Passing along values

ShareThis

At age 13 Alfie Patten has fathered a daughter, Maisie. The mother, 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman, was already sleeping with more than five boys when her child was conceived. Asked how he intends to provide for their child financially, Alfie replied, "What does financially mean?"
If you haven't heard of the Patten-Steadman case, it's probably because Alfie and Chantelle are English, not American.
Rather than clamping down on teenage promiscuity, the British government has produced a leaflet to be distributed by pharmacies throughout the United Kingdom. It cautions parents to avoid trying to convince the kids about what is right and wrong about sex. Instead, it proposes that any discussion of values should be kept "light" to encourage boys and girls to form their own views.
Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist in England, approves of the government's approach. "We do not know what is right and wrong," she says. "Right and wrong is relative, although your child does need clear guidelines."
Churches in the UK disagree. Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute says, "The idea that the government is telling families not to pass on their values is outrageous."
He adds: "Preserving children's innocence is a worthy goal. We would like to see more of that kind of language rather than this amoral approach where parents are encouraged to present their children with a smorgasbord of sexual activities and leave them to make up their own minds."
In the United States the rate of teenage pregnancy has increased in the last two years and continues to rise. Four of every 10 children are born to unwed mothers. The Pew Foundation reports that two-thirds of Americans consider such births to be a bad thing for society. But when asked about the morality of producing children out of wedlock, American adults are split. Some 44 percent of men and women alike consider that it is "always or almost always wrong," whereas 52 percent say it is only "sometimes or not at all wrong."
Pregnancy and single motherhood are not the only outcomes of sex outside marriage. Sexually transmitted diseases have long since achieved the status of public health concerns, and condoms provide only limited protection from them.
Still, the condom is trumpeted as a cure-all to the problems of unmarried sex. An editorial in The Washington Post, entitled "Condom Sense," raps Pope Benedict XVI for criticizing the distribution of condoms to solve the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
"In a perfect world," the Post argues, "people would abstain from having sex until they were married or would be monogamous in committed relationships. But the world isn't perfect...."
Kate Sawyer, a teacher in England, begs to disagree. Teenage pregnancies, she says, are "a problem of the society in which we live -- a society in which nobody, not even parents or teachers, can use words like 'moral' without being scorned. That is why we teach children how to use condoms rather than to say 'no'."

David Yount's latest book is "Celebrating the Single Life: Keys to Successful Living on Your Own" (Praeger). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)

AMAZING GRACE