"Making a Love Connection"

I just finished reading an interesting article for my class, it was about preventing teen pregnancies through relationship education. One statement from the article that I really liked was: "Talking to teens about sex without talking to them about relationships and love makes little sense." Parents need to be more involved in teaching their children about relationships, love, marriage, and sex. Yes it's kind of awkward and you might think "why bother, they can take Theme 5 (that's what it was called at my school)" but the article points out that by the time a person is a teenager they have already absorbed messages about sex from the streets and the media. The article gave examples of songs that have themes of abandonment, betrayal, sadness, anger, pain, and a longing for a functional family. I thought of another song not mentioned, it is called Father of Mine by Everclear. Here are the lyrics to the first verse:
"Father of Mine
Tell me where have you been
You know I just closed my eyes
My whole world disappeared
Father of Mine
Take me back to the day
When I was still your golden boy
Back before you went away"

Some teens only see failing relationships, therefore they are pessimistic about ever forming a successful relationship for themselves, if they see a happy marriage as being impossible they won't even bother with it and will try to fulfill their need for love and sex elsewhere (outside of marriage).

I think of some of my favorite shows, like Gilmore Girls, it's about a mother who got pregnant at 16. The article states that "for today's generation sex is increasingly separate from marriage and married parenthood. Sex is just sex." This is a sad reality. I've even noticed a theme in several of the classic Disney cartoons and Disney Pixar, there is so much single parenting going on, usually due to death, but still it sends the message to children that single parent homes are normal - The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Cinderella, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Up, to name a few.

These are just a few points that I found interesting, I thought it was a very good article and hope to see relationship education programs become more common.