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Bring back chaperoned dating!

2007-07-02
By

I recently had a letter to the editor published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I had written my letter in response to an op-ed piece by David Brooks decrying the ineffectiveness of both sex education and abstinence education. My letter was edited.
The following part of it was published.

David Brooks is 100% right to realize that neither “comprehensive” sex education programs nor “just say no” lectures have much effect on the behavior of teenagers. He is on target to note that “when a teenage couple is in the backseat of a car,” they are not apt to think about maxims about abstinence or even to reach for a rubber.

Teens are fertile and their bodies and brains are flooded with sex hormones. Their ability to make good judgments is not maturely developed. Thus, if we want to encourage abstinence we have to direct them away from situations in which they are subject to strong temptation. One way to do this would be to revive the custom of chaperoned dating. The presence of a responsible adult would act as a safeguard against premature sexual experimentation.

Part of my letter was not published in the AJC. They ended the last sentence quoted above before I did. My statement had been: The presence of a responsible adult would act as a safeguard against premature sexual experimentation with its devastating consequences of abortions, babies born to parents ill-equipped to care for them, and sexually transmitted diseases.

I then added the following: This need not mean a return to the dark days of sexual repression. Jocelyn Elders was fired as Surgeon General for making the point that masturbation is a normal part of human sexuality but she was entirely correct. Families should not be fools — let both boys and girls fool with themselves when they want to!

My letter may have been edited simply for length. However, it is also possible that my position on chaperoned dating was seen as contradictory to my acceptance of masturbation as a way of relieving the sexual tensions of teen girls and boys. The fact is that there is no contradiction as I take a pragmatic approach to human sexuality and advocate as much damage control as is possible through humane and reasonable measures.

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  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/denise-noe/ Denise Noe

    David R. Usher said,
    Now, I am no prude.

    (Denise) The question here is not one of prudishness, Mr. Usher, but one of harm reduction. Children should not be born to those ill-equipped to care for them. Regardless of one’s position on abortion’s legality, we should all want to minimize the number of human fetuses being ripped apart. The spread of sexually transmitted diseases, some of which are life-threatening, ought to concern us all. Reducing problems pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections are obviously good social goals. One can easily go too far with extreme measures to further these goals but chaperoned dating, liking bringing back the college house-mother, is a reasonable measure.

  • MartianBachelor

    If a girl’s mother gives her date just the right evil look the first time she meets him, she does not have to be physically present on the date, and the effect can even last for several months. Double-dating can also be an effective form of self-chaperoning since it tends to keep things from going much beyond the make-out stage just out of modesty.

  • mruffolo

    The American matriarch does not trust adults under the age of 21 to have an abortion without their parent’s permission; smoke cigarettes or cigars; or, drink alcohol, yet they trusts the same children to not have sex after watching celebrities:

    - Pamela Anderson and ex-husband Tommy Lee
    - Socialite Paris Hilton and ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon

    Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan showing their vagina may contribute to sexual attitudes.

    I suspect the Vigina Monologues play that run on campuses may have an influence..
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues

    The partiarch was different for our children – daughters were not whores or single mothers and sons acted like men.

    In the past, few fathers give their daughters the opportuinity to be whores. Today, with a high divorce rate and visitation orders that state men will see their children four days a month, things today are different.

    In feminized America virginity is rare, but drug use common. Just 4 per cent of US adults are virgins but 20 per cent have tried hard drugs like cocaine and crack, a new study shows.

    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad384.pdf

  • roadkill1965

    This is still widely practiced in other countries. My wife is from the Philippines, and they ALWAYS have a chaperone escorting them until they’re married, even as adults! It would be scandalous for a man and woman to be caught together without a third party accompanying them.

  • The Vicar

    Sounds like a great idea!

  • ggreen67

    Sounds good on paper, but unfortunately our society’s “be young forever” mentality I would think there would be an immediate lack of mature adults to qualify as chaperone’s.

