Via the Incidental Economist a fascinating study from the Journal of Adolescent Health that attempts to decompose the reasons behind the continual slow down in the teen birth rate. Teenagers are having just as much sex at the end of the study period as at the beginning. They are just having much smarter and safer sex.
They found that that sexual activity didn’t decline. What changed was contraceptive use. Use of the pill went up from 26% to 35%, as did IUDs (1.3% to 2.7%), condoms (49% to 56%), and even withdrawal (15% to 20%). The use of multiple methods increased from 23% to 34%. The percentage of kids reporting no contraceptive use dropped from 20% to 13%.
This led to the PRI dropping 5% every year from 2007 to 2012. Further, about 94% of the decline in the pregnancy risk index was attributable to contraceptive use.
I would love to see a follow-up once the 2014/2015 policy years are included as that is when IUD adaption has significantly increased. Given people tools to minimize risk, teaching them how to use those tools to minimize risk leads to lower risk.
And now I’m double dipping on The Incidental Economist and teen pregnancy prevention programs as they also flag a recent study on the baby simulator doll program:
A number of people, and programs, have decided that one way to combat teen pregnancy is to teach teens how hard it is to raise a baby. They sometimes force kids to “couple up” in school and pretend they have a child. Sometimes, they even give them a doll – one that cries, wakes up at night, etc. – to bring home the point…
And… more girls in the intervention group got pregnant. In the intervention group, 8% of the girls had at least one birth, compared to 4% of those in the control group. Even after adjusting for potential confounders, the intervention group had a more-than one-third higher relative risk of pregnancy in the teenage years.So not only are those baby-doll-simulators likely a waste of time and money, they may be leading to an increase in teenage pregnancy.
Scaring them straight seldom works.
Kids these days… how will us old(er) people complain about the next generation when they are way less stupid than my cohort?
Well at least we had snow to walk through uphill both ways…..
OzarkHillbilly
In our bare feet.
Richard Mayhew
@OzarkHillbilly: I am not that old…. In my original air Jordans
Patricia Kayden
This is great news for those who advocate comprehensive sex education for teenagers versus abstinence-only programs which usually don’t work.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: Pfft. Like evidence matters.
Kay
I have to say though, we had a really good weekend with my son and “baby think it over”- he called her “robot baby”
Our 7th graders can choose robot baby or an essay and he chose robot baby. 90% of them choose “essay”. His job is to mow the lawn and this is an extremely cranky baby so he would go out to mow, the baby would fuss, and I would call him in. It took him like 5 hours to mow the lawn w/ all the interruptions.
It’s maybe not worth the money the school spent but we had great talks about babies in general. I would have to say it’s probably a sucker move to choose robot baby over essay. It’s a lot of work.
Kay
This part of it is interesting too:
This is SO widely believed (in my experience) that I wonder about it. Why do people think they’re worse? They don’t seem worse to me. I don’t know if I just remember how bad we were more vividly or what, but I think they’re better.
Betty Cracker
My little brother was born when I was a teenager…and being frequently left in charge of that crying sack of bottomless needs and endless responsibilities damn sure scared me straight! My guess is that if there’s a link between the doll study and a higher teen pregnancy rate at all, it’s due to the study’s requiring the teens to “couple up” to participate; they inadvertently played matchmaker!
Baud
@Kay:
Thanks, Internet!
Kay
The Right wing theme on this was always a bit of a lie Bill O’Reilly still uses it. The teen pregnancies were always clustered at “older teens” – 18 or 19. People just read the stat and assumed it meant 14 year olds- that’s a dramatic “shock” story that fits a lot of Right wing narratives.
Shantanu Saha
I suspect that the main unintended consequence of the baby doll intervention is to convince teens that having a kid isn’t too bad. Of course, the doll doesn’t pee, poop, or projectile vomit. And when the teens are told to “couple up”, many of them take that literally…
gene108
@Kay:
Nobody reports good news. And when they do report good news, they go out of their way to find the shit-sandwich portion of the story.
A year or two ago high school graduation rates topped 80% for the first time in U.S. history. The news was not “good job everybody”, but “so what, a high school diploma’s just a ticket to flipping burgers and even college bound students have crappy job prospects and kids live with their parents longer and start families later and those high school diplomas are effectively meaningless anyway”.
Kay
@Baud:
My husband thinks “education” is broad so he would take them out of school periodically and take them places. Just for a day here and there- and it was educational really- they would go down a river or a museum or whatever. My youngest won’t go. He’s horrified. He says he’s “not allowed” to miss school. We’re like “okay goody two shoes, be that way”.
Matt
TBH I think that’s somewhat misreading the intent of the people who push the doll thing: they aren’t interested in *preventing* teen pregnancy, just in stigmatizing teens who get pregnant. Telling kids “LOOK AT HOW MUCH HASSLE YOU’RE GONNA TOTALLY DESERVE JUST FOR FUCKIN” is the entire selling point.
Frank McCormick
@Kay: It’s no different than the number of folks believing that violent crime has gone up when it fact it has been consistently going down for a long while. It’s sad (so sad!) that so many people would rather believe that things are worse than they really are and that they go out of their way to find corroborating “evidence”.
Gin & Tonic
I have to admit that I never knew that “My Own Theological Premises About The Nature Of Sex” was a category. This really *is* a full-service blog.
OzarkHillbilly
@Richard Mayhew: The funny thing is, I really did walk to school in the snow and it was uphill both ways (we lived on a ridge top, the school was across the valley on the opposite ridge top) (not for miles tho, more like a half mile) and while it wasn’t bare foot it wasn’t all that much better. I was # 4 of 6 and followed my older brother by a year and a half so I got all his hand me downs, which when it came to shoes and boots meant they were a little… leaky.
@Kay: I was the person your parents warned you about.
anon
Please pardon me if I say any of this in an offensive way, I’m trying to be careful about not being crass.
Maybe it’s just because my kid’s gay, but I’m seeing a lot higher percentage of the high school age population identifying as gay and being open about it. And gay sex doesn’t lead to pregnancy. I wonder if that might not have a subtle effect on the numbers as well? I know a number of my gay and lesbian friends tried very hard to be het when they were young, before they were able to be true to themselves.
D58826
and in august!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
raven
This effort is part of what my wife does at the health department. It’s incredibly important and the douche that runs the department doesn’t like it one bit.
jonas
@Baud: I wonder if the widespread availability of internet porn might play a non-trivial role in esp the decline in teen pregnancy (in addition to better access to birth control, etc.) Back in My Day™ If teenage boys really wanted to go all the way, they had to find an actual girl to do it with. Nowadays millions of naked chicks are just a click away, and you can just masturbate yourself half to death in the privacy of your own room. That may not have great consequences for forging actual relationships with human women someday, but it does keep your junk out of the gene pool for the time being and in that sock under your bed where it belongs.
Central Planning
I tell my kids: if you’re embarrassed to buy condoms, how embarrassed are you going to be telling your mom and me you are (or you got) someone pregnant?
