This article is not about teen books, it’s about teen sex.
But what teens are doing has a bearing on what they are reading. And what they are reading has a bearing on what they are doing.
What I found most interesting is this, found at the very bottom of the article:
Tania says she and her friends talk about the right and wrong of what they do. “We learn morals from other people’s experiences,” she says.
According to Mitchell, now many sexual rules have gone, young people can develop personal ethics. “We need to understand that kids will have sex when they are not married,” she says. “Our concern would be to make them safe and enjoy it.
We learn morals from other people’s experience? How messed up is that?
And why on earth would we be concerned with making sure kids enjoy the sex they are having?
That is so silly. As if they need to enjoy it more. Isn’t the problem that they do enjoy it a lot already, with a whole lot of people they shouldn’t be enjoying it with?
And should we really just give up? I mean, kids are going to commit suicide whether we like it or not. Does that mean we should teach them to enjoy it?
Just because the rules have gone and kids are developing their own personal ethics (code language for following the pack off the cliff) doesn’t mean we need to teach them to enjoy sex. Maybe we need to teach them to enjoy being responsible and obedient and hard-working, and self-sacrificing.
Teen sex is greedy. It’s selfish. It’s not about commitment and love and hard-work. It’s about enjoying yourself and who gives a flip about the other person? I don’t owe you anything–no strings attached. Why would we need to teach them to enjoy that? We are all greedy enough without being encouraged. We need to teach kids to fight their ugly selfish urges.
Are there books out there that don’t glorify the sex but paint a true picture of it? I think the movie Juno did a great job of being real without glorifying the sex (and without condemning anyone) while showing that there are some consequences.
What else is out there?