  • David R. Usher

    PS: The last time I checked, John Podesta was the President of the Knox College Board of Trustees. Interestingly, due to my men’s rights activism, I cannot send an email to Knox College upon order of Roger Taylor, President of Knox. Knox has no use for men’s perspectives on sex, marriage, and human rights; and it is being run by people who think that women should be unprotected sex objects starting the first day of their freshman year.

  • David R. Usher

    They should really consider bringing back house-mothers in college dormitories — and have dorms for women and men.

    When I was a freshman at Knox College in Galesburg, IL, Whiting Hall had a housemother, visiting hours, a 7×24 receptionist, a sign-in / out log, and an open door rule. All men had to leave the dorm by 10 p.m. The housemother wandered around the place enforcing the open door rule, and students could be suspended for violating it.

    But, a student named John Podesta, who would eventually become Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff, felt differently. I will never forget the Saturday when I woke up to a huge and raucous gathering of students outside Whiting Hall. There was speechifying and ranting about Victorianism. Ultimately, students went in and threw the housemother out. Knox quietly capitulated, and that was the end of women having a place to live where men weren’t wandering around everyplace all year around.

    Bedlam ensured (your imagination will suffice in lieu of my personal recount). A fair number of girls were terrified. Some took to hiding out on the roof of the building I spent half the night talking one of them (who later became a Presbyterian minister) into coming down. As I recall, some girls transferred to other colleges, some moved off-campus. The rich folks actually bought houses for their daughters to live in (and rent out to other women).

    Now, I am no prude. However, it does go a bit too far in any day in age to take young women and men straight out of high school, and throw them into “anything goes” communal living situations. In a day where there are many fatal and untreatable sexually-transmitted diseases, it is not unreasonable to provide safe living situations for college women where they can mature into adulthood without being subjected to pressures that even a prostitute might find unreasonable.

  • donnieboy57

    denise….i was 19 before my first sexual encounter. was i a victim of oppressive parenting? never was chaperoned! i wanted to get laid, but the girls i dated held me in check, based mostly on the parenting skills of their mother and….FATHER. i believe i had more respect for young women then than young boys do now. could it be that with the absence of fathers in the home coupled with the ever evolving morality of women, the results were inevitable?

    the overwhelming majority of boys and men do not go where they are not invited. period. the opposite is also true. its called propagating the species. the only way to stop boys from wanting to get in girls shorts is to give them a frontal lobotomy at the age of, say 10. the system of girls showing restraint and morality worked pretty good, overall. once we did away with that, what else could have transpired? mike adams has an interesting article in which he discusses the link between teen abortions and consensual sex. it is posted on townhall.com now.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/denise-noe/ Denise Noe

    amfortas said,

    I would be quite happy being a chaperone. It is years since I have seen to teens getting it on!

    Under the Dems, and Hitlery in particular, would there be new job opportunities? The jobbers could have bags with helpful aides and pamphlets, how-to guides for Government approved bonking styles, spare underclothes, extra-large KY tubes for group-work, pop-up books for illustration, consent forms for each stage of foreplay, a whistle and a stopwatch for those change-of-mind moments.

    What an interesting idea Denise.

    (Denise) Hi amfortas. You have a good sense of humor. I have a good sense of humor. However, the truth is that sexual activitiy has consequences and many of those consequences are serious in the extreme. Teenagers are the most likely of any group to have abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy. While no abortions are pretty, late abortions are grisly in the extreme as I’ve written in other columns. Teenagers also give birth to babies and raise them — or try to. The baby of a teen mother is likely to be low birth weight and have the physical and cognitive problems resulting from that.
    STDs are very serious. They can be fatal. A death from AIDS is a long and painful death.
    The truth is that sexual activity, especially among young people, can lead to genuine horrors.

  • amfortas

    I would be quite happy being a chaperone. It is years since I have seen to teens getting it on!

    Under the Dems, and Hitlery in particular, would there be new job opportunities? The jobbers could have bags with helpful aides and pamphlets, how-to guides for Government approved bonking styles, spare underclothes, extra-large KY tubes for group-work, pop-up books for illustration, consent forms for each stage of foreplay, a whistle and a stopwatch for those change-of-mind moments.

    What an interesting idea Denise.







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