I also tell my kids having a kid as a teenager will ruin their lives. Not that they would not love their baby, but that any plans they had for their life would be totally and permanently screwed up.
Also too, anyone ever notice the double standards regarding college sex? I have a friend who told her husband’s boys that college was a time for experimenting and free love (with protection, of course). I asked her if she told the same thing to her girls. “Hell no!” she said.
Finally, love Aaron Carroll at the Incidental Economist. I also hear him frequently on Stand Up with Pete Dominick (SiriusXM 121, 9-12).
Rob in CT
It’s always been this way, it seems. My hardly brilliant take is that it makes older people feel superior, and that’s something humans love to feel. Simple as that.
Regarding the crying doll thing… well, I’m mildly surprised. I mean, people are going to have sex but I’d have thought that hammering home (some of) the realities of having a baby might help boost safe sex over unsafe. Apparently not (at least in that study).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Drum isn’t convinced that the drop in teen pregnancy is due to increased contraceptive use. If “withdrawal” is regarded as contraception these days, then it seems like something is lacking in the study. Surely the effectiveness of the method should figure into whether “contraception” is actually having an impact on teen pregnancy? Aren’t people who practice withdrawal eventually known as “parents”?
I haven’t read any of the latest studies, the reporting, or the criticisms in detail. I’m well aware of the dangers of saying that a group of researchers who have spent years working on something, and months writing it up, getting it though the review process, etc., are less thoughtful than a reporter’s summary or my 2-minute thoughts about it, so I’m not saying they’re wrong by a long shot. Just that there may (or may not!) be subtle things going on here that “Contraception (Y/N)?” doesn’t capture.
Cheers,
Scott.
Rob in CT
@jonas:
Back in my day, there was always a Victoria’s Secret catalogue or something (where “something” can be pure imagination). Spending too much time in a fantasy world is not great, but I’m not actually sure that Kidz These Days and their internets are worse about that…
OzarkHillbilly
@jonas: Back in my day we only had playboy and penthouse. Pretty safe to say I had no trouble at all in trying to wear my thing out (and it never did).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Oh, and I forgot Drum’s punchline. It might be the drop in lead (lead affects our self-control/impulsivity) that is having a bigger impact than self-reported “contraception” use. Maybe!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Rob in CT:
I sort of get it. I talk to a lot of them and I sometimes think the baby fills some kind of void for them- or they think they baby will. They will love the baby and the baby will love them. I think the reality of babies is not that reciprocal. Babies are pretty selfish, because they have to be – they’re so vulnerable.
it’s all about THEIR needs, babies- so self-centered! :)
Soprano2
I wonder why they didn’t measure how many boys became fathers in both groups? I think that’s important data to have, too. That shows how even researchers only think of the girls involved when they think about teenage pregnancy.
I always thought those simulated babies were a good idea, probably because I never wanted to have children. I think having this fake baby gives those young women who desperately want to have a baby an experience that confirms their feelings, so they go ahead with it. I read a book by Kristen Luker called “Dubious Conceptions”. She interviewed hundreds of teenage girls who had become pregnant and either kept their babies or had abortions. She found that the main difference was the belief in a better future – the girls who believed they had a better future generally had abortions,sometimes at the urging of their parents, while the ones who thought having a child was the ultimate thing they would do in life were much more likely to become pregnant at a young age. (Odds of ever being married also entered into it.) She said they had quite logical reasons for doing this – help was available to them if they got pregnant at 16 that they wouldn’t have if they waited until they were in their 20’s, for example. It was an excellent book that left a lasting impression on me.
nonynony
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: If you click through, Drum is misreading the research. The researchers indicate that teens are choosing more effective contraception and are using it more correctly than in the past. It’s not that teens are using contraception more frequently, it’s that they’re choosing contraception that works more frequently than contraception that doesn’t. IOW they’re using IUDs and the pill more frequently and the “pull out and pray” method a lot less.
If true, that suggests that good sex education is lowering the teen pregnancy rate (which is what it’s supposed to do) without lowering the rate that teens are having sex (which is what abstinence-only proponents want to see). Which is why abstinence-only folks will see this research as an example of the failures of comprehensive sex education while those interested in reducing the teen pregnancy rate will see it as a success.
Mr.Mack
@anon: I don’t find this crass or offensive in the least. I too have seen a HUGE increase in the number of kids who have come out. I am so grateful that it is much safer to do so these days, but I’ve wondered if there are more people identifying as gay, could it be Mother Natures way of controlling population numbers? The Earth is kinda smart.
nonynony
@Soprano2:
It is, but it’s harder to measure because the boys can lie about it more easily than the girls can.
OzarkHillbilly
@Central Planning: When both my sons were young teens I took them (separately) to the drugstore, had them pick out some condoms, take them to the cash register and buy them with me shadowing them, just to get them over that feeling of “everyone’s watching me”.
Kay
@gene108:
No one understands how complex those stats are though, over time, so good things are never reported correctly. I had an older acquaintance when I worked at the post office. He had a traumatic brain injury as a child. He never went to school. There simply wasn’t programming available in that (rural) area for handicapped kids at that time. Parents drove that. They became activists and insisted on a free public education for their children. It was like a quiet revolution. It changed the whole picture.
nonynony
@Rob in CT:
The trick is – what if you are told that this is something that is really hard and will show you the “reality” of being a teen parent.
And then what happens when you do it and you find out you’re really good at it? And that you miss having the “baby” (and maybe the connection with the other “parent”) when the assignment ends?
I can totally see why for a certain group of people this would be an utter failure. There are going to be some teenagers who are really good at taking care of the “baby”, who will like being congratulated for their success, and who find even tending the robot “baby” to be more fulfilling than anything going on in their lives at that moment. Not a huge number of them, but enough to be problematic.
Richard Mayhew
@jonas: Teens masturbating until they have carpal tunnel is independent of the internet
Jeffro
@Kay:
I’ve found that teens these days seem to be a vastly better bunch than me & my ‘cohort’ were back in the bad old good old days. They are polite, work hard, seem to be uninterested in smoking/getting blasted, and generally give me great hope for the future.
Millennials, on the other hand, are spoiled, overly sensitive, and have no comprehension of what ‘work ethic’ means.
/GenXer rant
Punchy
I’m surprised that in today’s Helicopter Parents Want Control Over Everything, schools can still compell kids to do the fake baby thing. I would have assumed winger parents would have objected on the grounds that it implies their kid may be considering sex, which is unpossible because reasons and cheese-sauce.
Barbara
@Central Planning: Your friend is essentially telling her daughters that she should avoid boys who exhibit the kind of behavior she told her sons was desirable. She is contributing to the gender wars by seeding expectations in her sons that are not matched by the expectations of the girls they meet and hope to bed. You either tell both genders that you think it’s best to limit sex to situations where they are interested in having a relationship with the other party or you tell them it’s okay to experiment and not get too torn up if the sex doesn’t turn into true love, but it’s important for the message to be the same.
