Was told to 'spread it', but honey, you are right on the money.
This is not just happening in the USA, but in all 'modern and industrialzed' countries. Unfortunately.
The cost of living is not helping the matter either. Those that live off any social system don't care about money, but produce a lot of children who are destined to follow in footsteps or stuggle harder than those that have 'everything'. Parents who feel they have to give their kids 'everything' feel the need for both to work to provide it - therefore paying someone else to raise those 'privileged' children - which can also go wrong..
I know I'm getting off the subject a bit, but it all goes around in this viscious circle and maintains that 'circular connection'.

Is there any wonder why so many are mislead, confused and easily influenced?

Vegan means that you don't eat ANY animal by product. Gelatin, eggs, diary, and other such foods. Well obviously the human body needs protein, such as amino acids. Really, I think you don't know what you're talking about when you're saying if you don't eat meat your body will have a protein deficiency. There are several ways to get protein without eating meat. Lettuce is 18% protein. It's like eating milk and a pb&j to make a complete protein. You don't even have to eat it at the same meal, just within that whole day or two. You should look into nutrition and educate yourself.


To the rest of the thread:
When I was younger and was curious about sex, I didn't want to talk to my mother. That was too embarrassing, I couldn't talk to my teachers because they were there to teach me about math, history, science, and social studies-- not sex. Then one day we finally got the computer and the internet. There is so much knowledge to be found from there, and one thing you CAN find is sex ed. I found out that coke isn't an effect sperm killer, having sex in water doesn't lower your chances of getting pregnant but you will be hurting much later, that certain lubricants make the condom faulty, I found out what exactly happens during a period and so much more just from Teenwire. That was actually the first website that was reliable for anything. I was able to ask them questions and they would answer them. Compare this to my high school education, it was basically "If you have sex before you're married you will be emotionally scared for the rest of your life, you will get numerous of diseases, and you will become pregnant." They didn't introduce it as possibilities, only as "this WILL happen." It was scary, and it did turn me off to sex with anyone until I was educated. Even now my sister doesn't know a thing about sex and what to do to prevent diseases and pregnancy other than to use a condom. She didn't know about timing and keeping up with your period and figure out what days she would be more likely to become pregnant. I'm still giving her information that she isn't sure about that I mostly learned from Teenwire.

As a parent you're suppose to educate your child, weather it be homeschooling, after school activities, or sending them to public/private schools. You're still educating them. Stripping them from sex education is a very dumb decision, in my opinion. Because then what if they do decide to have sex, what will they know? I'm sure they'll know to only use a condom, because even that's told throughout the upper grades in middle school. They won't know that boys/girls will con them into sex for their own enjoyment then later dump them, it happens and it's a fact of life. They won't know about the possibilities of getting a disease even if they did use a condom, yes that percentage is drastically lower than if they didn't use a condom but there is still a chance. They wouldn't know anything. Then you'll have children who are ignorant of the truth and forced to find out on their own. I don't really know which is worse, faulty information or being ignorant.

I understand that there can be religious reasons involved, but still-- educate them. At least if they do choose to start having sex they will be educated and not make wrong decisions. Or maybe it's just because of your morals, even then I would rather see an educated child make the right decisions in ways to prevent themselves or their partner from getting pregnant to a child who is ignorant, taken advantage of, contracting a disease, or being pregnant because they were not educated.

Now, keep in mind some people use the word "abortion" loosely, and can use that to make 'facts' a bit bias. Some people use it as a word to define any pregnancy that does not end in a live birth. It could talk about a miscarriage or a premature birth where the baby does die. Others consider this to be a spontaneous abortion. So, if you're going to have figures of what's going on make sure you know what they're defining "Abortion" as.

You forgot 'therapeutic abortion' which are probably not in the statistics either.

We are probably getting way off the original subject, but a lot of threads do that and still hold interest.

As far as nutrition goes, I like my steak rare and my vegatables crispy and not all mushy. It's all in the flavor to me.

Tell you what--I've got a DRASTIC solution here!

Let's:

1. Cut all funding to Planned Parenthood.
2. Cut all Welfare funding that isn't for the mentally ill, the elderly, or those terminally ill.
3. Make parents financially responsible for their kids until they are 18, and for their grandkids until their kids are 18.
4. EVERY pregnancy where the mother will not name a father will be automatically make that child (and therefore the mother) ineligible for state aid. If she isn't sure, ALL candidates must be named and DNA tested.
5. All fathers WILL pay child support. If the father is under 18, his child support payments will be based on his parents' income, and they will be responsible for payments if he does not make them.
6. Use the money saved when cutting welfare spending to pay for infertile couples to have a chance at IVF. Heck, we were throwing $20k around on teenage parents who couldn't keep it in their pants--why not give an older, more responsible couple the chance to parent for that same money?
7. Pull sex ed out of the schools entirely. Make the information available at the library for parents to teach their own kids. Then no one can complain about how much money is being spent on the wrong kind of sex ed. And since parents will be financially responsible for their failures to teach (in other words, the pregnancies and medical treatment of STDs that will happen if they can't parent their kids), I think that most parents will MAKE the time to teach their kids. If nothing else, they can't complain that the school/government/Planned Parenthood screwed it all up when their kid comes home pregnant/with syphillis/genital warts/AIDS/etc.

Any other radical suggestions?

