This and That
Asguard
Statistically, at least among American women, females who become sexually active at fourteen or younger see, according to various studies,
up to triple the risk for cervical cancer. This could be for any number of reasons, including increased HPV risk from diversity of partners.
A fourteen year-old girl might have a decent rack, shapely buttocks, and pubic hair, but her body is still not fully mature. Nor is her
brain—not just her mind, but her
brain—fully mature.
In the States, at least, socialization among teenagers is out of sync with physiological development. The psychosocial challenges facing our youth often demand more than their brains and bodies are prepared to cope with. Parents have long worried that "kids are growing up too fast", and one can reasonably wonder if the gap between psychosocial and physiological is widening, and if that asynchronicity is accelerating.
Perhaps it is different Down Under, but our neighbor's daughter is American, so I would sooner apply paradigms from our side of the Pacific than yours.
Some have chosen to criticize Bowser's snooping, but whatever one thinks, he is already in the situation, and cannot take it back or conceal the potential error. The point now ought, in my opinion, to be the construction of trust between adolescent and parent.
And, yes, I'm one who thinks it was probably a mistake to snoop. Specifically, I agree that a parent has the right to certain information about a child's behavior, but I also think that after the fact is a problematic time to introduce the assertion of that right. A friend lets her twelve year-old have a Facebook page, but I can guarantee you that the daughter knows in advance that her mother is watching closely. There is no point in me criticizing how Bowser came by the information. As I said, he's already in it, and the updates suggest that the situation is progressing out of his immediate ability to control. My advice, that he should plot a course that will get you to a place where you can be useful within the scope of her trust, stands; indeed, it might be the only realistic option he has left. Many criticize parents who try to be a "friend" to kids instead of the authority figure, but that
cannot be a static standard. In my view, he must adapt to changing circumstances in order to be able to exert
constructive influence in her psychosocial development.
Ultimately, parental duty to a child's physical and mental wellbeing trumps privacy in socialization. There are, of course, boundaries to that, but a Facebook page, at fourteen, does not exceed those limits.
I noticed you leapt to prostitution. The point stands out like a naked drunk crashing a Presbyterian Sunday morning. In the States, the more common nightmare projection is that a disgruntled daughter will marry young in order to get away from her parents, and wind up pumping out babies in a derelict marriage that spectrally dooms her future. I've had some moral disagreements with Bowser in the past, but I don't think those parts of his outlook that I have considered erroneous are so severe as to transform the story into a runaway turning tricks to survive. It's a bit melodramatic, to say the least.
I wouldn't disagree that abstinence pledges are, at the very least, unsettling. But a parent has every reason to
advise abstinence. It will be part of what I tell my daughter when the time comes, just like I'll tell her to avoid cigarettes and booze. Of
course one should not be absolute about these things. But growing up is not the only learning process taking place here. Parenting is a blind voyage into wild and even hostile territory. Each parent-child relationship is undiscovered country, no matter how much the psychologists, anthropologists, and medical doctors can tell us about the general terrain. To wit, I recently learned a new set of assertions about pubescent development in relation to mind and brain. The illustration was useful; the introduction of myelination into my outlook was exceptionally enlightening. But, still, that's only a general topography; the particulars of the road ahead will only be known when illuminated by the headlights—that is, it's a very immediate, short-term demand. It does not do well for anyone, of any given theory on parenting, to blaze screaming along the unlit highway in the foggy midnight of human understanding. Each road is different, even if the signs all read the same. But like the rabbit I killed with my dad's truck when I was seventeen, it's generally too late if your caution depends entirely on what you can see in the headlights. (I hit that thing at eighty miles an hour; the best I can say is that it was a mercifully quick death for the rabbit.)
It is not that I am without sympathy to your principles, but I think you're letting your emotions get ahead of you.
What is one's purpose in taking part in this discussion? To judge and feel superior? Or to offer our honest advice? Bowser and I have had many disagreements before, but this is his kid we're talking about. It takes a village, and all that. If anything we can tell him helps strengthen his relationship with his daughter, and thus help
her find a progressive path through life, well, at least we have done that.
• • •
The Esotericist
The Esotericist said:
WHY does she deserve freedom? What has she done to deserve freedom? Has she gotten a drivers license? How about a job?
Increasing degrees of freedom are part of a functional growth pattern. The question of whether or not a fourteen year old
deserves freedom is not necessarily appropriate. There are plenty of parents who view their children in such a judgmental light; they are making the parenting experience about the parents, when it is supposed to be about the child.
What freedom is appropriate according to her psychological and physiological development in relation to the demands of socialization? That is a question that is about the child. And it is also one without a consistent answer.
Control, or guidance? They are not always the same thing.
Yes yes, we know Tiassa. He is an affront to the collective, how dare he. He and his kind should be quickly be put on some "soma" shouldn't he?
I'm not certain that would do any good.
"We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 10
You know, most of us found that novel to be a warning for the up and coming times of tyranny, not a plan for State ushered Utopia. You weren't meant to take it so literally.
The irony of you quoting Huxley at me is nearly laughable as a general proposition. When one considers that you're doing so in defense of a man who quite apparently considers conformity and obedience to authority the utmost—that video is entirely about
him, and what
he demands, and what
he thinks
he deserves—the irony verges on toxicity.
