Tack on another year…

When Justin and I got engaged, we started talking about when we would ideally like to have children and settled on what’s known as the “Three-to-Five-Year Plan.” As you know, we recently celebrated our third anniversary and are now in this midst of this “plan” we devised.

Two news stories during the past twenty-four hours make me want to consider a “Thirty-five-Year Plan” instead. Or home schooling my children, which up until this morning I would never have considered. Let me explain…

Last night, after a particularly late evening at the office, I come home around 8:45 and watch the last few minutes of South Park. I hope my children would never be vulgar, but at times, I hope they are that sharp about what’s going on in the world – Cartman doesn’t count.

Justin then asks what’s on the movie channels, and so I flip around and end up on HBO Family, where they are showing “Middle School Confessions.”

Now, my mind immediately goes back to middle school and how horrible it was. Everyone is confused, hormones are wild, and you knew of about 12-15 kids in your grade that were total whores. I’m thinking to myself nothing has really changed, because I was in middle school only 12-13 years ago.

So this show starts interviewing a bunch of girls about how normal it is to give head at the age of 11 and 12. And I’m shocked. Justin and I are looking at each other like, we are never having kids, ever. I mean, these kids are talking about it in front of their parents! And these girls are saying how empowering it is, because they are in control and they wouldn’t even have to know the person and could just walk away. Seriously, my jaw was on the floor. Crazy. Which, by the way, if you go to the link I provided above, the girl that said that is the one with the braces.

Then this morning, I read an article on CNN about a group of fifth graders in Louisiana who had sex in front of their class for the fifteen minutes their teacher was out of the room. I mean, the worst thing that happened to me in fifth grade was the teacher left to use the restroom and some kid put a roach in my seat and I sat on it. I’m still bitter about that. These kids eventually were arrested because they were doing this in front of other students.

I mean, by the time my daughter is eight, will I have to start her on birth control? Will I have to worry about pregnancy by the time she’s 11? By the time she’s 18, will she be mixing my ashes with cocaine because she’s led me to an early grave? What is this world coming to?

Are parents not teaching their children morals, safe sex practices, or talking to them at all? Granted, 70 percent of the blame lies with the children, because a parent can teach two of their children the exact same principles with different results. But at the same time, are parents too consumed with work, their own activities, to sit down with their children and tell them how stupid they are behaving?

In my most thoughtful moment, I think the end of the world is nearing with stories like this, but then I was watching “The History of Sex” on the History Channel (it was interesting and I was bored) and learned about how people from the Middle Ages addressed sex. The Catholic Church at the time considered prostitution a necessary evil; at the same time, if you had sex and the woman was on top, you could be hanged. Then, there are these old prayer books from this time period with pictures of people getting it on in the margins.

So I suppose this isn’t abnormal behavior necessarily, but is happening way too early in a child’s life. Children at the age of 11 or 12 should not be expressing themselves sexually, and most likely are not engaging in safe sex. Think about it – you don’t even learn about STDs until ninth grade in the state of Texas, and most of the time, the teacher blows through that subject in about three days, and the topics never make a lasting impression.

All this to say, I would wait a long time to have children, because the idea of raising a hellion that sexes it up on the weekends, in-between classes and in his/her parent’s bed mortifies me, but the longer I wait, the more likely it is I’ll be worrying about this stuff during their terrible twos.

Regardless, don’t be expecting any birth announcements from me in the next year.