Disclaimer: As a dad, husband, cyber-lover, and adult blogger who was raised in a conservative Christian home I am a bit conflicted in discussing sexuality and the pros and cons of both sides of the issue. I reserve the right to contradict myself.

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I have a 13yo daughter who is hitting puberty, noticing boys and asking questions. My wife and I have to decide what to teach her, what advice to give, and how to support her in becoming a woman in today’s society.

We encourage her to have boy and girl friends. We help her learn the social skills to make friends, learn about people, and chose people who are good for her, people who will love and support her goals and values . One of the key values we are teaching her is that she is in control of her future.

She needs to learn what will get her to her goals and what will distract her. Staying healthy, doing her homework, sleeping right, and taking care of herself all get her closer to the things she finds important. Video games, too much TV, smoking, bad language, and boys do not, at 13, help her reach those goals.

I can empathize with the motivation of the “Purity Ball” organizers. It’s a tool to build a stronger relationship between a daughter and her father, and to give her a sense of accountability to another to make good decisions. All of us need a sense of direction, rules, and structure to do our best, and we need someone who will hold us to those standards.

We teach her that her mind has to be in control of her emotions and that she has to learn to tell the difference between what her head, heart, and body want. She has to realize that having a boyfriend at 13 is ridiculous, and that being sexually active too early is usually a recipe for heartache.

We talk very openly in my house about sex. A friend of hers (Toni), only 15, is pregnant by a boy she met twice. We talk about how it affects her schooling, her future, her family, and her self-image. We talk about the decisions Toni made that led up to her getting pregnant, and we discuss how it’s important for our daughter to be aware of what can happen, and the consequences of those choices.

We’ve talked about birth control and STDs and taken advantage of a wide range of opportunities to help her be informed. At church she gets a moral window into her choices, at school she gets statistics and medical facts devoid of any ethical judgment, so as her parents, we help to blend the two sides so she can be aware of her choices, the consequences of those choices, and have the personal strength to decide what is best for her.

We also try to show her (well, not literally) what role healthy sexuality can have in a relationship. We talk about the joy and security that can be found in relationships where two people love and support each other.

As a father I want to protect her from the boys/men of her world that seek to harm her. I want her to have the tools to protect herself from any predator that would cause her pain, whether they are called boyfriend, rapist, or acquaintance. I want her to value her self so that she protects herself from unnecessary pain that comes from rash decisions or teenage rebellion. In most cases, that means saying no to sex, because that is what most men are after, without regard for her.

I want her to feel loved and secure and supported by her father, her mother, siblings, and extended family so she does not seek acceptance and validation in the arms of a boy who tells her what ever it takes to get her in to bed. And yes, I will meet every boy who picks her up for a date, I will set rules and curfews, and I will set high expectations of behavior because when those we love expect great things of us, we can do great things.

I think the sexualization of daughters in the Purity Ball context is a little creepy, but in a world that bombards our young people with a constant stream of sexual images and enticements, people are doing their best to give their daughters a different perspective.

I want my daughter to be healthy and happy, sexually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I want her to pick friends and relationships that build her up and support her. I am not the “guardian” of her sexuality, but I am her father and am her teacher, protector, counselor, and #1 supporter.

(Please remember, this was written on the fly while I was participating in a conference call at work and trying to answer e-mail, so it’s not a perfect post.)

