Okay, speaking purely as myself and not, say, as a parent, there may be some value in this current British experiment to teach teens about different levels of sexual intimacy.
The big flashy headlines are, of course, all about teaching children about oral sex, but the basic premise behind the A Pause program is that teens today are taught that it’s All or Nothing — either you merely hold hands, or you go all the way. Too many kids seem to be going all the way, leading to a teen pregnancy problem in the UK.
So if, for example, you can teach kids that they can get intimate at a less potentially-catastrophic level — be it oral sex, or petting, or, yes, just a lot of kissing and holding hands — is that a bad thing?
Well, it depends on whether you think that even whispering the word “sex” at kids makes them likely to rip off their clothes and have at it like randy weasels. (Like they need any encouragement to do so.) Or if you think that any sort of physical intimacy is a slippery slope to full-out coitus.
I think there are a lot of potentially good ideas here. On the other hand, I trust myself, as a parent, to try to teach some of those lessons to Katherine myself. (Or, rather, let Margie do so. Heh.) I’d hate to see someone with the teaching skills and intelligence of some of the teachers I’ve known trying to tackle anything more than the basics, which this definitely seems to entail. On the other hand again, given that some parents seem to do a piss-poor job of doing this sort of education themselves, maybe it’s just what we need.
I dunno. Ask me in another seven or eight years.
(via Andrea)