by R.E. Hannay
* The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there were more than 1,000,000 documented child abuse cases in 1990. In 1983, it found that 60% of perpetrators were women with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in abusive situations by allowing both parents to monitor the children’s health and welfare and to protect them.
SOME CALL IT SEX
Americans, supposedly the world’s free and enlightened people, are inconsistent in many ways. One inconsistency is our uninhibited display of sex in movies, various art forms, in advertising and dress, while underneath the public sexual freedom there are obviously some repressed feelings, in spite of all the sex noise. In many ways, our sexual revolution was only skin deep. When liberated Americans see women on a foreign beach who left their swimsuit-tops in their bags, or naked people in a park in Munich on a warm day, most are surprised or shocked. Such women look more or less like three thousand million other women, but their appearance is a big deal to many enlightened, retarded Americans. They can see nudity in movies rated OK for Children, listen to foul language there and everywhere else, or watch a bloody television slaughter with no point in the story except violence, all that is a ho-hum. The liberals fight to protect coed college dorms, but to go to the beach and see girls without shirts or a naked couple strolling down the beach? Eek! Hide the children!
The same sort of repressed view of many adults regarding sexuality and sex education for our young people is obvious, depending on their personal beliefs and religious dogma on sex education and sexual activities. Human sexuality is one form of hunger, a vital subject like nutrition, but neither seems to be taught, even in medical schools, in their whole, wholesome forms. There is a major argument between one school that wants abstinence-only sex education, and the other wants to teach all the medical, physical and psychological aspects of sex. The abstinence people fear that teaching the details will result in more experimentation and unmarried intercourse, while the sex-education people say promoting abstinence without detailed sex education is useless. However, the sex-education people do a poor job of getting across all the psychological and medical hazards of sex and the fact that condoms don't really provide safe sex, particularly from viral diseases like HPV, which is linked to cervical cancer. The sex-education group also takes the full-story discussion and pictures down to the kindergarten level, which is not a bright idea.
Teens in the more sexually open countries of northern Europe and Scandinavia abstain from sex longer, are virgins at an older age, have lower rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion and have fewer sexually transmitted diseases than American teens. Researchers in Chicago interviewed many thousands of people in Great Britain and the U.S. on their sexual attitudes and practices. More Americans than British have rigid opinions against extramarital sex, unmarried sex and homosexuality. Nearly twenty-five percent of Americans think premarital sex is "always or almost always wrong," compared with only eight percent of Brits, but the percentage of Americans who reported having had five or more sex partners in the previous year was twice as high as in Britain.
Much of the silliest thinking about sexuality and the human body is church-borne, but occasionally there is hope for some sanity or at least a little fun. The Old Testament is full of both approved and disapproved sex, but later Christianity was often so repressive that bathing, which involved touching and seeing the naked body, was discouraged. Orientals in contact with Europeans were shocked at how filthy they were. Some Oriental religions celebrate sexuality. Hindu temples often display dozens of statues of erotic bodies and celebrate sex in their temples and rituals. Some Hindu, Buddhist and Shinto sects display and handle models of penises and what they often call lotus blossoms. In earlier times the Judeo-Christian official lines were repressive and the Vatican still opposes sexual activities for pleasure, but the pill, the Woodstock generation and the very low birth rates in Christian countries show that most people don’t follow those instructions. They are playing in a new ball game.
This quotation is from a conservative Protestant magazine, responding to someone who wrote in to blame American sex hang-ups on the Puritans:
True sensuality is a celebration of two people in a committed relationship…. What more divine gift of celebration do we have than lovemaking? Even those married couples who can't afford to splurge on grand meals and fine wines can feast on each other….Yet notice how non-sexual we are in our living. We run from the cold, impersonal sex of our surrounding culture only to act as if lovemaking were some shameful secret. The joy of sexuality doesn't permeate our lives like it did in earlier eras…. Modernity has not only turned us into shameful animals copulating with strangers, but Christians - who should be the best lovers, the most sexual - are quite stiff and on feverish guard lest anyone actually commit a holy kiss…. This is a sign of our spiritual immaturity. A more mature, Christian culture could honor public etiquette knowing that lovemaking is a private, but not a secret thing, while still leading lives blossoming with celebration of the amazing gifts of sexuality.
In America, we tend to glory in sex, to flaunt it, and on another level to avoid the realities of it. We are good at warning of its dangers but not of its virtues and its joys. Our discussions of sex with our children tend to be awkward, labored and often ineffective. The change from intercourse mostly involving a romantic interest to often being an impersonal recreational activity is causing some problems. Among young people, casual sex - “hooking up” and “friends with benefits” – are causing problems with girls who prefer a romantic, more permanent relationship and with boys whose attitude toward girls tends to worsen.
One vital aspect of successful sex should be obvious, the need to keep it interesting, not just in performance but the whole matter of relations between couples. Part of it, of course, is pleasing the other person, but it goes far beyond that. It goes into what caused one person to see another across a room and get interested: a man to straighten his tie, to look again and plan how he can meet her, the woman to flick her hair and look again, over and down.
