I've heard other people talk about this before, that young teenagers now have a very different approach to sex than we grew up with, and that there's a lot of very risky behavior. The problem may not be that "these kids don't respect sex" (which I know isn't what you were saying, I'm just illustrating a complaint) --- we feared sex, and were a little ashamed of it, and were attracted to it because it was forbidden, but I don't know that we respected it. I think the problem may be that ALL teenagers, at any point in human history, have believed that they were bulletproof --- you couldn't throw a war without teenaged boys, or a spring break without teenaged girls. I don't think we'll be able to wake them up just by trying to impress on them how deadly serious are many of the diseases passed through sex, although I still think we need to try to tell them. My plan is to demystify sex early, to make an uncounted jarful of condoms available for pilferage, and to get the new HPV vaccine for my girls before they hit 12.

We probably can't change this generation's view of sex, but we can influence our own children. And the thing that makes me the MOST angry right now is the early, EARLY sexualization of our daughters in the media and through mass marketing. My older daughter is 5, and already I'm having a very hard time finding clothes for her that aren't stupidly inappropriate. Miniskirts and tube tops and platform knee-high boots, for 5 year olds? I was trying to buy her a new nightgown and there was a large rack, prominently displayed, of "Little Princess" (or some crap) negligees! Honest-to-god pint-sized versions of Victoria's Secret. I couldn't find her shorts that weren't butt-baring short-shorts, although I did finally find a few miniskirts with build-in shorts under them, and a few t-shirts that weren't low-cut or off-the-shoulder (off-the-shoulder shirts for 5 year olds!) or semi-transparent. And this was still the kids' clothing section --- the bigger-girls' section was painful, all bikini tops and below-the-hipbone jeans. Basically, we have to teach our daughters (AND our sons) early and strongly that they are worth more than that, and we have to try to make them bulletproof to peer pressure and media pressure. We have to try to build a fortress of confidence for our children so that they can say, "I don't care what you think. I'm doing what I think."