One Reason Why I Talk to My Girls About Sex

They did it in the back seat of a ’57 Chevy. It was her first time. It didn’t take long for them to learn that yes, you can get pregnant your first time. Virginity was not a virtue in the world I grew up in. By the time I was a teenager I knew my parents married because the barrel of a shotgun stared them down. I did the math – my sister was born 9 months after my mom’s 18th birthday and while they told everyone they got married in July, they really eloped in October. By the time I was 16, not only did I know that I was a product of the rhythm method of birth control, I knew that many of my friends were no longer virgins. I heard sex was a lot of fun, but, more than anything, I thought if a guy wanted to have sex with me that I was somehow special, valuable, worthy of love – if only for a moment. Even in the midst of multiple casual relationships, sex still had some sense of making love attached to it. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that sex and love do not always go hand in hand. When we separate sex from love we lose something. We lose some of our humanity. We become like all the other animals on the planet, driven by passions and instinct – responding to physical stimuli without thinking, without feeling, without loving. That’s not what I wanted for my daughters, but neither do I want to ask them to make a promise to NOT do something that statistically they have little chance at succeeding at.

While I may have some anecdotal evidence from a few young people around me, the statistics show that (almost) everyone is doing it before they get married (Relevant Magazine September/October 2011, pg. 65) – even Christians. Yet, I remind myself that statistics are a description of past behavior, not a prediction of the future. While some are speculating about why young Christians aren’t waiting anymore, I’m looking for the reasons why some people ARE waiting – and I talk about it often with my girls because I hope my girls will make better choices than I did. Isn’t that what most parents want?

“If I could just spare her that pain – the pain of feeling dirty and unlovable after having casual sex,” I thought. “If I could just make sure she knows she is special, valuable and worthy of love.” I had no idea whether a purity talk and signing a purity pledge would do the trick and protect her from the pain I had experienced or help her feel special, but I hoped it would make some kind of difference. I searched the local Christian bookstores and looked online and finally found a program called Passport2Purity. I invited my daughter’s best friend and her mom to do a Passport2Purity weekend together, hoping our daughters might be a little more receptive to our instruction if we had someone else to back us up.

Glue, construction paper, puzzles, balloons, … We gathered the supplies listed in the parent manual and embarked on my first purity talk weekend getaway. The Passport2Purity curriculum is good, though I’m using The Purity Code Book and CD now – it’s a little more up to date. But the curriculum is not the most important thing. The most important thing is continuing the conversation and making things that are often un-discussable between parents and children discussable. While sex and intimacy are private matters meant to be special moments between two people, keeping things secret and hidden promotes a sense of shame and fear. Using a curriculum helped me organize my thinking and talking as well as touched on subjects I may not have thought to talk about. I have been exposed to a variety of views on purity and sexuality – from the free love and sex mentality of growing up in Woodstock, NY to the conservative Christian view of “kissing dating goodbye” and waiting until marriage to even kiss. I wasn’t exactly sure where I would land on the spectrum with my girls, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be on the same end of the spectrum I came from.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

“Mom, you HAVE to call the school counselor and switch me out of Astronomy class! I don’t think I can stand seeing him every day.” This was her plea amidst the tears after he broke her heart the first time. I was as surprised as she was when he broke up with her. After all he wrote, “I love you” in her yearbook. They were still dating when they signed up for classes but by the time the next school year rolled around, they had broken up. For a while, she didn’t think it would be possible to be in the same class with him, and she certainly couldn’t imagine being friends with him. But, they had quite a few mutual friends and I encouraged her to at least try to not hate him – after all, hatred is not a popular Christian virtue. We prayed and cried through the pain of rejection together. Then, he made a pass at her at a party and begged her to take him back. She opened her heart again – but a bit more slowly. They tried to focus on developing a healthy friendship and taking things a bit slower this time, but it didn’t last. She cried the second time around, but by then she knew she could survive being in the same class – and while odds are they won’t be close friends, she has learned some valuable lessons about romance and friendship through this experience.

Time and again we hear the story of those who’s marriages have lasted the test of time, “I married my best friend.” We hear stories and tell our teens that romantic relationships are about so much more than sex and physical attraction. We tell them that friendship is the foundation of all lasting romantic relationships and that when they are dating they should avoid getting physical and focus on developing a friendship with their romantic partner. Other popular Christian dating (or NOT dating) books advise young people to avoid romance all together and focus on developing healthy cross-gender friendships (in group settings, of course) until they are ready to commit to a courting relationship. On the one hand, we tell them to “just be friends” and that friendship is the most important aspect of a life-long, committed love relationship. Then, we turn around and tell them that, honestly, they can’t be “just friends” because all adolescent guys ever really think about is sex. Sometimes we tell them, if a guy says he wants to be “just friends” it either means he’s not at all attracted to you and senses your interest in him, or he wants to have sex with you and senses the feelings are not mutual. But everybody knows, it’s impossible for young men and women to be “just friends.” And, women see this differently than men, according to some college students.

Are we giving mixed messages here? Friendship is the most important thing, but cross-gender friendships are impossible? Dan Brennan, in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women, argues it is not only possible, it is important to have friendships between men and women that are ‘non-sexual’, but still intimate and deep. He goes on to imagine that when we locate cross-gender friendship among Christians within the context of spiritual siblings we mitigate much of the danger of sexual sin. I’m really interested in this idea, especially for my daughters and will be reviewing Brennan’s book here soon. There is also an upcoming gathering on this topic and my friends Jim Henderson and Kathy Escobar are on the speaker list, though I hear it is more of a conversational event than a presentational event. Check out the Sacred Friendship Gathering and tell your friends – both kinds!

What do you think?

Purity Pledges and Faithlessness

“I wish I knew God like you do, Mom, but I’m just not sure.” According to David Kinnaman of The Barna Group in You Lost Me, “nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15.” This doesn’t always mean they lose faith, but sometimes it does. I’ve been wrestling with this data for a few weeks in thinking about talking to teen girls about purity. One popular purity pledge states, “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”

True Love Waits

So often our arguments for why teens should not have sex before marriage are contingent upon faith in God and belief in the Bible as the authority on such matters. Or, we present scare tactics of unwanted pregnancy and STD statistics hoping that if the fear of God doesn’t compel them, then the fear of consequences will. Unfortunately, studies have shown that fear is not the best motivator (see Change or Die) and that teens respond to pleasure, not pain and we need to parent accordingly.

What other reasons do we have to offer to encourage healthy sexuality?