It's not every day that you come across something online that you think is truly different, useful and, even fun. The other day I came across a website, "Maria Talks," that I think meets this criteria. The site was created through funding from the Massachusetts government, and it operates in conjunction with the Massachusetts Sexual Health Hotline. As someone who has spent plenty of time searching the web for resources on sexual health and birth control, I think that this site stands out.

At The National Campaign, we often send the message that safe sexual practices among teens are best achieved through ongoing conversation and communication. First and foremost, teens themselves have told us their parents most influence their decisions about sex, and we have long asked parents to take the lead and start that open and ongoing conversation with their children.

This just in from Massachusetts about a pack of little girls who decided to get pregnant together.  This is exhibit #50928345 in a basic reality today: our culture and its constituent parts--parents, media, faith leaders, elected officials and more--have failed in one of our most critical and basic jobs, which is communicating to the next generation about what babies need and deserve.  And what are those things?  The list includes having adult parents who are deeply and sincerely committed to each other; who are willing to be active, devoted parents for decades; and who have done the best they can to get educated so that they and their children need not struggle with poverty.  I cannot believe that if these girls had been surrounded by a culture and families who were clear and explicit about these simple facts that they would have been so reckless.   

Why didn't they just go get tattoos together or do some other innocuous adolescent thing?  This Massachusetts story provides a possible answer:  casual, non-marital child-bearing among teens as well as older individuals has become so common and inconsequential that it actually now IS the consumer equivalent of a tattoo: meaningless.