us to talk about sex more openly. Her friend Julie Prey-Harbaugh, jpreyharbaugh@franconiaconference.org, helps Mennonites do that in an effort to prevent child sexual abuse.