SARAH WRITES:

I’m a happily married mother of two young girls (ages 3 and 5). I want to bring my children up to embrace the kind of ideas and moral virtues you espouse on your blog, but there’s a small problem. Unfortunately, in my quest to encourage their remaining chaste until marriage, let’s just say that leading by example won’t be an option. My great fear is that a ‘do-as-I-say,-not-as-I-do (or did)’ approach will ultimately be ineffectual. Should I lie to them about what went on before meeting my husband/their father, tell them the truth (with 101 disclaimers!) or simply hope that the topic doesn’t arise?! Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but rightly or wrongly, the issue is weighing on my mind. 

I wasn’t really taught about the inherent morality of abstinence at my liberal Christian school (although I am Jewish…long story!). Abstinence was simply presented as a method of birth-control alongside the pill, condoms and IUD’s. My mother told me in a matter-of-fact way, when asked, that she lost her virginity at age 16. If she regretted having had premarital relations, she certainly didn’t let me in on it. Around the time I turned 18 she started to actively encourage me to dress provocatively in order to attract the opposite sex. When this inevitably worked, as it did time and again, her only advice to me was to use protection and, above all, DO NOT GET PREGNANT. My father didn’t get involved at all in such matters. The popular culture at the time was possibly more sex-obsessed than at any other time in history and I was fully immersed in it. Madonna’s ‘sex book’ was a best-seller, George Michael was telling me that ‘sex is natural, sex is fun’ and I believed it all. So, in 1992, at the age of 19, I lost my virginity. I regret it now. Oh, how I regret it. But I didn’t regret it back then. At the time it felt, well, inevitable. Until I found blogs like yours and ‘Oz Conservative’, I didn’t really know of any alternative reality. Sure I knew what chastity was, but I thought it was something that only the Victorians actually practised. Maybe if the Internet had existed back then with sites like yours… 

Thank you for taking the time to read my little note and thank you again for your wonderful blog.

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing. You are not making a mountain out of a molehill. The issue you raise is important. The majority of women who are now mothers have experienced promiscuity firsthand. Do mothers have any authority, let alone the desire, to raise their children differently? The answer is simple. It does not require strained logic or unprincipled exceptions. There is only one answer. I hope you will see it and never have any doubts about this issue again.

I used to know a woman who was very beautiful. In fact, she was the most beautiful woman I have ever known, perfect in every way, like a goddess. She had high cheekbones and doe-like eyes and a  voice that was unusually deep for a woman but which added to her overall mystery and remarkable beauty. I knew her as a child, she was a few years older, and I have followed her life ever since. For years she had many lovers and one central boyfriend. They were perfecting their intimacy, this man and she, and both hedged about getting married. They went back and forth for years, dissecting their relationship. Finally, when she was in her mid-forties, he decided that the thing he wanted most in life was to have children. Needless to say, it was too  late for her. She is still good-looking and has since found another man,  incredibly wealthy and recently divorced. He asked her to quit her job and help him raise his young children. She did. He promised marriage but has since decided he’d rather not. He did, however, buy her a new car. For all those years of love, this ravishingly beautiful and self-assured woman, a woman who could have had anything she wanted if she wanted it, has one thing left: a car.

This is a relatively trivial example of the harm the sexual revolution has caused. A river of tears runs through our culture.  Sex is miraculous and we have made it dull and destructive, murderous even and cruel. But, I don’t have to tell you all this. You already know it. You have found happiness, but you still see the waste, the loss of something sacred.

That’s the most important thing, that you see the waste and admit your own role in it. Wrongdoing does not disqualify a person from advising against wrongdoing. It is not hypocrisy to say, “Do not do as I have done.” It is hypocrisy to see that some activity is objectively wrong and then not advise others against it. That is inconsistent. That is hypocritical.

You are qualified, every bit as much as someone who was a virgin when she married, to teach your daughters why premarital chastity is good. That’s because it’s true and you recognize that it is true. The truth of it is independent of your experience. When and if the time comes to talk to your daughters about your own past, you will tell them how you felt the waste in the deepest part of your person. [See a reader’s comment here that that time should never come.]

But that’s a long way off. In the meantime, you can prepare them for a better life. You can help them know what is right when they are still little girls. For most children, life is filled with beauty and God is real. You can confirm their impressions. Through stories and fairy tales, myths and legends, the works of the imagination that all children love, you can show them there is both danger and wonder ahead. The written word is indispensable. Faith and prayer are indispensable. Sex education starts in the imagination and the soul.

As they get older, you can talk to your daughters more and more about marriage and men. This is the job of mothers, not schools. They will trust what you say. If you tell them with conviction that love is much better when one is married, they will believe you. If you tell them with conviction, not once but many times, that many men do not respect a woman after they have had sex with her, unless they are married to her, they will believe you. If you tell them marriage and motherhood will be the best experiences of their lives, they will believe you. But, you can’t say it just a couple of times. The opposite message will be conveyed elsewhere.