Here is Fred Reed’s delicate analysis of romance: “While men are far uglier than women, they age better. It is useful to reflect in moments of unguided passion that, beneath the skin, we are all wet bags of unpleasant organs. Soon you will be a balding sofa ornament and she will look like a fireplug with cellulite. Once the packaging deteriorates, there had better be something to get you through the next thirty years.”
What has happened later to a couple, when years of contact have brought long familiarity? Is it a feeling of mutual affection and respect and closeness, a little excitement when one suddenly sees the other person driving on the same street, or is there boredom, annoyance at this or that little thing and a secret wish to be somewhere else or with someone else? What makes the difference? That varies with different people, but one way or another people have to keep things interesting. Sometimes it can be done simply by staying attractive physically or in personality, with others it can happen when faded physical attractions are offset by achievements, status, money, activities, wit, or sometimes simply by being considerate and loyal, by always being there. But one way or another, something has to be there to maintain the original interest or things are certain to get dull.
What about the sexual revolution? Today the average child of 14 knows, sees, hears and talks more about the human body and its functions than many adults did at 21 two generations ago. Unmarried sex was furtive, a tee-hee among the young and either an unmentionable or a matter for gossip among adults, except in the artists’ and Bohemian colonies and among some lower socio-economic groups. Now articles about dating protocol suggest that if a man hasn't tried to bed a girl by the second or third date, he is out of it and not to be tolerated. All kinds of "nice" people live together openly, pregnant girls are voted prom queens, high scho
ols provide baby sitters for students' children, couples getting married have their bastard children acting as ring bearers and flower girls and few pay much attention. Almost 40 percent of all babies born in the U.S. last year were illegitimate, and close to 75 percent of the blacks'.
One big difference, of course, is birth control. Or rather, more dependable birth control is what started it, and the hippie generation wrote the script and acted it out. However, there has been one big problem: children, wanted and unwanted. The sexual revolution, the bastards without their fathers at home and functioning as fathers, the high divorce rate and the mixed-up families with his children, her children, their children or a whose-is-it? have created a social structure undreamed of two generations ago when divorce and shacking up were comparatively rare in polite society.
The problem has been compounded by the change from having almost no working mothers with children still at home to a society where most mothers with school children now work outside the home. The result is that many children are adrift and there has been a great increase in the parents' problems -- financial, status, and simply time -- time for each other, time for the children, time to eat, talk and do things together -time to be a real family.
What is the solution? Abortion is often the answer, but not a good answer. It can create physical, emotional, religious and legal problems, even when done early in pregnancy, and it is a no-win political nightmare. With the post-intercourse drug now approved, , some practical and legal changes may help, but that jury is still out. Our overly-generous welfare system that encourages inner-city illegitimate births and often a why-work? mentality and prohibits welfare payments with a father in the house, has to be changed. Making both parents responsible for the financial support and general welfare of all their children until adulthood is only right.
Cheryl Wetzstein: “The reality of U.S. cohabiting is more fully witnessed in America’s black and Hispanic neighborhoods, where cohabiting has almost fully replaced marriage. Anyone who says cohabiting is not playing a major role in the repeated cycles of poverty, anti-social behavior and family heartache just isn’t living in the real world.”
This country spends an incredible amount of time, effort and money studying and treating matters of human health, both physical and mental, and in the polarized, closed-minded arguments about abortions, but efforts to educate our children about human sexuality are pitiful. Mexico, ninety-some percent of which is Roman Catholic, has a much more open and healthy attitude toward human sexuality than typically is found in the U.S. The girls are natural flirts, the boys are bird-dogs and sexuality is celebrated. Even their celibate priests are often more realistic and helpful on matters of human sexuality and family planning than are typical American parents, educators and religions.
With Japan and most of Europe moribund as a result of low birth rates, perhaps a generation or two of promiscuous sex is needed. Major changes in human behavior and relationships, such as family structures changing from wives being homemakers to working elsewhere while children are still at home, take more than one generation to be worked out. In some primitive cultures like Polynesia, the historic pattern was that when the hormones started surging, the young people engaged freely in sexual activities, grandparents took care of any children that were born, and generally the eventual marriages were at least partly monogamous.
Older generations always assume that different behavior patterns of the next generation are bad. Perhaps this one isn’t, now that birth control is readily available. It would be useful for extensive studies to be made of the later effects of the uninhibited sexual activities of today’s young people on success patterns in eventual marriages, divorce rates, adultery, and most important, of what happens to children born and brought up in the changed environment.
UP JUMPED THE HIPPIES
Sweeping generalizations are often both right and wrong. Saying that all the baby boomers were true hippies just because they had long hair, wore different clothes and liked loud music isn’t fair. There was a big difference between some of them and the freeloading, smelly druggies who preached free love, ignored laws, violated the rights and property of others and, above all, did nothing productive -- just existed, getting laid and stoned, looking dirty, tired and unhappy.
