This is an installment of “This I Believe…”, a series of posts focused around one topic. The first series is on Sexuality and Body Image.

What I Think About Kids & Abstinence

“Don’t you remember at church, when they told us it was better for us to come home in a pine box than to lose our chastity?”

-Sarah Henrickson (18) to her brother Ben (16)
Big Love

I grew up in the church. The conservative evangelical church to be exact. Sundays and Wednesdays were spent at the Lutheran Church, and Monday-Friday at the Assemblies of God private school (chapel three times a week, Bible class every day, choir, and optional 7am prayer meetings.) If you’ve ever seen the fantastic dark-comedy Saved, then you have seen my life. It’s like a hidden camera reality show based on my high school, only with better hair.

Growing up, the message I received was that the absolute worst thing you could do was to have sex outside of marriage. It was worse than getting drunk. Hell, it was worse than DRIVING drunk. Sex, actual intercourse, was totally forbidden. All the other bases were either totally verbotten or pretty damn bad. Oral sex. Very Very Bad. Groping of all kinds. Bad. Making out in your boyfriend’s car. Not great. Kissing. Tolerated –but not on school grounds, of course, or you would be given a two day suspension. Holding hands? Well, okay, but only holding hands; certainly not putting your arms around someone’s shoulder. Anything and everything you might do with someone of the opposite sex was cloaked in shame. Tickling? Shoulder rubs? Boy-girl stunts in cheerleading? It was all highly suspicious. (Do I even have to mention that doing anything with someone of the same sex was completely off the charts? You might as well pick up a ‘go directly to hell’ card.)

We had sex education, once, in fifth grade. It was mostly to make sure everyone was in the know about getting your period. I suppose the boys had a similar filmstrip about unwelcomed erections, but I’m not sure. It was the 80’s and AIDS education was huge, so even in Christian school you got a little mention of condoms. You never actually saw one, no one ever demonstrated how to use one on a banana for instance, and they were definitely NOT distributed in health class. The main idea was, “Abstinence is the Answer”, and everyone from teachers to pastors to parents was 100% on-message. And the teens, well, everyone had to sign on. (Or at least pretend to.)

Over and over again the messages we received were distilled in our hormone-soaked brains down to this one echoing refrain:

“Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.”

I recall one youth group session in which a cartoon was placed on the overhead projector. It showed a pit dug into the ground with a ladder in it. Each rung of the ladder had a physical act on it. The top rung was holding hands, the next one down was kissing, then making out, petting…you get the idea. The last rung, in the bottom of the pit? Yep. Sex. This kind of illustration was pretty common, and usually came along with a sermon about how “your body is a temple” – followed by a round of fast food and artificially sweetened cola. One of my favorite variations of this youth-group sex scenario was told to me a few years ago by a fellow seminarian. He told me, in all seriousness, that he was teaching his youth group that “Sex is like a wild, vicious, hungry lion, and you DO NOT want to go putting your head anywhere near that lion’s mouth.” (How he got away with using “sex” and “head” in the same sentence in a room full of teenage boys without the place exploding into laughter is beyond me.)

I know that the intentions of my teachers, youth group leaders, pastors and parents were good. I know they were trying to protect us from getting in too deep, too fast. I know they wanted to save us from harm, hurt, and, I suppose, hell. But the reality is, all they did for me was create a space in which to grow shame, guilt and dysfunction. And oh, how it grew! Here’s a short list of the messages I carried away from my abstinence experience:

-Every physical impulse you have towards a boy is wrong–probably even sinful.

-All the natural, normal parts of growing up and falling in love –physicality of any kind—are wrong and unnatural.

-If my body want this, then my body is bad. (This combined with the typical magazine spreads with size 0 models and pimple-free skin, and you can see what that did for a teenage girl’s body image.)

-If you don’t plan for sex, it’s not as bad of a sin. (Therefore, don’t own birth control or condoms.)

In spite of this, there were boys who got lucky and girls who went all the way. There were girls swept off to the Crisis Pregnancy Centers and expelled from school—or worse yet, allowed to stay but banned from all extracurricular activities–like going to the basketball games or walking down the aisle at graduation. (The boys on the other hand, never seemed to get into much trouble. I don’t recall any of them getting kicked out or shamed out of leaving.) And if anyone ever had an abortion, well, they kept it as a dark secret, and went through the experience without any help or counseling.

Because of my experience in abstinence programs– and because of the way my experience was echoed again and again in the shameful tears full-grown women brought to me during my tenure as a pastor –I am not raising my children under the banner of abstinence. Being physical and having sex are natural normal parts of growing up. We are physically and chemically programmed for it. We are culturally conditioned for it. It is a part of our healthy emotional development. I want my children to grow up in an atmosphere that acknowledges this reality—one that is shame free, where their bodies are seen as being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,” and where their hearts can be trusted to lead them in the right direction. My intention, my deep hope, is to raise them in such a way that they will carry with them these messages:

-Your body is amazing. You can trust it to tell you what you are physically ready to do.

-Your heart is your guide –you can trust the wisdom of your own intuition in making choices.

-Sex is something you move into one step at a time. Each step is good. Each step is appropriate. You– and only you–get to choose when you are ready for that step.

-As a romantic relationship grows deeper emotionally, it’s natural for it to grow deeper physically.

-Planning for sex and being prepared to protect yourself and your partner is smart, responsible, and essential.

-You have the right to say NO. And conversely, you have the right to say YES.

Rather than telling my kids “Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.” I want the messages I give them to be able to be boiled down to this:

“You are capable of building a relational history you can look back on without regret.”

A friend of mine bequeathed that turn of phrase to me. We were drinking margaritas and talking about sex. (What else do you talk about after you’ve had a couple of margaritas?) She was telling me about her major high school boyfriend, and being in love, and what her parents and his parents thought about them having sex (or not). She said, “I never wanted to have sex in the car. I always wanted to build a sexual history I could look back on without regret, and I didn’t think I could do that if I had sex in the back of his Camero.” That’s pretty self aware, don’t you think? Pretty well-reasoned for a seventeen year old. Build a history you can look back on without regret – or at least, with as little regret as possible. I think, all told, that’s the best we can do. That’s what we humans can hope for: safety, respect, and a collection of memories held without shame.

So when it comes to sex and all its accoutrements here’s my parenting pledge:

-I promise to make talking about sex as natural and open as possible. (We’ve already got quite a track record.)

-I promise to help you access birth control and protection. (Yes, even for the masculine kids in the family.)

-I promise to help you assess what your heart and body is ready for, if you want to talk to me about it.

-I promise to give you accurate information about your body and its needs, to the best of my ability.

-I promise not to shame you for wanting physical contact with someone you care about.

-I promise to do whatever I can to make sex a wonderful, beautiful, joyful thing you give to the one(s) you love.

What will you teach your kids about sex? Any conversational tricks to share? Stories that worked out well? Do tell…

Rachelle Mee-Chapman is a 30-something minister, mother and artist. She is currently living with her husband and 2 school-aged girls in Copenhagen, Denmark; while her teenage boy adopted-by-affection forges his own path back home in Seattle, WA. This piece is available for publication. Contact: moi @ magpie-girl dot com.