On Sandin Lee...and Rina Jimenez David

On May 11, 2006, the Inquirer ran a cover story on a woman who did not let her poverty defeat her generosity. Sally Ruiz, a woman living in a 15 sq.m. shanty, adopted a newborn baby boy, Sandin Lee, who had been abandoned by his teenage mother. It was accompanied by a picture of Sally holding Sandin--both their faces glowing with happiness and love.

When Sally declared, "(Sandin's mother) really wanted to have an abortion but I told her it's wrong...babies don’t deserve to die," she moved the nation and made the issue clear as day. This quickly put the so-called "reproductive rights" activists on the defensive. (It is no secret that these activists would dearly love to see abortion legalized in this country.)

One columnist who reacted was the Inquirer's Rina Jimenez-David. In a subsequent column, she focused on the teenage mother and asked:

What kind of counseling did Sandin’s mother receive in school, at home or from other significant adults in her life? Being a teenager, was she able to access full and accurate information on relationships, sexuality and the means to protect herself from the unwanted consequences of unprotected sex, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections?

This prompted my letter to the editor, in which I indicated that I, too, focused on the angle of the teenage mom:

THIS is in reaction to Rina Jimenez-David’s column titled “What about the teenage mom?” (Inquirer, 5/12/06) The way I see it, Sandin Lee’s teenage mother was another sad casualty of our society’s obsession with “sexual and reproductive rights.”

A 14-year-old has no business having sex with men who have no commitment to her. This is playing with fire. We don’t put up with kids playing with fire; we get them to stop the dangerous behavior at once. We don’t tell them, “It’s okay if you play with fire, just wear asbestos gloves.”

David asks what kind of information the mom received. I ask: Did anyone tell her to consider that what she was doing with her life was wrong? If you’re going to advise persons not to engage in unprotected sex, go one better: advise them not to have sex, period.

This simple message may be incompatible with the values of pop culture, but it is a message many need to hear.

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of that. To my surprise, Jimenez-David devoted an entire column to responding to my letter:

Just say no -- to sex?
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer
Last updated 03:41am (Mla time) 06/09/2006

Published on Page A15 of the June 9, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IF CHILDREN only did us parents the favor of following everything we told them to do, we would surely be living in paradise. But as every parent knows, getting children to brush their teeth before leaving the house or to stop bickering among themselves over dinner is a thousand times harder than getting the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiation table.

And it only gets harder the older they get. If we can’t get our kids to eat their veggies, no matter our exhortations about good health and the need for fiber in the diet, what makes us think that by telling our teenage children to “just say no” -- to drinks, drugs, cigarettes, and sex -- we have done our parental duty by them?

I don’t know if Michael Mapa is a parent, much less a parent of a teenager, but clearly he has little experience with this exotic species. Surely, he couldn’t have been serious in his letter to the editor when he insisted that all the significant adults in the life of the teenage mother (whom I wrote about last May 12) needed to tell her was that “what she was doing with her life was wrong.” And, “if you’re going to advise persons not to engage in unprotected sex, go one better: Advise them not to have sex, period.”

What makes Michael think that if only someone bothered to tell this to the teen-age mother, then she would not have engaged in sex and gotten pregnant well before she was ready for the responsibilities of parenthood?

Would teenagers today deny themselves pleasure on the simple say-so of adults, even of parents? Did we -- when we were teenagers ourselves?

Risky, reckless behavior happens to be a hallmark of adolescence. It’s a young person’s way of carving out an identity. That’s why we parents dread its onset -- and the rocky ride we all have to weather before they become adults.

* * *

WHETHER we like it or not, young Filipinos are engaging in sex before marriage. The Young Adult Fertility Survey 3, conducted by the University of the Philippines’ Population Institute in 2002, finds that 4.9 million Filipinos age 15-24 (out of a population of 16.5 million), had engaged in pre-marital sex. Of those who admitted to being sexually active, 1.6 million had “multiple partners,” and 400,000 were having same-sex relations. And of those having sex, only 19 percent admitted to having used some form of protection.

Teen pregnancy is one consequence of such behavior. The 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) found that by age 17, 7 percent of their women respondents had become pregnant; by age 18, the number rose to 11.9 percent; and by age 19, the number of teen-age girls getting pregnant had reached 23.5 percent.