Dork
@OzarkHillbilly: Aaaaaaaannnnnddd…..there goes my breakfast. Asshole.
maurinsky
@Kay:
Ditto – when I think back to my circle of friends in my rural hometown, my kids and their friends were so much better in every possible respect.
I had friends who were sexually active, using drugs, drinking regularly starting in 7th grade. I know people think suburbs and rural areas are great for kids (and they can be), but we had nothing organized happening in our town, so kids made their own fun. My kids grew up in a small city and there were always things for them to do that didn’t involve going into a field and drinking.
I never walked to school because *rural*, no sidewalks, and the school was pretty far away. My kids, OTOH, did actually have to walk uphill to school – both ways! For real! The road to the school had a big hill down and a big hill up, so coming or going, you had to go up a hill.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dork: I live to serve. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Central Planning
@OzarkHillbilly: I like that. I think I will do that with my kids (boys and girl).
NorthLeft12
@Patricia Kayden: I would not be surprised if the abstinence pushers are taking the lions share of the credit for this.
Now, now, there is no amount of evidence you can show them that will convince them otherwise.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Kay:
This may be the first documented transmission of “goody two shoes” from parents to child in human history.
Kay
@maurinsky:
You have to sort of accept the social sanction and let them do things, IMO. Ours walked or rode bikes everywhere and I know people didn’t approve. I’m not driving giant 12 year olds a mile. I used to love the freedom of a bike and they can have that too.
Barbara
@maurinsky: I lived in suburbs with no sidewalks and walked uphill to school for two years (other schools were too far away). My mother let me ride my bike longer distances and did not closely supervise. I get into arguments all the time with my husband about letting my 11 year old do things on his own. Here, we do have sidewalks and there are stores within half a mile, easily accessible on foot. So I send him down to the store to get things for me and this drives my husband nuts. IMO, he is behaving like a parent who wants their kids to be mature and responsible but either won’t actually let them grow up or makes them feel as if they are incapable of doing so. A lot of parents do this. We use the term “helicopter,” but really, what it means is, “I don’t trust you to be self-sufficient or capable.” Obviously, kids need support but where parental involvement is concerned, there is often a fine line between support and sabotage.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
My kids were much better than me and my loser friends were.
In the 70s in my blue collar liberal Catholic neighborhood, everybody was sexually active by 14 or 15, tops, and despite the Church, the girls were quietly on the pill. Everybody was having a good time, nobody was getting pregnant, and I never heard (nor had) any complaints about STDs.
Major Major Major Major
My favorite “Kids these days, with their Internet and their hippity hop music and Pokemons!” quote is Socrates complaining about basic literacy.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
The only time I remember my mom getting upset about me ranging around was once when I was about 12 – I rode my bike to someplace several miles off. Later, when I was 16, I got confined to the boundaries of the county in which Louisville sits when I told her about rappelling down a cliff close to Ft Knox (soooooo restrictive).
Kay
@Botsplainer:
I think some of the “helicopter parenting” is more about the parents. If they’re in your sight you don’t have to worry about them. It’s easier. I went along with it initially – the adult version of “peer pressure”- but it really is silly for a group of adults to be telling 3 year olds how to play in a sandbox. They know how to do this. Back off.
gene108
@Kay:
After about 3-6 months, when babies can start to recognize people, especially the mother, they seem to me * to return affection in their own baby way, like smiling when you enter a room.
It’s not really any emotional support, if that’s what you need, as kids are not really capable of that. But they can hug you and show they care.
* I do not have kids, but this is my observation of those that do.
Kay
@gene108:
Oh, they do respond. It’s subtle until they’re a little older but they do respond. It just isn’t “reciprocal” in the sense that “friend” or “peer” relationships are- and the teen parents themselves are still self-centered in the way older children are. It’s a bad match.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
Wife tended to helicopter while I was the “hands off” parent (having had mainly positive experiences in my teens, even with the beer drinking and weed). I viewed all of it as sort of “growing experiences, circle of life” stuff.
I used to have acquaintances say “aren’t you worried about having daughters, you need to meet the potential dates and be mean” thing. My response was always the same – what they do in their intimate life is their business, not mine. I have broad guidance and certainly reserved (and occasionally exercised) the right to be critical of the character of the young men who were coming around, but to me, making a fuss about sexual contact seemed really creepy and controlling and was none of my business.
Capri
@Shantanu Saha: I was going to post the same thing. If raising an infant was so horrible, there would be a lot fewer people in the world. A lot of people like babies – they are cute and make you feel important and needed. Being able to change a crying “baby” into a silent baby gives you a sense of accomplishment. As a matter of fact, the entire premise of scaring someone “straight” from caring for another person by exposing them to something sort of similar is pretty whack.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: This. Having raised (with my wife) two daughters to adulthood, my view is that their choices in men and adolescent/pre-adult behavior may be influenced only by applying good and consistent values and setting a good example ourselves from the beginning. You have to build the base from the start – it’s not like you can cram for this test at the last minute.
In the event, both ended up pairing up with good and decent men. Obviously we are happy with this.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Gin & Tonic:
They can be pretty funny. Early on, we made express statements that we didn’t care if they chose black, brown, or red, of different creeds (but would prefer liberal practitioners of whatever faith), or if they happened to be gay. The one stern injunction that we gave was “no bums”.
Middle daughter was drawn to bums like a moth to a candle. I suspect it was a response to the single restriction we stated, LOL.
maurinsky
@Kay:
I got a ration of shit from some parents once (well, raised eyebrows and murmuring judgment) because I let my 14 year old take my 6 year old to the mall on the bus. Seriously. My childhood was largely free-range, although my parents clamped down when we were teenagers – I was basically under house arrest even though I was a goody-two shoes (and I was, even though many of my friends weren’t).
Felonius Monk
@OzarkHillbilly:
Maybe, but it looks a little funny wearing bi-focals now.
ETA: Or bi-focal, as the case may be.
RepubAnon
@D58826: The next generation of teens will say “Snow? What’s that?”
Pogonip
@Kay: A mere 50 years ago, less than the average lifetime, my then 15-year-old brother set off on his bike to visit a pretty little town 20 miles away. He looked around, enjoyed the day, and came home. No caring adult was involved, unless you count Mom replying “Okay” through the screen door when he yelled “I’m going to Prettytown, see you later!”
Pogonip
@maurinsky: what’s a goody-two-shoes doing on this fucking site?
Major Major Major Major
@Pogonip: maurinsky said ‘was’, fuckwit.
Pogonip
Remember the Stephen King doorstop about the ’50’s group of kids battling a monster that lives in the town sewers? They can do this because it’s summer and their parents, even the good ones, don’t expect to see them between breakfast and dinner. The story is set in 1958. I read it as an adult, in the early 80’s when it was first published. I am ten years younger than the kids in the story, so their freedom seemed unremarkable to me as I had the same freedom, but whenever I see that book at Half Price I wonder what modern kids think of it. Do they think “Wow, I wish I had an unscheduled, unmonitored 3 months,” or do they just find it unbelievable?
