Okay, deep breath.
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| The Painter's Family. Henri Matisse, 1911. |
While it's true that parents can't make their kids' life choices for them, they have a responsibility to help their children make the right choice--the right choice being the one that will make them happy, whole and successful later on. That's what parenting is all about, and it begins on the very day parents become mommies and daddies. Parenting is not about controlling your kids so they only do what you want them to do; it's about working hard to raise them to be good, happy and independent adults.
That said, parents have every right to warn their children about the consequences of premarital sex, and to dissuade them from engaging in it. Yes, the decision is still the son's or daughter's, but that does not take away the fact that mom and dad's two cents matter.
One father I interviewed put it this way: "I tell my sons that premarital sex, like drunk driving, is a life-changing decision. You know that if you get drunk and you drive, you could wake up the next day recovering from a car accident, or worse, hearing news that you had severely injured or killed somebody last night, or worse still, you don't wake up at all."
It's the same big consequence for premarital sex: you know that if you engage in it now, you can find yourself a few months later having to give up school for the baby, having to marry the girl for the baby, considering abortion (!), or at the very least becoming completely emotionally attached to the boyfriend who decides to leave you anyway. Now, is this the way to pursue happiness?
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| Saying Grace. Norman Rockwell, 1951. |
Like many good things, true love happens slowly. It grows as you get to know the person more in friendship, it matures as you also mature in mind and heart, and its progress is composed of many decisions that you make out of selfless love.
This is what our parents want us kids to discover, and as much as they wish to explain it to us, sadly, it does happen that the only words they are able to say are the misleading "That's bad," the explanation-warranting "Don't do it because I say so," or the rebellion-inducing "Huwag mong bahiran ng kahihiyan ang pangalan natin." (Ooh, the drama!)
It is difficult, but we have to learn to see the love behind the different permutations of those inadequate comments. We need to understand that while not all parents have the gift for words, the very fact that they're struggling with these words at all is proof of their love. It's up to us kids to repay that love with obedience.
"Where there is no obedience, there is no virtue; where there is no virtue there is no good; where good is wanting, there is no love, there is no God; where God is not, there is no Heaven."-St. Pio of Pietrelcina
It's really very sad. In our school, Premarital Sex is an issue with a minority of the students... surprisingly, not with the high school boys, but with the GIRLS. As in, they're the ones who initiate. It comes as a bit of shock for Tata and I. These girls usually come from broken homes, so they try to fill their huge need for love by engaging in PMS. The sad thing is, with some of them, all the guidance talks in the world will make no difference. Their credo is: "I'm young, so I'm allowed to act stupid." T.T At the end of the day, teachers can only do so much.
ReplyDeleteBut, still, thank God for teachers! Don't lose hope, Gabi. As one of my friends always tells me, 'There are no hopeless cases.' :)
ReplyDeleteWhat you said about broken homes really is a big factor to the PMS culture. :( So much depends on the parents, and that means so much is not being done in broken homes. That's why we should really protect the family in our society.