So what's up? Ro turns one and the pillow fort gets disassembled? There's really too much to cover to make an easy transition back into the blogosphere, so I just figured I'd do a quickie post to break the seal.
For this inaugural post, I'm going to break from all things baby-related to get a little political. North Carolina teens have, for the past decade-ish, received abstinence-only sexuality education--that is, sex ed that teaches that abstinence until marriage is the expected standard of behavior, period. Condoms are discussed in terms of failure rates. Other birth control? Forget about it. 'Cause we all know, despite the fact that the average age of marriage in this nation is in the mid-twenties for women and the upper twenties for men, and some groups are denied access to legal marriage, and the average age of sexual debut (to put it in sex research terms--sounds so debutante-y) is 16 for boys and 17 for girls, it's totally realistic to expect every single teen out there to wait.
Cut to the Healthy Youth Act--now appearing in the NC House of Reps. In a nutshell, it gives parents license to choose the type of sex ed their kids receive: abstinence-based or abstinence only. Here it is in its entirety: http://ncleg.net/Sessions/2009/Bills/House/PDF/H88v4.pdf . Giving parents options about the info their kids are exposed to (or not)? Great! But every time this bill hits the house it keeps getting watered down. And okay, I need to head back to middle school civics class--I don't really remember how the system of readings and votes on a bill works. But at this point the Healthy Youth Act has been through so many changes that its original intent and mission has been altered! It may seem like insignificant little changes in wording, but this latest iteration is the weakest yet.
I think I need to go watch me some Schoolhouse Rock now--didn't they have a song about billz gettin passed?
Anyhow, just had to get the blog chops back.
More later!
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2 comments:
. . . "weakest yet" plus opt-in, which may mean that parents get really involved in discussing with their children the decision about which form of the class to take, but may also mean that kids from the most disorganized families don't get any information at all.
...and I think we here at the pillowfort would qualify as one of
the "most disorganized families"...
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