You're Teaching My Child What? (6 page)

Our kids expect to be bugged by parents and medical providers about eating right, seatbelts, and sunscreen. They worry about secondhand smoke, saturated fats, and genetically engineered vegetables. But thanks to sex educators' belief that “anything goes,” the most bizarre, depraved behaviors have become just another thing for them to try.

Again, when it comes to most health issues, it's considered responsible parenting to lay down the law. But with sexuality, parents are told not to lecture or judge. Do not impose your values, they're instructed. Don't interfere with your teen's decisions, unless, of course, you're reminding her about “protection.”

Adults who insist their teen lives up to a particular standard or moral framework need a style and attitude adjustment. This is your child's own journey, the experts say; step back while she discovers what works for
her.
Listen calmly, and respect her decision.

This isn't education, folks, this is an ideology. You don't need a Ph.D. to understand its hazards; all you need is common sense. In the chapters ahead, I debunk these sacred beliefs, and indict the sex ed industry of misleading us—promising one thing, and doing another.

A
STUDENT ONCE CAME to the counseling center where I worked because she had been unable to get to class for two weeks. Kayla,
¹
18 years old, drank tequila and smoked pot until the morning hours, and then slept the rest of the day. She was vague, at first, about how she'd fallen into this pattern. But our discussion soon turned to David, a guy who lived down the hall. They were friends, and they hung out with the same group. One night they started kissing, and, well, they hooked up—had sex. It was the first of a few casual encounters with him. But after a while, Kayla faced an unwelcome development.

Kayla discovered that the more time she spent with David, the more she needed to be with him. In spite of herself, she had feelings for him, and couldn't help wondering if he cared for her, too. But she didn't ask him—Kayla knew guys don't like high maintenance girls.
So she'd hook up with him and act like it didn't matter.
That's what everyone else is able to do
, she thought,
why can't I
?

But in fact Kayla was always hoping to hear from David: constantly waiting for a text message and compulsively checking her email—longing for some sign of connection, some indication she meant something to him. And it didn't help that he was always around: she'd see him doing laundry or in the cafeteria. Thoughts of David preoccupied Kayla; she couldn't concentrate or sleep well, and so she turned to alcohol and pot to relax. It became increasingly difficult to make it to class, and when she was high, she'd hook up with other guys. But her thoughts always returned to him. “I just can't take it
,
” she told me, holding her head in her hands. “What's wrong with me?”

We formulated a plan. Kayla would contact her professors and also get help for her alcohol and drug abuse. She'd follow my instructions and gradually adjust her sleep schedule back to normal. So far, so good. Then I advised her to refrain from hooking up: no kissing, no sex, no anything in between. Her emotional state was too fragile.

“
Kissing
?” She asked, in disbelief. “I can't
kiss
anyone?”

“Kissing is an intimate behavior,” I told her. “It has an effect on you. How about trying it for one week—can you agree to that?”

“Wow,” she said, considering my suggestion. “OK, but this is going to mean a big change of lifestyle. I'll need something to remind me.”

Something to remind her... there was a wide rubber band on my desk; “Take this, and write NO HOOKING UP on it. Put it around your wrist and don't take it off. It will remind you of our conversation. And if anyone gives you a hard time about it,” I said with mock authority, “tell them to come and speak to
me
about it!”

For the first time, she laughed. “Thank you, Dr. Grossman.”

Telling a patient to wear a rubber band with advice on it is not a therapeutic intervention I learned in my residency. Nor was my abstinence suggestion any more than a stop-gap solution to Kayla's crisis.
But her high-risk behavior was an emergency: she could show up at her next appointment pregnant, or infected with herpes. Stopping these chaotic, meaningless encounters would help stabilize her and perhaps pave the way for some meaningful self-reflection.

Parents might think, what was wrong with this girl? It's tempting to conclude that she must have been immature or unstable, or perhaps not so bright to begin with. That would be a convenient explanation for how she got into this mess.

Not so. Kayla was a smart young woman without a history of emotional problems, and she was no less mature than the average freshman. Furthermore, she always practiced responsible sexual behavior with David. The most popular resource for comprehensive sex education, SIECUS, recommends that sex be consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable, and protected.
²
Check, check, check, check, and check. Kayla
had
been careful, she
had
played it safe. What went wrong?
³

The problem wasn't with Kayla; it was with those guidelines for “responsible sexual behavior” They omit the fact that sex, with or without latex, is a serious matter. They fail to mention that even one encounter can have profound, lifelong consequences, and that girls are different from boys—that they are, in fact, monumentally and deeply different. Kayla's female brain, for example, predisposed her to yearn for connection, communication, and approval. Her chemistry promoted attachment and trust of David. Her wiring caused her to minimize his shortcomings, and to take risks. In short, Kayla was ignorant about a girl's unique physiological vulnerability to intimate behavior, because that's a “gender stereotype.”

