The birds and the bees

My children are going to reach sexual maturity some day, and that's all right with me.

There, I said it. *Phew*, that wasn't easy. I mean, beyond just hoping that they grow up healthy and all that, they're going to hit puberty. And I'm ok with it.

You may be thinking, "Um, what?" but hear me out. This being ok thing wasn't always true. Like all things parenting, until I had kids I hadn't really thought much about how to parent sexual beings. I mean, I've always considered myself to be pro-sex, or sex-positive, or whatever moniker, but when I started to think about having kids, and once I had them, I would have moments of paralyzing fear about them reaching sexual maturity.

Turns out I'd completely internalized all of the fear-mongering regarding teen sexuality in American culture and media. All of the hysteria about supposed "rainbow parties", "hook-up culture", pregnancy pacts, girls-gone-wild, and teen pregnancy generally, for example. It's one thing to want to raise kids with healthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality, but another thing altogether to raise wanton sex-fiends (as all teenagers are, natch) who have sex with virtual strangers anywhere, any time with no regard for self-respect, intimacy, or responsible use of birth control. The volume on this fear was cranked up to 11 when I found out I was having a girl, as you'll notice the gender disparity in the cultural caricature: boys just think about sex all the time, and really all you have to do is teach them how to use a condom effectively, but depending on your parenting failures girls are either amoral sluts or potential victims of sexual predation of one form or another.

This all came into focus for me because of 3 things:

1. About a year ago, I started reading 3rd wave feminist blogs regularly. In fact, I haven't updated my blogroll in forever to reflect my recent habits. I'll do it once I finish this post. Blogs like Feministing, The Curvature, and Feministe, among others. First up, I gotta say that once you dip your toe into this pool you will not believe how many cool people are writing sometimes amazing, sometimes work-a-day but always interesting, stuff around feminist issues. I love the ladies (and occasional gentleman) who post on those blogs! There are regular posts about the double standard young women vs. young men are held to regarding sex. Slut shaming, purity balls, etc., and it got me thinking about why I was freaked out about having teenagers. About how much of it was reflective of what I really felt and how much of it was a panic response to all the fear-mongering in society at large.

2. I was reading about George Bush's failed Abstinence-Only education agenda one day and I ran across a quote. I can't find it now, but essentially it was along the lines of, well, we can disagree about the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, but as parents we can all agree at least that of course, in the best of all worlds our kids wouldn't be having sex until marriage. It was stated as a given, like we may disagree about methods, or how realistic a goal it is, but obviously we don't want our kids having premarital sex. This brought me up short. I thought...huh...well, no, actually. I don't think anybody should be getting married to someone they haven't had sex with. I suppose there can be exceptions, but in general I think it's foolish. I want my children to marry someone (if they choose to get married) that they are harmoniously intimate with, for lack of a better phrase. I explicitly want my children to have premarital sex. If that construct is even appropriate as they grow up. I would say, in fact, that premarital sex is a core family value in our household. Well, once I articulated that so explicitly, I had to think about exactly what I think are appropriate boundaries regarding sex and sexuality. Don't get me wrong, I don't want either of them having sex when they're 12. Exactly what do I think is right and wrong, and what do I want my kids to believe? I had to try and think about it with a clear head.

3. I read a study called "Must we fear adolescent sexuality?" by Dr. Amy Schalet, where she compares attitudes toward teenage sexuality in America and the Netherlands. The 2 countries are similar in terms of wealth, and education, and similar measures, but the U.S. has the highest, and the Netherlands the lowest, teen pregnancy rate in the western world. What she found is that parental attitudes toward teenage sexuality were also starkly different. When asked whether they would let their teenage child spend the night in their room with their boyfriend or girlfriend , something like 9 out of 10 American parents answered an emphatic, "No", or probably something more like, "Over my dead body!", while 9 out of 10 Dutch parents said yes, they would consider it once their child was at least 16 or 17 years old. Well, at first, when considering the question of would I let my teenager spend the night with their boyfriend/girlfriend in my house, I must admit my initial response for about 3 seconds was, "Hells no!" But when I thought about it longer, I realized that I was responding again out of fear, not out of what I really believe about sex, or teenagers, or morals, etc. So, it got me thinking. Now, I'm not saying that I'm on board with the idea of a teenage sleep-over in my house yet, but I might be in another decade. I'm just saying that I'm not reacting in a knee-jerk fashion anymore. I'm thinking about it is all.

It's a really interesting paper, a must-read for parents, I think. Another tidbit I found interesting: a majority of American parents don't believe that teenagers can actually fall in love (as opposed to infatuation, I suppose), that they don't really know what love is, while Dutch parents do. Interesting...

So, there you go. Blame it on the feminist blogs, George Bush, and a sociology thesis.

2 different but closely related topics...

All of the discussion around Obama's comments on abortion has brought up some still raw feelings about my own experience. I think he was talking out of his ass a bit, as many do who haven't been through it, and I'm disappointed. Others have expressed themselves more articulately than I ever would, so I won't go on at length. I'm just disappointed is all.