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: piss off.
Pogonip
@RepubAnon: i’d like to be able to say that myself!
Cleos
I’d be in favor of encouraging teens to either wait or use birth control by some kind of reality check. For that matter, some adults could use it too: having a child isn’t like taking up a hobby that you can just abandon and sell the equipment on eBay and adults often have children because they’re expected to, because they’ve been told their “biological clock” is ticking or (worst reason of all) they think it will salvage a deteriorating relationship.
And I’m usually skeptical about references to kids being “forced” to do something nondangerous. It brings up an image of a 6-year-old convinced that Mommy hates him because she just forced him to brush his teeth.
Kay
@maurinsky:
I think they’re born with it. They have that toddler period where they’re always saying “put me down” or “do it by myself”. You can kill that by the time they’re 5 if you don’t back off a little. My daughter was small and cute and people were always swooping in and picking her up. Her outrage at this was real. It’s comical because she was so small, but she was as mad as an adult would be.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Pogonip:
Speaking of “IT”, have you seen the story about clowns in the woods of South Carolina trying to lure kids into the forest?
Somebody is going to get deservedly shot, man. Its clowns – game over. Clowns….
Rob in CT
@nonynony:
That makes sense, yeah. Also, too: the doll, no matter how it’s programmed, isn’t going to be as difficult as the real thing. The biggest issue is that you know you get to give the doll back after X days. Actually having a child is a lot more than dealing with an infant for a short time.
Welp, once my daughters get older I guess I’ll have to complain at the PTA meeting or something (as I’m pretty sure our district uses the dolls).
Major Major Major Major
@Pogonip: I would not be at all surprised if the whole ‘overstructured/overprotected childhood’ phenomenon is a class-determined thing. My first boyfriend came from lower middle class white exurbia and he and his friends had lots of free-range time, for instance. The people I know who didn’t tend to have white collar parents, or they’re the children of immigrants.
Pogonip
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Yes, I did!
Clowns are creepy anyway. There’s a $3-dollar word for the fear of clowns, “coulrophobia.”. If you win big bucks on Jeopardy for knowing that, I get 10%.
Punchy
Hell, by the time I was 10, me and a friend rode our bikes to towns at least 10 miles away. By 12, we’d go at least 20 miles away (40 miles round-trip). Or, as we knew it, a normal weekend day. Nobody cared we were on busy roads, nobody stopped to “help” (didnt need it), nobody helicoptered and called the po-po on us. Not sure my parents always knew just how hell-and-gone we were, but importantly, they didn’t fear for my safety.
Sigh…nowadays, a 10 year old only miles from home on a traffic-free road is scooped up by the PD in minutes flat and the parents jailed.
Barbara
@Pogonip: In 1953 my husband’s grandparents put his seven year old brother on a bus in Richmond, Virginia, and sent him home alone (60 miles away). They pinned a dollar bill to his shirt along with his name and address in case he needed anything. This is a true story. When my mother in law died, my husband found that dollar bill and the note attached to it with a safety pin in a dresser drawer.
Rob in CT
@Kay:
Depends on the kid. Daughter the Eldest is very cautious, and in fact needs to work on that a bit (and my nervousness about her fragility – and she is more breakable than average – doesn’t help). My youngest, on the other hand, does not understand the concept of caution. One of the most common things to hear in our house is *THUD* “I’m ok!”
I’d like to be more of a laid back parent than I actually am. I’d like to get to a point where my kids go off biking somewhere… BUT. I live in a fairly rural place with dangerous, narrow, twisty/hilly roads and I worry about them getting hit by somebody bombing along while texting or some shit.
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: it may be. Could tie in with all that safe-space stuff at expensive colleges. Out in the real world, there are no safe spaces and no one expects any.
Pogonip
@Punchy: You probably passed my brother on the road to Prettytown.
Cleos
@Mr.Mack:
The argument that homosexuality is unnatural because it’s non-procreative overlooks a basic fact of nature: Nature has no specific interest in every single member of a species reproducing.
In some species, that’s the pattern. But in others it’s a few at the top of the hierarchy with the rest of the social group providing support including food (e.g., wolves), one female and a few males (bees) or — a very common pattern — most to all of the females but only a few males (horses, chickens). And even, in some amphibians, asexual reproduction.
For all the male fantasies generated by the sight of a handsome stallion or strutting rooster, the lots of females/one male pattern is NOT that of species where it’s great to be a guy. Because such a low percentage of males are actually needed, Nature tends to treat them as close to disposable.
Nature ain’t those old Walt Disney films, at any rate.
Luthe
@OzarkHillbilly: I too walked uphill both ways in the snow to school! Admittedly, it was in college, but my dorm was on one side of a hill and the science building on the other, so I hauled my physics major ass up and down that hill every day (because my gym class was next to the science building). It really sucked when the wind blew right at you as you walked down the hill.
Pogonip
@Rob in CT: Yes, my brother didn’t have to worry about idiots texting while driving!
I spent most of the trip-to-Prettytown summer playing in the woods. I remember being emphatically warned not to approach “tame” wild animals, but other than that Mom trusted the dog to babysit (and a fine job she did).
Major Major Major Major
@Pogonip: a lot of the safe space issue you read about is overblown right-libertarian agitprop, but there are still certainly issues there. That said, the abuses of the idea that DO exist could certainly be related to overprotective parenting.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Frank McCormick:
And yet, when confronted with evidence of actual bad things (say, climate change), they reject that evidence out of hand and go for the gummint conspiracy angle.
I’m beginning to think half the country is legitimately brain-damaged.
Cleos
@Capri:
I’m constantly hearing people insist that raising a child is “the most important job in the world” and “the hardest job in the world.”
Not disputing it. But if either of those statements is true — let alone both — most people should not be doing it, at any age. The motives are understandable but putting another person in the role of making one feel important and needed is a recipe for decades of disaster.
Roger Moore
@Rob in CT:
An important thing to remember is that not all teen pregnancies, especially among “at risk” kids, are accidental. For some girls who feel hopeless about their life prospects, being a mother is one of the few meaningful, positive things they can imagine doing. Giving a girl like that a baby doll to look after- and a partner to help her look after it- may be sending the exact wrong message. Instead of getting the idea that this is really hard and not something she wants to do, she may get the idea that it’s perfectly doable and emotionally rewarding.
Pogonip
This all makes me wonder why many modern people seem to regard the ’50’s as the nadir of human civilization. People who remember the era tell me it wasn’t THAT bad.
Rob in CT
@Roger Moore:
I knew this, but if I’m not reminded of it the knowledge tends to fade. Thanks.
schrodinger's cat
deleted
scav
Electronic babies? Unleashed as a terrible terrible warning! in a world with Furbies and Tamagotchis as crazes? I can see a reason for mixed results.