Kayla had asked me, referring to how she'd bonded with David, what was wrong with her. There was
nothing
wrong with her. But there is something wrong when sexuality educators promise comprehensive, accurate, up-to-date medical facts to girls like Kayla, and then fail to deliver the goods.

I checked Webster's dictionary and “comprehensive” means “covering much; broad; all-inclusive.” SIECUS's
Guidelines for Comprehensive Sex Education
⁴
appears to be exactly that. Along with contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS, topics include sexual fantasy, masturbation, sexuality and the media, and gender role stereotypes. Downloaded a thousand times a month, in addition to the 100,000 copies that have been distributed, it would seem that if Kayla's schools had followed SIECUS's
Guidelines
, she'd have learned all the up-to-date medical facts she needed to know.

But medically accurate facts are scarce in this publication. In fact, SIECUS's
Guidelines
consist mostly of questionable, agenda-driven material. This curriculum is designed to inculcate students with a specific worldview:

The only information that makes it into these pages are what supports SIECUS's values and goals. One value, for example, is that “sexuality is a central part of being human.”
⁵
SIECUS expects Kayla and David to “explore their sexuality as a natural process in achieving sexual maturity.”
⁶
Presumably, by doing so, they will learn to “enjoy and express their sexuality throughout life.”

Just one minute. A
central part
of being human? What does that mean, precisely? Something that they should
explore as a part of achieving sexual maturity
? Where is the scientific research demonstrating that? With the SIECUS curriculum animated by this ideology,
is it any wonder so much emphasis is placed on teen sexual activity, in all its diversity?

SIECUS follows what I term the “bikini approach” in its understanding of male/female differences: men and women are the same, except for some minor physical features that could be covered by a bikini. More influential than biology, SIECUS implies, are “messages” kids get from family, culture, media and society: “Cultures teach what it means to be a man or a woman.”
⁷

Cultures? What about anatomy, histology, neurology, endocrinology, and physiology? Sure, kids get messages from their environment, but the foundations of maleness and femaleness are rooted in biology, far beyond the reach of Hollywood,
Seventeen
Magazine, or Aunt Sally.

But not according to SIECUS. From the
Guidelines
:

From Kindergarten through 12th grade, our kids learn that maleness and femaleness are culturally imposed concepts, and that endorsing them can destroy lives.

This is
comprehensive sex ed
, for sure—comprehensive indoctrination.

Now consider basic biology. You know—cells, organs, hormones, viruses? In spite of the overarching goal of sexual health, and SIECUS's refrain that it provides medically accurate and up-to-date information, the
Guidelines
are noteworthy for their
lack
of technical and cutting edge information. In the entire 112-page document, only a single page, “Reproductive and sexual anatomy and physiology” might be described as biology, and it's anything
but
comprehensive. Instead, it's heavy on the sexual (“Both boys and girls have body parts that feel good when touched”) and light on anatomy and physiology.

In fact, what's missing from the
Guidelines
is more important than what's included: research that highlights the differences between male and female brains. Medically accurate? Up to date? It doesn't get any better than this. This science is cutting edge, and comes from the best medical centers in the country. It demonstrates that Kayla's wiring is exquisitely reactive, and distinctly female. A unique female cocktail of estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin
⁹
bathe her brain, influencing her perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Silently, beneath the radar, her system reacts in a variety of ways to David; it registers and reacts to his scent and touch. Bottom line: that second X chromosome in all
¹⁰
her cells creates a distinctly feminine reality.
¹¹
It's a reality of elevated sensitivity and, along with that, increased vulnerability.

SIECUS, there is more to Kayla and David's emotional and sexual functioning than is met with in your philosophy. Your work is animated by dusty themes of social justice, but the idealism is misplaced, the science is outdated, and young people pay dearly. Unlike programs devised in the 1960s and 1970s, sex education in the twenty-first century can and should be based on processes occurring at a cellular and
molecular level. Research conducted over the past two decades provides us with a wealth of insight. Those are objective truths, those are the facts kids have a right to know, and we have an obligation to provide them.

In this and the following chapters, I provide the science that's omitted from “comprehensive” sex education—science that has confirmed what common sense always told us: there are more than “a few” differences between girls and boys, and sexual behavior has profound consequences—with or without contraceptives. It's not a “stereotype,” it's not a “value,” and it's not a “paradigm”; it's what you see under a microscope. It's information our daughters and sons never hear, because it challenges the institutionalized ideology and—gasp—confirms traditional values and teachings. The deliberate exclusion of this science, by those who have our trust—and our dollars—is a crime.