I grew up attending private school all the way through high school. I know where a lot of these ideas in this book are coming from. I saw them firsthand, saw them developing over time into something that is now marketed and paid for by our tax dollars. I started high school at this really tiny Conservative Christian high school in a town near to where I grew up. There were literally less than 30 kids in my freshman class. The people were nice enough and I quickly made friends with a girl called J. J was a little different, wore “grunge” clothes and has pierced ears and a streak of blonde in her dark hair. Although people liked her, she didn’t really have many friends, definitely no girlfriends. She told me one afternoon that one of the teachers had molested her the year before, when she was in 8th grade. I’m not sure what exactly had happened, but when I got there, the teacher had been relieved of teaching duties and was transferred to the “administration office”. As far as I know, he was never punished. Even then, I remember a attitude of “she wears weird clothes and does her hair weird so she must have deserved the molestation somehow”. I don’t remember being bothered by this attitude at the time, but I certainly am now.
At this same school, we had PE last period. All the girls changed in the bathroom and headed out to the soccer field. I remember some girls coming in late to change, having just met their boyfriends behind the dumpster for a quickie bj. This was shortly after signing the “purity contract” with their pastor and parents, swearing before Christ to stay a virgin until marriage. Needless to say, I did not sign said contract, and there was no pressure from my parents to sign it.
After I left the school, the married Algebra teacher got a 16 year old student pregnant. The last I heard, he had left his wife and had gotten an apartment for him and the 16 year old and the baby. I wonder how they are doing now?
After we all graduated (I switched to a new school in my sophomore year), I returned to a friend’s house for a big graduation party, including all the people I had started high school with and some others who were a class above or a class below us. The girl’s parents were out of town, so we all spent the night at her house and drank wine coolers and hung out. At some point in time, the girl who gave the party, G, was looking for her boyfriend, F. F was nowhere to be found, although he did turn up sometime later. He had taken another girl, A, back into the bushes behind the house for a little hanky-panky and had left her there. It turned out to be my job to help A on with her panties, as she was too drunk to get them on properly.
In high school health class, we were blatantly lied to about the effectiveness of birth control methods and how the pill works. And the teacher was supposedly a nurse!
I’ve also been on the receiving end of quite a bit of the virgin/whore dichotomy. I have a pretty outgoing personality, and I like to meet new people. I’ve been accused of being too flirtatious, of being slutty because I want to go dance on the dance floor, or being a whore because a lot of my friends are guys.
Most of these stories are harmless, silly things that happen in high school (and, arguably, beyond). The thing that concerns me the most is the hypocrisy. The telling people one thing and doing/living another. Hypocrisy is the number one reason I highly dislike organized religion, and would never subject my children to any of it’s bs. I would rather be up front with my children about sex. About birth control, condoms, STDs, the whole thing. Be up front, educate yourself and then at some point, when your kid grows up, they have to take responsibility for themselves. And you have to trust that you gave them a good enough education that they will insist on using a condom, or getting yearly checkups, or advocating for women’s health. I’d hope to raise responsible, socially aware kids than kids that are so ignorant they don’t know if a blow job can get them pregnant (trust me, I’ve had this conversation….with kids at an Ivy League school, nonetheless).
As a biologist, the thing that concerns me the most is the lack of education. The dirty lollipop or the dirty piece of tape, the idea that a girl (or woman) is “used” – the whole thing is ridiculous and disturbing. Along with the paternal ownership of a girl’s body – the whole idea is just inane. And, call me silly, but I’d want my kids (or anyone else’s kids, for that matter) to be equipped with as much education on subjects as possible, before they are faced with the decision to have sex or not have sex.
The upside? I’ve started reading more about this whole “feminism” thing. Turns out? I guess I am one

“Parents being allowed to bring their children up to follow their religious values is not bullshit. No one is going to tell you not to raise your kids as feminists or whatever your religion you choose. Can it be damaging? Yes, but it’s not always damaging.”

Some, such as Richard Dawkins, would argue that religion is damaging no matter what and that children should never, ever be indoctrinated. It is better to leave religion until later in life than to risk causing serious psychological damage to a child.

Indoctrinating children, according to some (and I believe this as well), should be considered child abuse.

I don’t think that older people would necessarily always make safer choices, but that they would be better equipped to deal with the risks associated with sex. Teenagers are ill prepared to take care of a baby and may not have the support/money to get an abortion or give a baby up for adoption. They may not have transportation to a clinic or the money to get birth control and condoms or to get tested for STD’s on a regular basis.

It’s important to teach young people that even with the appropriate precautions that shit still happens.

I am not sure how the Purity Balls work, but with the True Love Waits thing that my own church did those situations were handled privately and delicately. There was always a Q&A deal and questions could be brought up privately/anonymously. This was done at camps I went to with hundreds of kids from other churches too. Victims were not blamed and they were assured that they were still ‘pure’ in the eyes of God. Perhaps it is something that should be more openly addressed, and maybe it is now (it’s been 10 years since I was involved in it).

Of course, it’s all according to where you went to school or church how this was handled.

I have a an issue with this. This implies that people who are older are more likely to make safer sexual decisions, which is not always true in many cases. Rather than teaching young people to wait, which has no real purpose other than “purity” ones, teach them about safe sex and how to pick a good sexual partner.

Telling young people to wait is only going to make them go out and make bad choices which will probably not involve safe sex.