WereBear
I think feminism has something to do with it.
More than half of the girls I graduated from high school with had no further ambitions than getting married and having a bunch of children. Why not start now? Especially since you are a teenager and you hate waiting for things. And the entire town of eligible males is also in high school. Add in being bored at school and tired of parents giving you a hard time, and the amazing thing might be that anyone did not.
Roger Moore
@anon:
I would expect the effect to be quite small. The best guess of the number of gay people is a few percent, while the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by more than 1/3 since 2007. Even if you went from having the gay kids having heterosexual sex as often as the straight kids to none of them doing so, it would account for only a small fraction of the change.
WereBear
If they are white guys: there’s your answer.
Dork
@Pogonip: I am really new to this stuff, so what is a “safe space”? LIke a panic room?
schrodinger's cat
Trying again because WP eated my comment, while I was editing.
@Kay: I was the first grandchild for both sets of my grandparents, so I got a lot of adult attention and fussing. I would absolutely hate it when anyone treated me like a child, like your daughter. When I was growing up, instead of cousins in the summer I used to hang out with my uncles and aunt and their friends.
I also used to play by myself and read a lot when I was growing up.
Rob in CT
@Pogonip:
Wait, now it’s the nadir? I thought we were still trying to beat back the idea that it was the pinnacle? Has there been an overcorrection while I wasn’t looking?
Pogonip
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: stephen King gives me an excuse to plug 28 September, the anniversary of heroic Louis Pasteur’s death, World Rabies Awareness Day. People in the U.S. don’t think about rabies much, but it’s still a big problem in the developing world, and today’s Pogonip Prediction is that it will become a bigger problem in the U.S. as the country continues its downward slide. Even if this were still a first-world country, its size makes it unlikely that rabies will ever be completely eradicated. Too many skunks and raccoons out there. So be aware and thank good old Louis! And give a thought to Joseph Meister as well. Pasteur was not ready to test his vaccine on people when young Meister arrived at his lab, badly bitten by a rabid wolf. Having no choice, Pasteur treated him. Meister grew up to become the caretaker of the Pasteur Institute. One day the Nazis came, wanting to see Pasteur’s crypt; Meister died rather than allow such desecration on his watch.
Pogonip
@WereBear: nope, elderly folks of both sexes and all races. Although one big downside of the early ’50’s for men was being drafted into the Korean War.
opiejeanne
@Kay: The HS counselor was in on our youngest’s educational excursions, after seeing what she was up to during those absences (I won’t bore you with details but she was dancing professionally at 15). Looking back on it we probably should have done independent studies with that child. Only realized it by the time she was a senior. Spring of Junior year she had mono and was really sick for a month. She spent the summer finishing all of her classes with stunningly good results.
Pogonip
@Rob in CT: Beats me. I missed the ’50’s myself.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Pogonip:
I remember having some conversation with my RWNJ mom sometime in the last 10 years, and making derisive tones about some wish she expressed about my oldest daughter. I think I made some sarcastic crack about “there never really was a “Leave It To Beaver” world, and was tearfully advised that yes, it really was like that all over, and that she lived in it. All I could do was roll my eyes and change the subject out of disgust.
The woman spends her mornings watching Fox News and the 700 Club, with more of the same in the evenings, with occasional forays into “I Love Lucy” reruns.
I hate the 50s.
Pogonip
@Dork: We can probably get a better description from readers who work at one of those expensive colleges, but from my understanding it’s a room or some designated area marked off where nobody’s allowed to say anything that might upset anyone. Sounds peaceful and quiet to me, as with the possible exception of “I’m here to tell you you just won ten million tax free dollars,” anything you say may upset one. The American Conservative web site has a lot of material on safe spaces.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Pogonip:
Amazing story. Were the Nazis planning some desecration?
Pogonip
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: TV was a lot better. Other than that I dunno; I was born in late 1959. How do you remember the ’50’s?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@nonynony: Thanks for the Explainer. Who needs Vox when we’ve got folks like you! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Pogonip
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I don’t think so, but as far as most French citizens were concerned, their mere presence was a desecration.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I also wonder if those “safe space” rules are partially because of the Junior Trumps of the world who insist on their “free speech right” to be obnoxious assholes to other people and won’t STFU unless forced to by a specific rule. With my impulsive ADHD I usually didn’t have trouble talking in class (quite the opposite), but there are frequent complaints by women and POC that the Junior Trumps won’t STFU and let other people talk.
WereBear
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: My mother was a teen and young adult during the ’50’s, and stories like that make her laugh and laugh. “They all say that,” she says, “And some of them might even believe it. But it’s not true and don’t think that for a second.”
Rob in CT
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Wikipedia says that’s not what happened:
Sad.
Major Major Major Major
@Dork: @Pogonip: when I was in college, not all that long ago really, I only ever saw it in reference to the LGBT community center, where the phrase ‘safe space’ is meant quite literally. I believe but could be wrong that now it means a place you can be free from the scourge of people who disagree with you. Obviously it doesn’t mean that everywhere or even most places but there are some annoying people being very insistent that it does.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Pogonip:
I don’t. I was a Generation Jones kid, born the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was inundated with 50s nostalgia for the entire period of my childhood, though, its values, music and entertainments frequently extolled as the greatest, bestest things ever by RWNJ mom, which were gruntingly approved of by a mostly indifferent dad (who was happiest when I wasn’t really getting in the way, which I was happy to accomodate).
Roger Moore
@Cleos:
This. Even beyond different species having different reproductive patterns, there are plenty of traits that we think of as negative that stay in the gene pool because they convey some kind of real advantage. A classic example is sickle cell, which is a recessive genetic disorder. People who get two copies of the sickle cell gene get very sick and often die young, but people who have one copy are resistant to malaria. The malaria resistance is beneficial enough to the people who have it to keep sickle cell from dying out.
While it’s unlikely to be a simple genetic trait like sickle cell, being gay might be something like that. For example, sex isn’t just for procreation; it’s also part of bonding between parents, which is essential if they’re going to cooperate in raising children. Bisexuals might benefit by using sex to form especially tight social relationships with people of the same sex, which could be advantageous, and gays are just people who spend most of their effort on those same sex relationships. It’s also worth noting that plenty of gays still reproduce because they want to have kids and are willing to put up with undesirable sex to have them.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: classrooms were CERTAINLY not intended to be a ‘safe space’ when I was in school. That was reserved for more haven-like places, community centers and the like.
schrodinger's cat
@Pogonip: One theory I have heard that makes the most sense; is the people who remember the 50s fondly were children then. They are looking back with rose tinted glasses, a period when they were happy and had no responsibilities. Probably, was not so idyllic for their parents back then.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: it could also just be random or a spandrel or whatever. Plenty of things are, like chins.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Conformist white guys. My parents are very white, but neither of them liked the 50s very much because they hated the enforced conformity. My mom has some awful stories about the social pressure to conform in the tiniest details, and she grew up in San Francisco.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Baud:
But don’t you think Bristol Palin presents a cogent…
Never mind.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Mnemosyne:
I view safe spaces as the derpy bastard children of the unholy mixing of college Republicans with crit lit disciples of the MacKinnon/Dworkin school of feminism. Its like the black hole of the mass of prickly assholes, so nobody’s paradigms get challenged.