The really curious thing is how hippies just appeared out of nowhere. There have always been rebellious young people who protest existing social, political, economic and cultural patterns. Part of growing up is to protest the competitive and therefore unfair world -- until they need to compete to earn a living. Winston Churchill is said to have been suspicious of anyone age 20 who isn’t a socialist and anyone 25 who is. That was before many young people were still in school and living with their parents at 25 or 30. Still, the hippie revolution that started about 1967 was like nothing seen in this country in the last 300 years.
The hippie/Woodstock phenomenon was a big puzzle to normal people. The typical one came from a normal middle-class family. His parents had struggled through the Great Depression and World War II and said, “We want our children to have the things we didn’t have.” Instead of appreciating their parents’ struggles and efforts to do better by their kids, many boomers chose simply to do nothing useful. They sponged off their parents and taxpayers while trying to find meaning by protesting everything they thought was wrong, while doing nothing to improve matters. Tune in, turn on, drop out.
Instead of cutting the bums’ cords, many parents and politicians helped them “find themselves.” That often meant finding themselves in public hospitals with burned-out brains, venereal disease and screwed-up bastard children starting life with two-and-a-half strikes against them. All this in the name of love, peace and socialism -- hate the establishment but demand that it support you.
The hippies focused on protesting the Vietnam War. Admittedly, we were stupid to be involved in it, but hippie protesting seemed derived simply from a desire not to get drafted. The anti-Vietnam student protests almost stopped in 1970 after Nixon ended the draft, even though the most ferocious bombing continued for three more years.
It appeared that the hippies’ perception of a society obsessed with materialism may have been a partial cause of the movement, or perhaps it was just a combination of indulgent parents and politicians, the pill, abundant drugs and newly available student loans and grants based not on merit, as previously, but on “need.” Many hippies were bright enough, but just slouched aimlessly through college and life at someone else’s expense.
Aside from a lack of ambition, the biggest difference between hippies and the youth of our past was that hippies seemed to lack a moral compass, a distinction between right and wrong. Their attitude was, if it feels good, do it. If the law or convention says it’s wrong, do it anyway. If someone else’s property rights or feelings get in the way, who cares? As much as you can, as long as you can, be a parasite and take what you want.
Bill Clinton was their first president, and they cheered the scoundrel and his conduct, his lying under oath and his corrupt administration. Many of the grown-up hippies still believe that lying, cheating and stealing are good, you just have to avoid getting caught. Their favorite career politicians tend to follow that pattern.
Congress always has a big complement of inherited-wealth socialists like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, who never had a real job. They call it “a lifetime of public service,” but in reality it is a lifetime of feeding at the public trough, providing pork to their districts to collect votes and contributions for the next election. They may not wave banners, chant slogans, smoke dope and push flowers down gun barrels now, but they still don’t have a clue what it takes to make the country prosperous – free enterprise, opportunity and productivity. They're just grown-up hippies.
Jobs aren’t created by politicians; government jobs and government-created jobs are mostly unproductive welfare. Jobs are created by new entrepreneurs and by existing companies gathering the capital and human resources to start or expand businesses, p
roviding products or services that people want at prices they are willing and able to pay. The hippies, including the respectable middle-aged ones, seem to have no understanding that the force that drives the economic engine of the country is innovation and risk-taking by businesses, and that the government often impedes growth.
Napoleon said to understand a man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20. The counter-culture of the ’60s and 70s has evolved into a political movement, not just promoting a socialistic welfare state, but seeking more and more control of our lives. We must have laws for everything, with or without a constitutional basis. HUD regulates what property owners may say in advertising their property for sale or rent. It is illegal to advertise a property named “Roselawn Catholic Home,” and no tenant preferences may be stated. Speech and advertising codes are so outrageous they are laughable, yet they are enforced by liberal courts.
In defense of the majority of the boomer generation, Marilyn Quayle said at the 1992 Republican convention, “We believed in hard work and personal discipline, in our nation’s essential goodness, and in the opportunity it promised those willing to work for it. Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it.”
There is still hope. Recent public opinion surveys show some increasing skepticism of depending on a huge, expensive and intrusive government to solve personal and business problems. Career politicians try, and fail, to solve citizens’ problems at a high price in taxes and lost freedom. We need a wholesale return to personal responsibility and liberty. In Congress, we need to throw out the hippies in both parties.
It seems that many Woodstockers have not made it past adolescence. Anything that offends them must be made taboo. Their wants have become needs and the "government” must provide them. Either they have not saved for retirement or they have not saved enough to continue to supply their heavy load of wants. Diana West in her book, The Death of the Grown-Up, says trouble began when children started aspiring to adolescence rather than adulthood. Presumably they will be increasingly active and noisy in their support of politicians who promise to play Obama’s game. Orwell, here we come. Or are. Curtsy to Big Brother.
PART IV: INTERNATIONAL AND MILITARY ISSUES