I'm a lame blogger, we all know that. I vacillate between wanting to write openly and honestly (and as often as possible, humorously) about every experience, feeling grossed out by my narcissism, and feeling shy and wanting to keep my life entirely private. And these feelings have nothing to do with the actual time I have available to write. I feel guilty when I haven't posted in more than a day or two, and I've thought often about just quitting this blog and taking it down. But, in the end I really only have 2 kinds of readers; friends who know me well and read the blog to keep in touch (and a couple of friends of friends who have that as a connection), and people who search for "multiple omphalocele" or "hydrocephaly" or "2 chamber heart" and "routine 17 week sonogram" in google in some combination and end up here somehow. It happens every couple of months - I'll check the visitor paths and there's the trail. That's really why I leave this blog up even when I haven't posted in weeks. When we found there was something wrong in that first pregnancy, first I searched for specific information about the medical conditions (diagnoses, prognoses, probabilities, etc.), then I searched for any personal accounts from people who'd faced similar circumstances. I was desperate for not just the cold facts, but how people, women, expectant couples had dealt with the situation. I wanted to know if they faced it bravely or if it crushed them. I wanted to know if they told everyone they knew or kept it a secret for years. I needed to know if they'd ever been able to face pregnancy again. I wanted to know the small things about how they talked with their doctors, how they felt about every step of the process, how they felt about themselves through it all. My account of my experience doesn't have all that, but I do hope it offers some perspective. A small consolation for having gone through it.

My heart goes out to those who find their way here that way. Though we've never met, I feel protective of them. I'd like to be able to call them up and offer my support directly. I wish I could help them navigate the road of suck they're on.

You already know I'm awesome

Orion's out of town this week, leaving me with Linus and Luna Bee on my own. I've said the following just today alone:

"Linus, get that bin off your head and stop kicking stuff!"

"Please don't rub that popsicle on your sister's face."

"No, you can not poke her with that stick!"

and my favorite:

"Do NOT pee on your sister!"

a Luna list

I know, I don't write nearly as much about Luna as I do about Linus (or even just random other stuff). It's not because I care for her any less, or find her less interesting, it's just that she's a baby. Linus talks about shooting rhinoceroses, and runs around in Spiderman underpants, and what not. Basically, he's blog fodder. While I find Luna fascinating, I recognize that this is mostly because I'm her parent. Now that we're on the second one I can see with more clarity that every little thing she does is not magic to anyone but me, her father, and maybe her grandmother. That First Baby Veil has lifted from my eyes. However, I feel I'm juking her in the word count. I don't want her to find this blog 15 years from now and feel slighted and get all huffy and morose (any more so than she'll already be because she's a teenager anyway). I could list 100 things I find completely charming and interesting and amazing about her, but I'll just list 10:

1. She crosses her legs at her ankles whenever she nurses. Has since the day she came out. It's like she's kicking it at the booby, chillin'. It's really eff-ing cute!

2. She's in the 95th percentile for weight and completely off the charts for length! Our girl's going to be a tall one.

3. She is very noisy. If you put her down for even a minute on the floor or couch or whatever, she makes this noise, a sort of a growl that sounds like a chain-smoking baby dinosaur. Rowr, rowr, rowr, rowr, rowr. It's really annoying and therefor effective. Sometimes, she just hollers. Not cry, mind you, hollers.

4. She does not like to be put down (see #3). Sometimes she likes to sit and play with stuff, but mostly she knows you're just trying to do something without her and that's BULLSHIT! She is on to you!

5. She has a hilarious don't-put-me-down strategy of NOT BENDING AT THE WAIST! She will NOT BEND AT THE WAIST no matter what if you try and put her down when she's not ready. The Human Plank. This usually results in having to lay her down on her back WHICH SHE HATES EVEN MORE THAN SITTING DOWN, DAMMIT!!

6. She has no interest in crawling, but she will scale you like Mt. Everest. If I'm sitting next to her on the couch or floor, she'll flop over and scale up the side of me until she's smiling right in my face with a big, one-tooth smile. She's going to be one of those babies that walks before she crawls.

7. She loves the singing. Though she hates the car seat, she'll sit happily as long as I'm singing The Wheels On The Bus. Over, and over, and over again. Her very favorite song is The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. She sings to herself all the time a kind of tuneless chant that includes vigorous arm flapping and bouncing.

8. She sleeps in the crook of my arm all night, which I love, but that means I can't really have much in the way of covers over me because she doesn't do covers. She kicks, kicks, kicks with her super chubby power legs until all covers are off. Even in her sleep she'll kick off the covers. Kick, kick, splay! Only in the deepest of deep sleeps can I sneak a little blanket up over her. Again, cute, but annoying.

9. She pokes her tongue out all the time. Like in the picture above. I don't really get it. There was a period of about 3 weeks a month or so ago when the tongue disappeared, but now it's back. I think it may have something to do with teething, maybe she likes the feel of it on her gums. It's a mystery. It compliments the chain-smoking baby dinosaur noise nicely, however.

10. She loves her brother. Loves him. She lights up with a huge smile whenever he comes to talk or play with her. She finds his shenanigans hilarious! Spin and fall? Funny. Spin and fall again? Funnier. Call her a doh-doh-head? Funny. Get an inch from her face and sing a song. Funny. Pretend to pee on her? Hilarious! You can tell she wants to follow him so bad. She gets furious that he can walk away and she can't follow. Once she starts walking, he's in trouble. He won't be able to shake her.

Anyone still reading at this point, thank you for indulging me.