“Sexual risk-taking among Filipino youth is becoming more pervasive,” Ma. Paz Marquez and Normita Galban note in their study of the YAFS2 and YAFS3 findings, titled rather provocatively “Getting Hotter, Going Wilder: Changes in Sexual Risk-taking Behavior among Filipino Youth.”

Dr. Corazon Raymundo, who oversaw both YAFS2 and YAFS3, concedes that the findings are “shocking and revealing,” as it tracks a rising incidence of risky sexual behavior among young Filipinos in the eight years between the two studies.

* * *

CECILE Villa, executive director of the Foundation for Adolescent Development (FAD), which was founded in 1988 and which runs the “Dial-a-Friend” counseling hotline, concedes the link between information, awareness and behavior when it comes to teens and sex. While young people may know about the link between sex and pregnancy, says Villa, “hindi lang nila masyadong alam na” [they are not so aware that] pregnancy is possible each time you engage in sex.” There is a distinct lack of fertility awareness among young women, she adds, including making the link between menstruation and fertility. A lot of misconceptions still abound, especially regarding withdrawal (whether it is a “safe” method of contraception; it is not, it is highly unreliable), and “the number of times you have to have sex before the girl can get pregnant” (a single instance of unprotected sex taking place during a girl’s fertile period will most likely result in pregnancy).

But even if they have their brains crammed with all the sex education information they need, young people are still vulnerable precisely because they are young people. They think themselves invulnerable and immortal, and so they do not make the connection between their personal experiences and feelings, and all the “scary” stories we can throw at them about pregnancy and STI’s, including HIV/AIDS.

* * *

WHAT, then, are we parents to do? Do we just throw packets of condoms and contraceptive pills at them and tell them, as Mapa writes so derisively, to just wear asbestos gloves while playing with fire?

Maybe we should make “fire” unattractive to them, at least in this stage of life. And we can best do that precisely by giving them information -- information without judgment or moralizing or the intent to scare the bejeezus out of them. Knowledge about their bodies, their bodily functions, sexuality and relationships is the basic human right of all people, teens especially. And it is information and knowledge that take all the exoticism out of sex and blunt the curious teen’s fascination about its allure.

Basically, we can “protect” teens from risky sex only if we respect them, respect them enough to answer their questions honestly and factually, and respect their ability to make decisions for themselves based on what they know is best for them. And if we parents cannot or will not take on the responsibility to educate our children about sex, I would hope that we would be humble enough to turn to other adults -- teachers, counselors, midwives, nurses and doctors -- to do the talking for us.

I think I hit a nerve somewhere to have brought on such a massive ("At Large"?) response! My brother put it another way: "She sounded pretty defensive." He probably thought so because her response seemed to be written with the thought that I had criticized her stand.

I don't see why she needs to be, though: at the heart of it, we were focusing on the same thing--the teenage mother. In fact, our positions were probably closer than she thought--with the exception that I advocate a more comprehensive solution. So I wrote a rejoinder. It never got published--rejoinders usually don't. Now, Jimenez-David may own her space in the Inquirer, but I have this. So here's my rejoinder:

I'd like to thank Ms. David for responding to my letter to the editor ("A Message Many Need to Hear").

Our positions are not far apart. We both know that parents have a critical role to play in educating our children about sex. In fact, the burden is ours and we need to face it squarely, not abdicate it to government or the school. You don't leave it to the fireman to teach your kids that playing with fire is dangerous.

But we have to take a stand. From the earliest ages, our kids are bombarded everywhere by sexually-loaded messages in the media. Unless we tell them--clearly, consistently, and earnestly--to take sex seriously and only in its proper context, it is very likely they will form the opinion that sex is a game, a toy, or a sport. It is possible that they will arrive at that conclusion anyway--the media messages are so strong--but that's no reason to stop advising them to do the right thing.

If your kids don't hear it from you, they're not likely to hear it at all.

Oh, and by the way, Rina--my daughter is two years old. You can bet that by the time she's a teenager, she'll know that sex is a beautiful thing created by God, but with its proper place and time and not to be abused.