How My 7-Year-Old Learned About Pre-Marital Sex from John McCain

[struggle4progress]

By Karen Dolan, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2008

Ok, yes, you can credit or fault me as a mother for allowing my 7- year-old to suffer under the blissful ignorance of believing that one needs to be married before one gets pregnant. Or you can credit or fault me for answering my child's matter-of-fact questions about how babies are made even though he is only 7. But all credit and fault goes to John McCain and Sarah Palin for exposing all children who have a TV to the news that Palin's unmarried teenage daughter is indeed 5 months pregnant.

Seeing this "Breaking News" on TV when trying to catch news of Gustav and the Republican Convention, my son immediately asks me "But how can she be pregnant if she isn't married?" and "Does a girl get pregnant every time she has sex with a boy?" Thus ensues the revelation that sex is possible before marriage, and how condoms and birth control pills can prevent pregnancy and HIV. I wholly believe in educating my child about contraception. But given that he is indeed 7, I could easily have waited another year or two for him to be older for that particular conversation ...

I don't judge the Palins for having a pregnant teen daughter. I do think that it reinforces the need for frank sex education and the distribution of condoms in middle and high schools ... Each year a million girls under the age of 20 become pregnant in the U.S.

But the hypocrisy of so-called Conservatives in touting this circumstance as proof of family values, of conservative values, really roils me. The AP recently reported that John McCain not only has opposed federal spending on teen-prevention programs, he has also voted to oppose education and federal spending on contraceptives. Palin's own record shows the same at the state level ...

http://www.alternet.org/sex/97320/how_my_7-year-old_learned_about_pre-marital_sex_from_john_mccain/

[orleans]

1. k&r "what will we tell the chilllldren????

(i remember that phrase from about ten years ago!)

yes, republikas--what indeed.

(btw--nice talk you had with your kid. seriously. and--at seven? he asks some good questions)