Everybody knows that college is about trying to sound smugly smart while partying and getting laid a lot, and the aforementioned folks ruin it for everybody by stepping outside those boundaries.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Betty Cracker: Talk about unintended consequences!
WereBear
It was a truly frightening level of pressure and I am told that the people who were aware of it suffered even more because no one dared complain!
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: My parents’ youth was during the Fifties, and nobody was more insistent that the “Leave It To Beaver” world (or the “Happy Days” world) was a myth. Though they liked the rock and roll.
boatboy_srq
@Kay: “Kids these days” has been a meme since before there were memes. Shakespeare and Sophocles commented on it. The trouble is that the perception adults have of the world around them has changed: instead of the wild and dangerous place that humans knew (up to our grandparents’ day perhaps) the modern world is significantly safer (except in places like Afghanistan or Syria) and kids are far less likely to get into trouble. I suspect a food portion of the bosom-rending from the Reichwing stems from having to invent new scariness so the young will be properly cowed.
john b
@Jeffro:
Is this snark?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Punchy: I had the same experience growing up in SoCal (Fullerton). My friend and I would hop on our bikes and end up in neighboring towns, not sure where we really were and having no plan when we got there (in theory, a good way to end up in trouble–we never did).
So the questions are, were things really better and safer then; why or why not; if they weren’t better, why are we so afraid now? Is it the endless supply of Dateline-like horror stories available 24/7?
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Matt McIrvin:
There was a really interesting arc of entertainment, and it kept swerving. In hindsight, the late 40s through the 50s appear to me to be really reflective of the influence of Hays Code, HUAC and Joseph McCarthy. Everything is truly candyassed, and the number of people willing to buck the sociopolitical trends of the moment were running huge risks. By the 60s and early 70s the risks were gone, so people could freely be more daring (Jack Paar/Johnny Carson, Smothers Brothers, Laugh In, Dick Van Dyke Show, All In The Family, MASH, Kelly’s Heroes, The Dirty Dozen, Trek TOS all come to mind). And if you notice, aside from the truly well written things like Andy Griffith, you don’t see simpler, more homespun fare (e.g. Petticoat Junction, My Three Sons, Family Affair) have a great shelf life or be watchable decades later.
Me, I could sit down to a Barney Miller marathon and laugh my ass off today.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
I think it’s more that they have a feeling of generalized dread because straight white men are losing their absolute social dominance. They’ve lost enough of their position that they can’t even say exactly what it is that’s bothering them- damnable political correctness!- so they just see danger and terror everywhere.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Matt McIrvin:
Another interesting observation – I’ve seen speculation (pre-Internet) that Hoover engineered Elvis being drafted, saw his music as “subversive”, and wanted the popularity to wane. The exit of Elvis and the death of Holly did stick a spike in the development of rock for a bit, because the material from that last bit of the 50s and into the early 60s sucked ass.
Villago Delenda Est
@nonynony: THIS. It’s about the sex, not the pregnancy rate, with the wowsers. They are driven batshit by people somewhere having fun.
raven
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Same here in Whittier, we’d ride all over the damn place. I also remember renting horses for rides in the riverbeds and they just put kids on them and let them go!
Gelfling 545
Back in my teaching days my students were about 12 to 16 years of age. I noticed that girls who were given a lot (most of) the responsibility for younger siblings frequently were the ones who became pregnant young. I wondered if they thought that since they had to raise kids anyway, they might as well raise their own. Occasionally one would say, as I’d have expected, “Hell, no. I don’t want any kids.”, but generally that wasn’t the case.
WereBear
Very true. The irony is that one of the main writers for the Andy Griffith show was the son of Jewish immigrants from NYC. When he needed a “homespun adage” he would translate from the Yiddish he heard growing up :)
Peale
Part of it is that we grow too old to go on rides in amusement parks and watch horror films, so we need to invent perils and none are better than children to induce panic. I don’t think this is a new phenomena at all, but has been around since the first ladies journal wrote the first article explaining how “someone might be rearing their children wrong and that someone could be you” using some standard that hadn’t exactly existed before.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
It lasted a bit longer than you might think–I remember all those shows having significant afterlives as syndicated reruns on independent stations in the 1970s, when I watched a lot of crap TV in the summer. And I religiously watched Fifties Mickey Mouse Club reruns along with all the Sixties anime on Channel 20.
That was a great show. Or so I remember–I actually don’t know if it holds up or not.
nonynony
@Pogonip:
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
If I go into a business meeting and start trashing political parties or organized religion or even fellow co-workers, I’ll get an earful about how “this is not the place for that”. And I would expect it because they’re right it isn’t.
That’s all a fucking “safe space” is – a place where certain things are appropriate and certain things are out of bounds. The fact that right-wing whiners get upset that they can’t bring their, for example, racism into a place that racism is out of bounds is not my problem – it’s their problem and they should get used to it because there are a lot of places in this world where their racism and their politics and their hate is going to be out of bounds (not as many as I would like, mind you, but I’m a cranky old man).
Gin & Tonic
Somebody help me out here. It’s around 0915 PDT at the moment, and Il Donaldo is presumably in the LA area for some sort of fund-raising meeting(s). In 8 hours and 45 minutes from now he is supposed to be delivering a “major” speech in Phoenix. In between he is supposed to have a private meeting with Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City. This involves at a bare minimum seven hours of inter-city flying, plus whatever unknown local transportation in each of three large cities. How is this supposed to work?
Face
@nonynony: Banks have safe spaces.
wenchacha
@Kay: Both my kids had the robot baby. I think my daughter was hip to some way she could position/rig the baby to stop crying.
Best moment of a lifetime was watching my son skateboard home with his robot baby. Cool dad! And somehow, the robot baby was no worse for the excursion.
Major Major Major Major
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: There was speculation before the internet??
/
peach flavored shampoo
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve decided it’s not supposed to work. By delaying the speech and making everyone wait, it will keep the MSM focused on Trump all evening. In effect, the longer he delays, the longer his infomercial runs on MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. They wont switch to other programming for fear of missing out on the start of it, so it will be All Trump, All Night until this thing starts (and then it continues All Trump, All Speech, moving to All Trump, All Post-Speech Debate), and almost certainly with a few hours delay.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I think teachers/professors have always created safe spaces informally. If you are the kid in high school who is getting bullied or shamed for being a lesbian, in the old days you found a sympathetic teacher who would give you a pass to work on a “project” (eat lunch in peace) instead of going to the cafeteria. I think safe spaces are the result of being more open about the oppression, hostility, insensitivity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and the need this constant oppression necessitates for a refuge. It’s also not unlike the ancient idea of sanctuary that one might find in a church.
