Palin pregnancy highlights need for 'the talk'

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Patty Thompson's 14-year-old daughter arrived home from school last week and said with disbelief, "Did you know that Sarah Palin has a 17-year-old daughter who is pregnant?"Thompson looked at Meghan and said, "Yes, that can happen."The question was a reminder to Patty and Mike Thompson, who live in San Rafael, Calif., and also have a son who is a college freshman, that it's time to have another talk about sex and its consequences.The disclosure of the pregnancy of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's teen-age daughter, Bristol, who plans to have the baby and marry the father, has prompted soul searching among parents of teens and a renewed call to action by those who work with adolescents.It has also revealed differences in how even long-married couples broach the emotionally charged subject.Patty Thompson said with a laugh: "Mike wants to have a blunt conversation where he tells our daughter that, basically, boys her age are running around and all they're thinking about is sex. I want to have a conversation with her that is more about choices and understanding her sexuality, including thinking about the message she sends by how she dresses."She added, "What we agree on is that another talk is necessary."Beth Casarjian, mother of three and executive director of the National Emotional Literacy Project for At-Risk Youth, said news of the Palin pregnancy should not come as such a surprise."One-third of all young women (before age 20) in the United States get pregnant," said Casarjian, author of a book on teen parenting. "Kids are doing it. It's important that parents face our discomfort and have an open dialogue."What's unusual about Palin's case, Casarjian noted, is that Bristol is white, comes from a close-knit, middle- to upper-class family, and is choosing to keep the baby."It's not aberrant that she got pregnant," Casarjian said, considering the prevalence of teen pregnancies. "What is aberrant is that Bristol is keeping the baby. The majority of young women who are getting pregnant and keeping their babies are poor, minority kids. I hope that cases like Bristol's shed light on the bigger issue."Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who favors teaching abstinence over sex education in schools, issued a statement, saying, "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents."Ayanna Bennett, medical director of the Third Street Youth Center in San Francisco, said the initial reaction among staff members to the news of the Palin pregnancy was sympathy."It's a charged situation, and judgments abound," said Bennett, who works with youth ages 12 to 24, treating everything from sexual health to mental well-being. "We deal with kids who have confidentiality issues on a small scale. They don't want their friends to know they are pregnant. Imagine being thrust onto the national stage."Bennett said that in her experience, parents are often the last to know."Generally, kids are sexually active about a year before parents know about it, and a year before the kids themselves know what they're doing," Bennett said, noting that most of the boys who come to the clinic are sexually active by age 13 and girls by age 15. "Much of the time, parents are completely stunned by the news. What I tell people is, be proactive -- talk to your kids about it before you think you need to have that talk."After a 15-year decline in the teen birthrate, attributed to increased use of contraception and less sex, the rate rose 3 percent in 2006, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. teen birthrates are the second-highest among 46 countries in the developed world, behind Armenia. Bennett said, "The idea of abstinence is a fabulous one. I wish it would catch on. But what I've found is that ignorance is never protective."Omar Khalif, who lives in San Francisco and has four daughters, said the Palin story provided another opportunity to talk with his girls about relationships with boys. Their eldest daughter is 19, and the youngest is 11. Khalif and his wife, Carla Duke, have been married for 21 years."My wife is more of a traditionalist and talks to the girls about abstinence and waiting until marriage," Khalif said. "I let her have her conversation, and then I have mine."Khalif, a mediator in the city's Juvenile Probation Department, tells his older girls, ages 17 and 19: "Just don't be with everyone on the block."With his younger daughters, ages 14 and 11, he points to their friends who have gotten pregnant and dropped out of school, and to high-profile cases such as those of Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears, pop star Britney Spears' 17-year-old sister."I ask my girls to think about how their lives will be changed by having a baby. I tell them that their lives are valuable and that in everything they do, they need to think of where they want their lives to be."Khalif said the difficulty is that popular culture is saturated with "sex, sex and more sex.""We need to allow children to be children," he said.(E-mail Julian Guthrie at jguthrie(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)