Claire thought that she
had a good handle on the activities of her fifteen-year-old daughter Samantha.
Her daughter got good grades in school and played soccer with the town league
on weekends. Claire knew that Samantha had an interest in boys, and Samantha
had mentioned that a boy named Roger—he was a year older, a junior—had talked
to her a few times at school events.
Then it happened. The
moment that nearly every parent dreads. Samantha asked her mom to take her to
the doctor because she thought she had contracted a disease. From Roger.
How little parents know!
Claire recovered from the shock and sat down with Samantha. Exactly what was
going on?
Roger and Sam had “done
it.” When? Claire thought that she had been very careful to monitor her
daughter’s social activities. Remember the party a few weeks ago after the
varsity basketball game? And the high school dance? And the night she slept
over at her friend Jen’s house? The opportunities for hookups, Claire realized,
were far more numerous than she imagined.
Claire decided to
educate herself and get some facts that would allow her to view Samantha’s
choices in context. According to reports published by the Kinsey Institute at
www.indiana.edu/~kinsey:
• By their late
teenage years, at least 3/4 of all teens have had intercourse, and more than
2/3 of all sexually-experienced teens have had two or more partners.
• The U.S. teen
pregnancy rate fell by 27 percent between 1990 and 2000, from 116.3 pregnancies
per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 to 84.5.
• The Center for
Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 19 million new
sexually-transmitted infections occur each year, almost half of them among
young people ages 15 to 24.
• Among women aged
15-19 years, 42.9% reported no partners in the last 12 months, 30.5% reported
one partner of the opposite sex in the last 12 months, and 16.8% reported two
or more partners of the opposite sex in the previous year.
The news that teen
pregnancy rates are falling was somewhat comforting to Claire, but nonetheless
today’s teen sexuality posed enormous challenges for her family.
What were their choices?
Claire knew that she could not turn back the hands of time. Her daughter, for
better or worse, had taken a major life step. She was “mommy’s little girl” no
longer.
Claire felt dismayed
that Samantha had done it in secret, without involving her mom. Claire thought
back to when she was fifteen, and the vacation to the lake with her parents.
She had met Ronald, the son of the man who owned the boathouse where the family
Chris-Craft was stored over the winter. One night Ron and Claire had ended up
in a vacant guest cottage. They had sex. Claire didn’t like Ron much and she
had mixed feelings about what she had done. And of course she hadn’t told her
mother! That would have been crazy! If she had gotten pregnant… Claire
shuddered to think what would have happened.
Claire put her feelings
aside and went into action. She made an appointment for Samantha with her
gynecologist. Beginning regular exams for Samantha was something that she had
been putting off, but no longer. Samantha needed her help, and Claire resolved
to move forward into this brave new world that her daughter now inhabited.
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