I am not surprised that the very same people who think it is worse to be called a racist than to be a racist mock the idea of safe spaces.
Botsplainer
@Matt McIrvin:
Shitty UHF stations were always on the prowl for cheap filler programming, so tripe like Petticoat Junction and 50s Mouse had a life long beyond the time they should have been put down.
I occasionally run across Barney Miller reruns, it plays well even now. Great chemistry and timing on that little set.
Peale
@Gin & Tonic: Its not. You’ll just have to wait until 11:00pm EST to hear that speech.
Frankensteinbeck
I wouldn’t expect a robot baby to work. Yes, it requires effort, but what makes a real baby so difficult is that you are trapped with it, 24/7, for *decades*. All emotions are heightened. The stress can be incredible. I’ve seen a fair amount of violence in my life, and have never felt flashes of rage that even compared with the ones that would hit me raising children. Not taking it out on the kids taught me a lot, boy howdy.
@maurinsky:
The level of parental control considered normal and even legally required in the US today is child abuse. It comes from the 80s, when fundies waged a successful war of public opinion so they could treat their kids like objects.
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
And when the conservative backlash hit in the 80s, we started going backwards again, with violence getting more and more acceptable, and sex more and more restricted. I think we have just now hit a swing point, and will see things go the other way in the next few decades.
Pogonip
@Roger Moore: Do you come from a rich family? Somebody up there thought conformity was more enforced among the rich, whereas the peasants have the comparative freedom to bike to Prettytown.
Pogonip
@Botsplainer: i love Barney Miller.
Botsplainer
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m recalling how much mid 80s programming was just unwatchable.
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: My dad spent the early ’50’s in Korea; draftee NCO’s weren’t paid much so my mom had to work although my brother was a toddler. Then there was one period where the army goofed and didn’t pay Dad for 4 months. His CO gave him some money to send home, he played poker, the landlady (who was also the babysitter) forgave the rent and made sure to invite Mom for dinner every night. After Korea things were pretty much OK for them.
Pogonip
I just got moderated for discussing my parents’s lives in the ’50’s. I guess FYWP is programmed by those people with an obsessive hatred of the dreaded era.
schrodinger's cat
In my all girls Catholic school (kindergarten -10th grade) we didn’t have robot babies.They sound creepy, I think life like human dolls are the stuff nightmares are made of. YMMV.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer: I’m still amazed and grateful that my parents let me stay up and watch original-cast Saturday Night Live from season 2 (just around the time Chevy Chase left) onward. I would have been 8 years old. I think they figured any content that would be somehow bad for me would just go over my head anyway. And they knew they were seeing something culturally important. In hindsight, the musical guests were as key as the comedy, maybe more so–they booked good acts in those days.
(I don’t think my daughter would even be able to stay up that late, though in the modern world that’s no longer a consideration.)
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
For most people, it depends on how humanlike they are, and whether they successfully hit the uncanny valley. I like the uncanny valley, which I’m sure was part of why one of my books had to be reclassified as horror.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve heard the robot baby programs don’t work–they have the opposite effect from the one intended; some kids get attached to the baby.
Mnemosyne
@nonynony:
Yes, good point. Here at the Giant Evil Corporation, we have to get re-trained every year in How Not To Be An Asshole To Your Co-Workers.
Interestingly, the video they show new employees includes someone harassing a fellow employee by being “helpful” and trying to get her to join her church. Yes, folks, trying to save souls at work is prohibited harassment, so knock it off no matter how good your intentions are.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
It was really kind of fun. The baby has a wristband and the child-parent has a wristband and the child-parent has to log in for each care session. That’s intended to thwart palming off the care of the baby on relatives :)
My son immediately said “I could just give you the wristband” so that’s not real effective. Confronted with a robot he immediately starts thinking about how to foil the robot.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
He was really kind of cute about it. The baby has 4 functions- 4 reasons it cries- hungry, needs diaper changed, needs burping or needs rocking. He would cycle thru the possible solutions frantically- he wasn’t at all confident about it. They get some kind of demerit if it cries too long.
catclub
@Kay: This is where Kevin Drum points out the lead poisoning-behavior connection.
Pogonip
@nonynony: From what I read, a “safe space” is not one where basic norms of civility is enforced, but one where nothing, nothing, is allowed that might upset the delicate sensibilities of the rich kids who populate them. And while the rich are deferred to in the real world, it’s not to the extent described in “safe spaces.”. From the descriptions they seem to be mostly populated by the kids I think of as Spoiled American Princesses [SAPs for short], of the breed who show up a lot on sites like Jezebel and Tumblr, earnestly lecturing grownups on everything they’re doing wrong. I myself think the SAPs will grow up and laugh ruefully at their youthful antics, but I saw recently that the University of Chicago is no longer amused. No safe spaces, no trigger warnings, blah blah blah.
The difference between a SAP’s childish antics and my childish antics is that there was no Internet to immortalize mine. Therefore I think “There but for the grace of God went I when I was nineteen.”
catclub
@Pogonip: If you know what words trigger the moderation, you can insert non-printing bits into the words,
like the open-close of \em (in http style) to avoid it. It was mentioned in a previous thread.
schrodinger's cat
@nonynony: Are the people who complain about safe spaces the same people who want to teach Creationism in schools?
JR in WV
@Kay:
Hillary Clinton was one of the drivers for public education for disabled kids. In the south. I have no doubt that it was hard, even for her.
JR in WV
@Richard Mayhew:
So THAT is what caused my carpal tunnel!?!?
I’m thinking that it was poor posture while typing for me, actually.
But I can totally see it happening from excess repetitive motions of any sort, though.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
He’s just going to have to miss that speech on immigration, dagnabbit.
Pogonip
I would take a pay cut to work someplace where they had a safe space from the endless United Way solicitations!
JR in WV
@Barbara:
I have a relative who got a degree cum laude and will always live with his parents, as they never trusted him out of their sight. So he never learned to do anything on his own. Smart but no common sense.
Pogonip
@catclub: I will go looking for a cheat sheet listing [grin]trigger words. I myself was talking about the wholesome ’50’s. I don’t know what triggered it. Maybe a mid-century feminist is supplementing her Social Security working for WordPress? (I always had the impression that most of the big-name mid-century feminists thought “The Donna Reed Show” was a documentary, and dedicated their lives to ensuring such horrors would never happen again. :D. )
Pogonip
@Rob in CT: that’s even more tragic than the original story.
Pogonip
@catclub: According to the list I found, the evil word was the name of the game my father played to keep my mom and brother from starving during the 4 months the Army forgot to pay him.
Pogonip
@JR in WV: Have the parents made provisions for someone to care for him when they die?
JR in WV
@Pogonip:
Well, there was that little atomic bomb thing, with the Cuban climax.
Otherwise it was pretty sweet. My dad took me for a walk in the woods, kind of randomly circling for a while, then asked me which way to the house, and I pointed the right way.
