sit down, have a talk

Op-Ed columnist Charles Blow recently wrote this article for the New York Times. He tells us that “a 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development” and that “the U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active.”

How can this be? I enjoyed Juno as much as the next person, but didn’t we learn anything from this? Teen pregnancy isn’t as funny as Diablo Cody and Ellen Page make it out to be. We can’t expect our nation’s youth to just know about safe sex practices if we don’t teach them.

I remember that my health class in high school was nowhere near comprehensive. Yes, our teacher did show us a very graphic video of child birth but I definitely don’t remember any talks about safe sex practices.

I think Blow gives great, yet simple advice to parents at the end of his article. He suggests that parents sit their kids down, talk seriously about sex, and give them straight answers on safe sex practices.