I can't think of any reason to limit it to 18, especially since 19 year olds are unlikely to have the resources to pay for a kid. A 19 year old with a kid might end up on the street, so why not make the parents and grandparents pay indefinitely? Or at least until age 25... ;)

I'm not keen on your IVF idea though. Too expensive. Your typical premature IVF baby costs millions of dollars in added health care costs and results in many life long health problems (for the baby). If we are going to be as hard hearted as you are proposing (I take this as a modest proposal), there are much cheaper and healthier ways to make babies...

Asking

The IVF comment was me being cynical.

It frustrates me to no end that I'll have to pay $20k for a CHANCE to have a kid, whether we go with adoption or IVF--and yet these little girls are playing house with taxpayer money, because they have a right to a choice as well. Not that I want to take away their choice--that item was personal frustration, and I just couldn't stop my fingers from typing it. Feel free to ignore it :)

I really do think that if we went back to the lack of funding for people who can't afford kids, though, people would be more careful about getting pregnant in general, and if people HAD to support their grandkids, or people HAD to turn to their parents for money first before going elsewhere, the family unit might be a stronger thing than it is now. Not only do people (in general, not anyone specific) not take responsibility for their own actions (the number of idiotic lawsuits out there supports this statement, imo), but people no longer take responsibility for their families, either. Look at how many posts we have from people who want to know how to get rid of their responsibility for their own kids, whether it's because of money, or because the kid is screwed up and they can't control them anymore!

And I was going to put 25 as the age originally, actually--I'm not sure why I changed it to 18, but probably the technicality of 18 being a legal adult and responsible for yourself thing.

And yes... it's hard-hearted, and it's me being selfish--but having paid my own way since I've been an adult, it frustrates me to see the people who don't educate themselves and learn from their mistakes, and have kid after kid, from guy after guy (or girl after girl), because they KNOW that as long as they try a little bit, no one is going to take their kid away, but they also know that no one is going to let their kid starve, either.

I'm just frustrated tonight about the whole situation. Everyone agrees that the whole system has failed somewhere, but everyone disagrees about where the failure really is, and who should take responsibility for fixing it, and HOW it should be fixed--it's like a snake biting its own tail sometimes.

Kind of makes a fellow wonder how parents were ever able to raise a child without everyone else's 'help' :D

I still go back to my repeated assertion that it's the culture. You can't expect decreasing unwanted pregnanices, STD's, welfare payments, etc. in a culture that glorifies the 'hookup,' undermines parental rights, throws sex in your face 24/7 in the media, abandons the notion of personal responsibility, plays up victimhood, mocks abstinence and marginalizes marriage and fidelity. Just my opinion.

First rise in U.S. teen births since '91 - Yahoo! News

You are right, it is a Circle.. and it will not stop. Too many things went wrong during the attempt to fix things, that a lot of organizations are throwing their hands up.

A poor economy, or threatened one, is going to continue to have kids, because out of all the helplessness, copulation seems like the only thing left to do whether it is done safely or not. It's sad, but I don't think we will find an appropriate fix this generation, and the next will have to work really hard.

There are countries out there using a few 'sorts' of birth control, china forbids more than one child, other countries let their girl babies die right out in the steets for ambulances to pick them up, african states place guns in hands of babes to kill other babes,, so what's next.

Unfortunately, there is no happy middle, not yet.

I feel the frustration, I really do. This world is heading toward unknown and scary future - that's why so many people are frustrated just like us.

Who has the right to decide which human has what rights?? I don't know, but I bet the ones with a lot of money and greed decide more than others.

Thanks NK, I already posted that article but it's worth a reprint. Oh, and I added these comments:

It's my turn:



Sorry about that.

Speechless: Condoms fail. Plus, believe it or not, there's a right and wrong way to use a condom. You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people think you can re-use one. So... more condom use, but more incorrect use as well.

Plus--when asked if you were using birth control, when you SHOULD know better--how many are going to out-and-out lie, saying they did when they didn't? After all, the pill can be tracked, and the shot, and most other forms of birth control--but who's going to know if you REALLY used a condom?

Call me cynical if you like, but I think you have greater faith in teens than I do. Most of them are so incredibly dumb about sex that it's not even funny.

I agree that it's the culture--but until you make parents completely responsible for their own kids, and make it pretty impossible to put the failure on the schools, the movie industry, Planned Parenthood, CDs, video games, their peers, whatever--it's not going to change. PARENTS should control what their kids see, who they see, what they do with their free time, investigate what they're being taught, etc. Yes, there are kids that will find ways to get around that stuff, but for crying out loud, we have to stop worrying so much about how kids FEEL and teach them some reality.

No Child Left Behind is a joke--if a kid can't pass, they should be held back. If they don't want that stigma (the parents or the kid), well, then, they can just work a bit harder on learning and less on soccer, piano, play dates, whatever.

I don't CARE if a kid feels worthless for not being picked for Little League. That should motivate a kid to TRY harder, and his parents to encourage him (or her!) to do so. No one is good at everything, but kids grow up now expecting that they can have anything they want, because our society doesn't want kids with self-esteem issues.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

I'm seriously at the point where I think that if parents fail their kids, they should be held accountable, but I realize that that's just my frustration talking, too.

Nope, I DON'T have faith in teen's decision making, I don't even have faith in a lot of parents, and I have no faith in PP or in public schools. It's a difficult situation I admit, but I still believe in the family as the best hope for a solution.

I'm with you here, absolutely.

Again, I feel your frustration. When I read that we have schools teaching kids "math" by asking questions such as "If math were a color it would be _______" my jaw dropped. Banning the use of red pencils when grading because it damaged their little psyches, not furnishing scores to students at all, abandoning score keeping in sports - gimme a break.

Accountability is not very fashionable these days...