When they are young women, you then can tell them all the brutal facts about the sexual revolution in an impersonal way, the truths that they may not hear elsewhere, such as that most women who have had abortions regret it and live in remorse for years and that abortion is objectively murder. You can point out all the cases of disease that lead to infertility and tell them the truth about single motherhood. You can tell them how unfair it is to raise children without a father.You can tell them about the women you know who have never had children and were lonely when they were old. You can tell them that adoption is often the best way with a pregnancy before marriage. They will believe you if you say these things often enough.

Again, anyone has the authority to raise her children differently provided she has sincerely examined her own conscience. Parents today not only possess the moral legitimacy to teach their children restraint, they have the absolute duty to do so. They may possess even more authority than parents in the past based on the misery they have seen.

It is very unlikely if you do all this that your daughters will go wrong, but if they do, you should be prepared to detach yourself somewhat from them. That’s the hard part and that too is your duty. A mother’s disapproval is a powerful corrective.

It’s all worth it, don’t you think?

Think of yourself as a revolutionary. You are part of a radical subculture working to dry up that river of unhappiness, madness and waste. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will thank you in their own indirect way. And even if it fails and no one is grateful to you, it’s still good. The angels will throw their arms about you someday. You will rediscover that glorious innocence you lost years ago.

                                                    — Comments —

Sheila C. writes:

Laura, as you so rightly note, so many mothers have experienced promiscuity (or other cultural excesses) firsthand. Far too many fall into the trap of thinking they cannot condemn something they themselves were guilty of in their youth and ignorance. I have sons, not daughters, but my husband and I have told the older one countless times that God intends sex to bless marriage, and have recounted stories of others we knew who engaged in promiscuity and the difficulties and even tragedies that resulted. Our son (the younger one still find the idea of a girlfriend “gross”) does not need to know the particulars of his parents’ teen years; he needs to know our clear convictions and morals now as his parents and as Christians. And we are well prepared to distance ourselves from him should he ignore our heartfelt advice and strong prohibitions against immorality – we’ve told him so in abundantly clear terms, and far more importantly, he believes us.

Your story about the beautiful woman who followed conventional wisdom and ended up with a car reminded me of a friend I had in college. She took up with a fast-talking, financially-comfortable guy with a large ego and went to live with him, with plans to convert to Judaism and marry him. Many years later, after sporadic correspondence, I had lunch with her overseas when she was on a buying trip for the retailer she worked for, and I was pregnant with my first son and working in the U.S. Embassy as a dependent spouse. She was two years older than I, and still single and childless at 35. A few years later this man she was still living with on nothing more than a promise changed his mind; he dumped her for a younger woman whom he married and had children with, and she returned home to live with her mother, single at almost 40 and heartbroken. A woman in my husband’s office (a year my senior, at 52) recently returned from a two-week trip to France and Germany – with her elderly mother. She also never married or had children, and it seems that glamorous life of a single career woman is just not what she had envisioned in her youth. I know we can all recount similar stories, yet far too many live with the consequences of having listened to those feminists who insisted a career was vital. I well remember the bitter single woman in the State Department with whom I clashed on numerous occasions (to the ultimate detriment of my job). She was totally bemused when she tried to bring me to heel by insisting I would never make ambassador with my attitude, and I calmly replied that I had no desire to be one. She could not fathom what else I could possibly want (I declined to share with her my desire to marry and have a family) and couldn’t comprehend why her threats really had no impact on my behavior.

Jesse writes:

Here is a good article on the theme of delaying sex until marriage in support of what you had to say to Sarah. 

The website that hosts this article is called “Good Morals.” On the website they have a link to “Sexual Purity Links.” There are many articles under “Purity Links” on the subject of the harm done by pre-marital sex. I think this webpage is a worthy resource.

Sarah writes:

Thank you, Laura, for such a thoughtful and beautifully written response to my question. I have read it (and the reader comments) several times over and each time, when I reach the final word, I smile inwardly and whisper my heartfelt thanks to you, for your tremendous gift of wisdom and clarity, and to G-d, most especially, for His hand in putting me on the right path after such a long and painful time in the moral wilderness. 

It’s strange to think that only four short years ago I was still watching shows like ‘Sex and the City’ with a completely uncritical eye. Worse still, and to my ongoing shame, I owned the complete series on DVD and saw nothing wrong with lending it to my 17 year-old (female) neighbour to watch. Needless to say, for her sake and mine (not to mention society in general), I wish my own ‘intellectual revolution‘ had started sooner. Much sooner. But better late than never, I suppose. Most of my friends, even the married ones, are still paddling in that river of tears and not doing anything to stop their children from eventually adding to its depth and breadth with tears of their own. 

Yes, we do need to reverse the sexual revolution. Your reply has certainly galvanized my determination to do what needs to be done so in order to achieve this. 

Thank you again. Everything you wrote makes perfect sense, and you can be sure that your advice has not landed on deaf ears.

Laura writes:

You are welcome.

