It was the weirdest "talk" we had ever had.
My mother had always been very open and honest with me when I had questions about sex and relationships, but this just took the cake. So what was this strange piece of unsolicited advice I received as we drove through my high school boyfriend's neighborhood?
"I know you really love him, but don't marry him. It's okay to have sex with him if you think that's the right thing to do."
Maybe she saw the gleam in my angst-y, seventeen-year-old eyes as we drove past his house on the way home from school that day. Maybe she remembered what it was like to be a teenager in love. Maybe she and her sisters had visited a spirit guide on their annual girls' night out earlier that year who told her that her youngest daughter would marry before the age of 20 (true story). Whatever it was - and I'm assuming it's probably a combination of all three of these factors - this was a message she delivered with the same urgency and conviction as the information she had been giving me about my body and birth control, the realities of raising kids, and all the other important stuff for my entire life.
The same mom who got me out of bed every Sunday morning for church and sent me to a conservative Lutheran high school every day had finally let the cat out of the bag: in her opinion, saving sex for marriage is not a requirement. I now realize that she wasn't giving me permission to do it - we both knew then that I didn't need it (is there a form you fill out or a slip she had to sign?). In her infinite mommy-wisdom, she was simply letting me know that if I aspired to the standard of waiting for sex until marriage and didn't quite live up to it, it wouldn't be a moral failure on my part. In her opinion, it would be perfectly normal. And as much as it mortified me, it was a message I needed to hear.
Needless to say, this isn't exactly the prevailing message given to young people within the church (not that any God-fearing person has ever called me a failure at any point, either). Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that any messages about sex actually prevailed in my various places of worship - it was mostly just understood that sex was bad until you got married. Many of us are still confused about how that negative connotation magically disappears once you say, "I do," but that's a discussion for another day.
While most conservative Christians are pretty firm on this no-sex rule, there is less agreement about how to help single folks actually achieve this goal in a day and age when people are getting married later than they used to. The solution for some? Get married early, and you won't have to wait.
I suppose the good news here is that religious folks are finally recognizing that sexuality is an important part of people's lives that shouldn't necessarily be suppressed or ignored. The more confusing news is that church leaders may be encouraging young people to enter into relationships under circumstances where the odds for success are mostly against them - we know that early marriages tend to dissolve more often than when both partners are older. Of course, there are exceptions to this, and I have great friends who've chosen this route and are living happily ever after.
But is this the best choice to promote? Are we addressing a symptom and not the root of the problem by focusing on marriage and not the standard for when it's appropriate to have sex? Is wanting to have sex for the first time reason enough to commit to spending the rest of your life with someone?
I know what my mom would say.
thanks for sharing this!
one thing i found really interesting was that your mom was ok with the sex but not with marriage. but i think having an unplanned pregnancy (something that teen sex often leads to) is scarier than early marriage (something that teen sex does not often lead to). i'm sure she wanted to protect you...just interesting that it seemed primarily from early marriage?
secondly, the data on early marriage definitely isn't positive, but neither is the data from late/delayed marriage. in fact, some of the marriages with higher reported marital happiness start in the 24-27 age range. certainly you don't want to fall off the bandwagon on either end - really early marriage or really late marriage; both have their unique challenges. but i think the research generally supports the concept that marriage as an institution is usually a pretty good place for children to be raised, and shouldn't be something parents are scaring their children away from.
the last thing is the standard for when sex is ok. for other life actions that are wonderful, serious and possibly life-altering, we usually don't tell teens to rely on their gut instincts (ie: college, driving, drinking, etc). parents, coaches, teachers, and mentors provide boundaries and guidance for a reason: we care about the teen's long-term well-being. why should we treat this subject so very differently?
in any case...thanks again for sharing. definitely thought provoking!!
Thanks for your comment, Amy.
The first thing I'll mention is that I don't think my mom gave me this advice because she thinks having an unplanned pregnancy is better than getting married early. We had several equally open and honest conversations about protection, birth control, "the parts and plumbing," and everything else. So, she made the comment above to me with relatively strong confidence in the fact that I knew how to avoid pregnancy and STIs if I decided to have sex, because we had been talking about this stuff for pretty much my whole life. And again, the larger point is that this wasn't about giving me permission to have sex - it was more about her normalizing the desire to do so outside of marriage when she knew that alot of the messages I was getting in other places made me feel like I was weird or wrong for having those feelings. As she pointed out to me just today - because we still have these "talks" on a fairly regular basis thankyouverymuch - "people have been doin' it since the beginning of time. These urges young people have are natural."
And thanks for the data on marriage you mentioned. I agree that parents shouldn't necessarily discourage their kids from marrying, and I certainly never meant to imply that we should be in the business of "scaring children away from" it, to borrow your words. But I respectfully assert that I wouldn't argue with any parent who is discouraging their 17-year-old daughter from marrying her H.S. boyfriend - especially if the sole reason for the legal union is to make sex permissible. That's the point I meant to make.
Thanks for reading! My mama's a thought-provoking kinda lady.