Abstinence only training is naive

Sarah Palin is the subject of this post, but it isn't about politics at all.

It's about raising kids.

As a proud member of the Christian Right, the GOP vice presidential nominee is opposed to abortion, not so high on birth control and very much against sex education in schools. The Alaska governor supports so-called "abstinence only" education, as do many conservative Christians.

And she has a 17-year-old daughter who is five months pregnant.

I don't want to be critical of young Bristol Palin, who probably never asked her mother to become a national candidate and make her a national scandal. Kids make mistakes, and at least she has a supportive family who will help her with the issues involved with being an 18-year-old mother.

But I'm highly critical of abstinence-only education, because once you get past that, you're left with nowhere else to go. You teach your kids to "just say no" to their hormones, and once a "maybe" or a "yes" has slipped in there (no pun intended), that's it. They don't know how to cope.

I raised two children, and I was pretty much the one responsible for their sex education. What I told both of them was that it would be a terrible idea for them to have sex while they were still in high school. I told them that they weren't mature enough emotionally to deal with it, and that there were all sorts of possible bad consequences -- pregnancy, STDs, loss of reputation, etc.

I told them in no uncertain terms that having sex in high school was a bad idea.

Then I told them that if they were going to ignore me, they ought to be aware of things like birth control and so-called "safe sex."

My friend Mick -- my own link to the Christian Right -- told me I was giving my children mixed messages, that by telling them about condoms, I was telling them -- wink, wink -- that it was really all right.

I told him I was treating them like intelligent human beings and respecting them as individuals. My daughter did get pregnant, but it wasn't until she was 27 and had been married for more than a year. My son is 23 and engaged, and as far as I know has no offspring running around.

God may give absolute messages.

We shouldn't.