You raise another interesting issue. Why have you had this intellectual revolution and others have not? Parenthood is a profound illumination, the greatest intellectual event in our lives. Nevertheless, some parents mysteriously remain in the dark. 

John E. writes:

Laura wrote: 

The majority of women who are now mothers have experienced promiscuity firsthand. 

This is an interesting way of phrasing it. Do you not mean that a majority of women who are now mothers were promiscuous in the past? But your phrasing doesn’t express this. Did they participate in promiscuity, or merely observe it?

Laura writes:

Good catch. I would change that passive voice if I had to do it over. But the complaint is trivial. I did not try to evade the issue of guilt. As I said:

That’s the important thing, that you see the waste and admit your own role in it.

And:

Anyone has the authority to raise her own children differently provided she has sincerely examined her own conscience.

By the way, in the case of the woman I knew from childhood, I hardly view her as a victim. That’s what most amazed me about her, the self-assured way she went about pursuing an empty life. She also does not appear to view herself as in any way a victim.

The tears I referred to were the tears of remorse, not victimhood. Remorse destroys or it renews.

Lawrence Auster writes:

Sarah’s account of what her mother told her and encouraged her to do when she was in her teens adds up to this: Her mother instructed her to be promiscuous. She writes: 

“Around the time I turned 18 she started to actively encourage me to dress provocatively in order to attract the opposite sex. When this inevitably worked, as it did time and again, her only advice to me was to use protection and, above all, DO NOT GET PREGNANT.” 

In encouraging her daughter to wear provocative clothes, Sarah’s mother was like the mother of Morgan Harrington, the Virginia Tech student who after taking her mother’s fashion advice disappeared while walking around alone looking for a ride outside a concert stadium in Charlottesville last fall:

Gil Harrington last saw her daughter the morning of the concert. Morgan, calling on her mother for a fashion consultation, was trying on outfits. They settled on a black Pantera T-shirt, black miniskirt, black tights and knee-high black boots. Morgan made a point of making sure the boots weren’t too high so she’d be able to dance, her mother said. 

Laura writes:

Sarah’s mother betrayed her. Pure and simple.

But my advice to Sarah is to not think of this and to focus on what she can do for her daughters. She should look at her mother’s betrayal as instructive. Now, if she went to a conventional therapist, she may be encouraged to explore and attempt to understand this betrayal, rather than shift her attention to her own power as a mother.

James P. writes:

Sarah writes,

“Should I lie to them about what went on before meeting my husband/their father, tell them the truth (with 101 disclaimers!) or simply hope that the topic doesn’t arise?!”

This reminds me of something I recently read in Leonard Sax’s Why Gender Matters. He notes what he calls the “oozing of parental authority” in recent decades – that is, parents are now more likely to ask their children what they want instead of to tell them what to do. Many parents now try to be friends with their children rather than parents. In his view, this is a negative trend, which causes “status insecurity” in the child, and leads, among other things, to more fat kids, more teenage sex, and more teenage criminals. He rejects the idea that parents have any obligation to tell their children any sordid “truths” about their own upbringing:

“Keep your own secrets secret. Your children do not need to hear about how you used marijuana in high school and that’s how you know how dangerous smoking pot can be. Sharing such stories, regardless of their educational value, erodes your authority and blurs the distinction between who’s the parent and who’s the child.

Some single parents are especially vulnerable to the temptation to use their children, especially their teenage children, as willy-nilly confidants. That’s a mistake, says Paul Kropp, author of I’ll Be the Parent, You Be the Child. As adults, we each have our own emotional needs: to confess our wrongdoings perhaps, or to get advice, or maybe just to share a juicy piece of gossip. But you’re an adult. Find another adult to satisfy your needs. ‘Parent who are looking for confession, psychotherapy, or a best friend should approach the appropriate people in an adult way,’ Kropp says, ‘Kneel, pay the fee or buy the beer. Leave your kids alone.'”

He advises against trying to use your past mistakes (“I did this and that’s how I know it’s bad”) for advantage, as this only provokes the child to respond along the lines of, “Maybe it was bad for you, but maybe it wouldn’t be bad for me!” or “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do something you did?” or “You turned out OK, so it must not be that bad.”

What’s not important is what you did as a teenager, but what example you set for your children now. Obviously if you have a major lack of personal discipline – a drinking or drug problem – you will have little capability to discipline your child.

Sax has some interesting things to say about discipline, and in particular, what approaches are approproate for each gender and age group. On the subject at hand here – decreasing the risk of teenage girls having sex – he says to make clear what’s forbidden, and enforce it, and to offer alternatives. Make sure your girls understand you don’t approve of sexual activity involving genital contact, and involve them in girls-only activity (“sports, ballet, jazz dance, and other all-female activities”). Know where your teen is; know who they are with; know everything about any parties they propose to attend. With daughters, “no more than three years age difference between your daughter and the oldest boy in the group. Girls who go out with substantially older boys are more likely to be pressured into sex.”

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