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by Martha Kempner A few weeks ago the television show Private Practice, a spin-off of Grey’s Anatomy that is so heavy on the soap opera aspect and light on the medicine that it can barely be called a medical drama, began a story line where the teenage daughter of two of the main characters started getting into trouble. In one episode her mother comes home early to find Maya fooling around on the couch with a boy, even though they were both supposed to be in school at that moment. Her mother exploded at her for the kissing part, told her she was going to kill her, and shipped her off to live with her father. I was distressed that teen sex was the enemy, when clearly the real problem in that moment was that they were cutting school.
So, two weeks later when it was revealed that Maya was pregnant, I was quite concerned about how the show’s writers were going to handle this plotline. As I mentioned in my Pregnancy Pact blog, television doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to sexuality issues.
I was almost pleasantly surprised by the outcome. The writers made the bold decision to focus the episode on abortion and whether this 15-year-old should terminate her pregnancy. The show has actually discussed abortion before; regular viewers know that Maya’s mother, Naomi, who is a fertility doctor, is opposed to abortion for religious reasons and that two other main characters, Addison and Violet, have had abortions. |
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by Martha Kempner Lifetime movies have always held a special place in my heart. I remember watching Blood Vows: Story of a Mafia Wife starring a post-Little House Melissa Gilbert and a really cute Joe Penny with my sister when we were in high school, and it remains one of my favorite (admittedly bad ) movies to this day. In fact, the concept of the Lifetime movie made it into my wedding vows when my husband promised to watch them without making fun in exchange for me reading his favorite comic books. Still, I am always a little wary when Lifetime tackles subjects of sexuality; for one thing it takes the movie out of the realm of silly fantasy and makes it part of my job, and for another, television rarely handles these sensitive subjects well. So I was both excited and a little nervous this weekend when I sat down to watch The Pregnancy Pact, a fictionalized account of events that took place two years ago in Gloucester, Massachusetts where a spike in teen pregnancy was attributed to a pact between girls to get pregnant and raise their children together. National media swarmed the story, and, while much attention was to the pact, it was never proven or disproven. |
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by Martha Kempner When I was in eighth grade, I tried to pass a note to my friend Andrea. In it, I admitted to wanting to kiss Mike Tuckman – a ninth grade boy in my algebra class who had once deigned to say hello to me. I don’t know why I put this in note form given that Andrea and I had discussed this particular crush both in person and on the phone ad nauseum, and I kicked myself for having done so for weeks when I realized that the note had never made it all the way to Andrea and I had no idea who had it. I lived in fear of who had the information about me, what they would do with it, and what Mike would think if he ever did find out (did he even know my name)?
In so many ways, our digital age has upped the ante for teens today. A note like that is nothing compared to a sext. If we are to believe the morning news shows, young people are sending each other sexually suggestive pictures and text messages at an alarming rate and we parents should be very worried. To underscore the fear, these news reports usually turn to a personal story of a girl who had sent her boyfriend or her crush a nude picture of herself only to find that he turns around and sends it to the entire school thereby opening her up to ridicule and rejection and ruining her life in a variety of ways.
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by Martha Kempner Last Wednesday, in a rather obvious attempt to avoid chatting with my in-laws on the night before Thanksgiving, I escaped to their guest room to watch TV. With no DVR filled of favorite shows, I was back to the old days of flipping channels when the new Courtney Cox sitcom, Cougar Town, caught my eye.
At the moment I tuned in, Cox’s character Jules had barged into a room where her teenage son and his girlfriend were sitting on the bed. “See this,” she yells holding up a water balloon, “do you know what this is?” “It’s a condom filled with water. People think that condoms are foolproof but they’re not, these things can break."
Of course, given that this is a sitcom, she then tries to break it in a series of comical moves that includes poking it with a sharp object, throwing it on the ground, and stomping on it, all to no avail. “This isn’t fair,” she whines when it remains filled with water, “because this is a balloon I got at the toy store because I thought it would be weird if I used a real condom.” (The implication here is that if it was a real condom it would have broken as she’d predicted, but we’ll get back to that later.)
I flipped away disappointed. Yet another example of bad sex education from parents on TV.
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By Kate Stewart
The annual trip to the doctor’s office for their yearly physicals with my daughters is a time I look back and take a few moments to think about how they have grown. You receive the instant reminders as the nurse tells you their weight and height. You look around the waiting room and see the anxious parents holding newborns and think how that seemed like just yesterday – and then you smile at the couple and think to yourself thank god my daughters sleep through the night (mostly) and diapers are a thing of the past. Well this year my oldest turned nine and we went to her annual visit thinking about the normal things – how much she had grown, did she need any shots, how long will we have to wait to see the doctor, will we get the nice nurse who likes to chat or the one that scares everyone – including parents. The visit started off just like all the others over the years. The doctor asked the usual questions – How much milk do you drink? Do you eat your vegetables? What time do you go to bed at night? And, then it came time for the shots. “Let’s see,” the doctor started to say as he looked at her chart. “We need to do a tetanus booster and oh yes it is time for her to get the HPV vaccine.” |
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