It’s About Making Babies!

Sam at Sam’s Stories tells about sharing an evening watching TV with her son Chicken, an episode of ‘weeds’.

I started to post my reply to her post, but .. well, Sam tells little vignettes of her life and family. Her intent is entertainment, and she does this very well. So my little bucket of ‘but ..’ seemed out of place for the story she tells. Following is my response to “How I Utterly Failed As A Parent”

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Sam, Sex stuff is OK for entertainment.

But what about the important stuff we just don’t communicate well from generation to generation?

I know I fixate on mates and mating rather than sexual adventure. I see sexual adventure - delighting in skirting danger - as a distraction from the dedication to a mate that builds a family. Adults and children needs love and devotion, respect and trust, to build a secure, nurturing and stable environment for a family.

The sex stuff glues new mates together, emotionally, if there is a solid bond between appropriate people. How is Chicken learning to tell the ‘fun’ dates from selecting a life-mate?

Learning about nekkid bodies and sex acts, and diverse thrills is good - ignorance can propagate unneeded fears with devastating force. But how is Chicken learning to find a mate that will be good helping to raise their children?

Many people take much of their lives to figure out that someone skilled in getting a partner into bed - is skilled in getting partners into bed. This is a life-skill they will not lose, nor put aside for very long. The rest of a relationship, a family, a life of love, is mostly beyond people skilled in attracting bedmates. A life-skill of attracting bed partners will last a lifetime - not the first thing you want in a life-mate.

That, and most people don’t get ‘lucky’ as often as they do on ‘weeds’. There is a reason most people refer to acts of intimacy as ‘getting lucky’ when dating. And people get distracted, thinking they don’t get enough sex compared to others. Instead of living, they may be chasing sex fantasies.

Is Chicken learning, along with the squishy facts, that sex distracts one from making rational decisions (whether to or not, whether the time/person/place is appropriate)? Or even that being nekkid is not the same as a sex act?

You have lots of parenting left to do. It is *much* too soon to throw in the towel and claim failure. lol! Back to work, Mom!

Umm, I don’t watch much TV these days. I found my years in public (family oriented, non-sexual) nude recreation was much more rewarding - I learned to watch for the person’s smile, rather than fixate on body parts or sexual connotations of exposing this crease or that curve.

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Then, this morning I got an email notification about a new response to a post, “Why you’ll always be a Yo-Yo Girl if you don’t maintain the No Contact Rule” on Baggage Reclaim. “Healthiernow on July 31st, 2008 1:45 pm” (the 50th comment) tells her story of being involved with a guy that shares great sex, but little else. And she has identified her value as a person as - good dates.

These men/women know how to manipulate. I know Im sick, because I do see how self destructive it is to want someone who can have so much influence on my daily sanity. Unfortunately, There were so many good years, I have a hard time letting go.

I think part of it had to do with my own insecurity as he has 22 yr olds -and all ages of women hitting on him. He is extremely good looking and he knows how to play women.

Sam, despite TV and movies highlighting sex as the goal of matching adults, there are a lot of good families. It hurts to see people distracted from a productive life by a fixation on sex.

I grew up with parents that watched Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights. Think about that. Big bands, they often showed the audience dancing. Slow dancing. There is no innuendo involved, in rubbing against your dance partner - this was foreplay, in public, televised. With regular changing of partners.

The mix and match on ‘weeds’ might be more graphic, but people still like to experience vicarious sex. Or even sex, first-hand, as it were. The closeness, the exchange of smells and touch, of shared breaths - these bind people together. We just have to remember to choose partners that help us grow in respect and honor and trust and discipline.

Tam at View From the Porch laments why several people in a few minutes time, each searched for ‘Porch Girl’ and following to her post from December, “Girls Gone Vile“.

First, why the search? I would hope that Tam’s popularity has outgrown the bounds of reasonableness, and so many people are just interested in her views. Maybe. Why they think ‘Girls Gone Vile’ is Tam’s hallmark post .. ugh. I don’t want to know. But the title is provocative. Much better than something like, “Why would a maroon take pictures of his girlfriend puking, while she is worried about why he isn’t helping her stay neat?” Which is kind of my take on what Tam’s post was about.

As for why kids are posting pictures instead of helping each other..

I think the answer is ignorant parents. Parents that don’t cover the basics of etiquette - respect, courtesy, honor and defense of reputation - can’t teach their kids how to handle partying, relationships, or other social interactions.

It takes good role models (watching Mom and Dad sit in front of the TV doesn’t explain social drinking courtesy) or oft-repeated experience to extrapolate ‘Bless You!’ for a sneeze, to helping hold your hair while you ‘yell at your shoes’ (I like that one!).

It could be that girls still get more experience with handling babies - and cleaning up after someone spews. In college guys are often still uber-squeamish about bodily fluids and such.

My generation (that is about ‘grandparent’s for many today) grew up with the notion that a girl had to protect her ‘reputation’. If she engaged in sex before marriage, she had a ‘reputation’. Many guys would happily sleep with a ‘loose’ girl, but never marry a woman without her reputation intact, virgin as far as social reputation goes. Even more families objected and blocked marriages because of reputations for being ‘loose’, as in ‘loose morals’, promiscuous, or just gossip that one is promiscuous or ’sexy’.

Really.

It will take the current ‘on video’ generation several more years to understand that ‘reputation’ is still a factor in society today. While today’s young people are tattooing their hearts, sexual behavior, and cartoons on their bodies, in years to come they will find that some doors just won’t open for them. Not all of today’s rocket scientists, doctors, nurses, or figures of authority started their adult lives thinking of public positions. Many of today’s future leaders, caretakers, parents, and teachers will find that the path destiny has laid on for them - is now closed. That is a sadness to many of us older folk.

College is a time and place where kids act out in the absence of parental authority. This is a time to make mistakes and choose which values are most meaningful in one’s life. This is part and parcel of the flooding of information, and history, and ways or thinking that colleges inundate students with. Many students come to similar conclusions, occasionally a genius or obstinate one or skilled thinker will put together very creative answers to important problems. And the experience both degrades family values in the nation, with the forced separation of years from the family home, and also frees young people to make a new life unbound by the limitations of older generations.

Learning to drink and screw are the two symbols of rebellion and freedom most kids share as they approach college - and many parents fear.

What is troublesome about the ’snap a pic and share it on the internet’ is that many kids lack compassion. They still play the grade school taunting games, and think nothing of the harm they do to each other in front of adults and the public. They think of taking a revealing or embarrassing picture, posting it, and the next day tell the victim, “Got you!”

Only, the picture hangs out there. Peers goggle at it. The picture, and reputation, hang about for a long time, it gets to family, it gets to future friends. A picture of a girl spewing might be amusing, in a drunken sot way, for a moment, until one or the other sobers up. But it is gossip - nothing good can come of it. It isn’t kindly meant, reflects a meanness and abusive attitude on the photographer. “Oh, I want to date Janet, she caught a great pic of her last date tossing his cookies for distance!” Not. And the friends and family that view this photo-gossip suffer from being part of the should-have-been forgiven and forgotten moment. Lots of victims, and the likelihood of anyone benefiting is slim.

We are not Allan Funt (Candid Camera tv show). America’s funniest home videos, reality shows - real and contrived embarrassing moments are humor - using pain for recreation. We can choose to share joy, or share humor (pain).

I don’t like video or photographic gossip any more than verbal gossip. Nothing good can come of it. That is, no healing, no character growth, no increase in joy, no enrichment of lives (well, maybe for predators).