So we were allowed to run wild in the woods, or ride our bikes down town (very small town, we could even take the dog with) to get a milkshake. Drop the bike on the sidewalk, leave the dig with the bike.
No problem, no hassle. Except for the atomic bomb thing.
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
My mother’s father was well-to-do, but she encountered the enforced conformity in a fairly ordinary public school (George Washington High in SF).
The story that sticks in my memory was one about the school having a student activities card that they wanted all the students to buy. They were promised a special school rally as a reward if 100% of the student body bought them. My mom always hated school rallies (in part because Johnny Mathis, who overlapped with her, would always be asked to sing at them, and she didn’t like his music), didn’t want a student activities card, and refused to by one. She and her best friend were the only kids in the school not to buy them. They were taken to the principal’s office and pressured for an hour to buy them so they could get their 100% participation. My mom eventually cracked, but her friend didn’t. The school lied and claimed they’d gotten their 100% participation, and held their rally.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: That makes sense. Trump reminds me of students who will do anything to get out of submitting assignments on time.
opiejeanne
@raven: We did that too, rented horses somewhere nearby. I lived in Baldwin Park until I was 14, then moved to Temple City. Born in 1950, so I do remember a lot of the 50s. For some reason even though Mom stayed home with us and my grandparents lived next door, life in the 50s wasn’t quite as smooth as Leave it to Beaver. It was mostly kind of boring, but also a little rougher. We had a charmed life, Dad always had work, no one was terribly sick in our family during that decade, We got regular checkups at the doctor and dentist and went to church every Sunday.
On the other hand, the neighbor kid’s dog got hit by a car in front of my house when I was 6, scary dogs ran loose in packs, we lost a cat to feline distemper a year or so before the vaccine was available. At 7 or 8 I was allowed to ride my bike to my best friend’s house, a mile down our somewhat busy street, we found pornographic photos in the church parking lot across the street, the man next door was an alcoholic. polio scared the shit out of parents so much that they didn’t let their kids go to the public pool for years after the Salk vaccine was introduced, we had trouble finding a Girl Scout troop leader, and my mom was ten years older than my friends’ moms, several of whom were on welfare, and one’s mom was an alcoholic.
The thing about the fear and worry over our children is that now we hear about every incident, every kidnapping, murder, atrocity against kids because the world is smaller than it was 60 years ago. The only time people in Florida heard about something like that in California is if it was spectacularly bad, like the Wineville murders, so bad the town changed its name, or the Lindberg baby. It isn’t that these are a larger percentage than they were, it’s more that the population has increased, and that we hear about it more often than we did back then. Back then it was huge news locally when a Girl Scout selling cookies was raped at a house in Covina, and that her Sheriff dad went to the house and shot and killed one of the men responsible. I doubt that anyone in New York heard about that back then, but it would be national news today.
JR in WV
@Pogonip:
No. He’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself, they just don’t believe it. Mom is a helicopter, so dad has to be also too.
They give him bad advice on account of their own doubts. Of course, no experience making choices doesn’t help either.
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
Nah. You just made the mistake of discussing a card game that’s beloved by spammers.
nutella
@Pogonip:
Have you been reading RWNJ sites? Because that’s what they imagine college safe spaces to be but actual examples of college safe spaces are Hillell and Black Student Union.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Even when their dodge is more effort than the assignment, yep. My one great epiphany was when we were having a gripe session about something at work. We were complaining about how somebody ought to fix some minor problem, when I realized that A) I was someone and B) I could have fixed the problem in less time than we had just spent complaining about it. As soon as I thought of it that way, I left the conversation, fixed the problem, and never looked back. I think that can-do, will-do attitude helped me get a big promotion a couple of years later.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
There’s always going to be a certain amount of cool-kidism and in-group/out-group with “safe spaces” because we’re talking about people who are fresh out of high school, but there’s also a LOT of entitled bitching by white dudes who insist on not understanding why there’s a Black Student Union but not a White Student Union, why they’re not allowed to tell GLBT students they’re going to Hell, etc etc ad nauseum.
Some privileged white kids in their early 20s go the opposite direction and suddenly realize that racism and sexism are actual things and go overboard in trying to be “allies,” but that’s part of being in your early 20s.
JR in WV
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Hoover??? He left office in 1933. Maybe you mean Ike? Elvis enlisted “was inducted” in 1958.
JR in WV
@Pogonip:
Your Dad made money by playing poker, which is one of the banned words. And that is why you got moderated, takling about gambling~!
Not your 1950s subject matter.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Also, too, getting verbally smacked down for saying stupid shit about race/gender/LGBT issues is also part of being in your early 20s, but some people learn not to be fucking idiots after being smacked down, while others don’t. In retrospect, it was humiliating at the time to have people point out that I’d just said something stupid about race or LGBT issues, but I was smart enough to realize that the problem was that I was being an idiot, not that the other person was mean for smacking me down.
Roger Moore
@JR in WV:
He meant J. Edgar, not Herbert. J. Edgar Hoover remained in charge of the FBI until his death in 1972, and he certainly did abuse his power to try to shut down what he thought were undesirable elements in society. If he thought rock music was subversive, he would have done everything in his considerable power to stop it.
Larkspur
@JR in WV: Right. Atomic bomb was big. I studied maps of Detroit trying to guess if we would survive in our little downriver factory suburb. (No, even assuming bombs hit exactly on target.) Grandparents were living in Florida during the Cuban missile crisis. My father was worried – they were so close to Cuba! – but my grandparents just laughed at him when he suggested they come back up north to Detroit. (“Are you nuts?”)
But otherwise I was scared of polio, rabid dogs, the blasting caps they kept reminding us not to touch, and having my underpants show during recess, because girls had to wear dresses or skirts. I rode my bike a lot, although I stayed in the general neighborhood.
JR in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
No doubt, good thought!
You know the flood of Noah is why those limestones full of marine fossils are on mountain tops, right? Only way that could have happened~!!!
/snark
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: never mind, that was in the OP.
Arclite
Fascinating statistics. My teen daughter likes boys, but also has her eyes on the prize. She studies hard and wants to avoid distractions until she finishes college. She’ll have a boyfriend at some point I’m sure (She’s smart, popular, and athletic) but she’s also fully versed in sex and all contraceptive methods and we have frank discussions around here to keep communication lines open. Kids these days are the most educated generation ever. Also, the internet has done wonders to educate and answer any questions a teen might have about sex.
Brachiator
Goddamm it. Not only are younguns having that sweet, good, sex, they are doing so without the shame and fear of pregnancy that made America great in the past. It just ain’t right.
Stop having sex on my lawn!
These stats about lower pregnancy rates are very welcome. How does this tie in with rates of sexually transmitted diseases? More research.
Chris T.
@gene108: News headline: RESEARCHERS LOSE JOBS – All cancer was cured today, and now thousands of research scientists are out of a job…