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**Warning: rant ahead. Proceed at your own risk. 🙂
You tell your kids not to smoke; it’s nasty, it’ll give them lung cancer, it’s expensive and will make their breath and clothes smell like an ashtray. You don’t smoke yourself.
They take up smoking anyway.
You lecture your kids on the dangers of drugs. It’s addictive. It can ruin their lives. It can change their personalities.
They do drugs anyway.
You tell your kids that abstinence is best, to wait until they are married before having sex. You tell them that waiting is the right thing to do and that it’s God’s will for them to wait until marriage before taking the plunge.
And they have sex anyway. And then they either get a girl pregnant or come home pregnant.
As the parent, is that somehow your fault? You’ve educated your children. You’ve made sure they were armed with intelligent information so that when the time came, and it will, don’t fool yourselves, that they have to make a choice, and they make the “wrong” choice, did you fail them as a parent? Should you be the one to accept the responsibility for their actions?
You can only hope and pray that they make the right decision when you’re not around. You can’t watch them 24/7. ESPECIALLY when they become teenagers, or start driving, or dating, or stuck at a party where they are doing illegal things.
How is that the parents’ fault?
I don’t discuss politics on this blog, mainly because I’m simply not articulate enough to discuss them on an intelligent level – there are so many blogs out there that do a much better job than I do. But when I read, on some other blogs today, the judgmental, hypocritical attitudes about Sarah Palin’s daughter, well, it got my blood boiling.
There comes a point in your life, as a parent, when you no longer have the luxury of making your children’s decisions. They reach a point in their lives, where they must make their own decisions and suffer the consequences of those decisions. Our jobs, as parents, is to make sure they are well equipped with information before they reach that step in their lives. And IF they make a bad choice, or they make an unintentional mistake, it’s our jobs as parents to be supportive and walk them through that bad choice. NOT clean it up for them, but be there if they need us.
And teenagers are still kids, albeit big ones, they will need us.
The self-righteous lectures about how Mrs. Palin is being hypocritical by standing up and preaching abstinence when her daughter is pregnant is unrealistic. As parents, we can preach our morals and beliefs until we’re blue in the face – that does not mean our children will heed our lectures.
I just don’t understand the logic behind the controversy – do you WANT Palin to stand up and say, “Oh well, since my daughter is now pregnant it’s rather stupid of me to preach abstinence to every other American teenager so you know, go for it.” That makes no sense whatsoever.
If anything, it shows people that Palin has a life outside of politics. Is it imperfect? Of course. Is she dealing with her daughter’s bad decision with grace? Absolutely. They are going to take care of the baby. Which in my eyes means they are taking responsibility and are putting that innocent baby first.
AND, if anything else, it also proves that if, and or when, Palin gets into the White House, she’ll be even more sympathetic to young girls who find themselves in the same situation and perhaps that will goad her into backing programs that help these young girls.
Sure, we would PREFER if our kids didn’t have kids, but let’s be real folks, stuff happens. They made a bad choice and now what? We stand by and shake our fingers at them? That’s not what they need, they need our support and to help them make the decision that is right for their lives.
And thank God we still have choices in this country.
I don’t know when people are going to start accepting the fact that these politicians? Have lives outside of politics. And they’re human, they have and will continue to lead flawed lives.
Do we expect them to lead a better-than-most-life to set an example? Of course. When you’re in the public eye, you SHOULD lead your life by example. But look at actors – you think THEY’RE perfect? People in the public eye have money and power – life is full of temptations as is, can you imagine how tempting it would be to make a bad decision with money and power to back it up?
We’re human. We make mistakes. When are we going to stop judging other people for those mistakes?
If my son gets into drugs, does that make me a bad mom? No, it makes me the mom of a troubled teen. My son was persuaded to step over that dark line, despite our talks about the evils of drugs, now it’s my job to help him step back into a healthy life. Would I be hurt and disappointed by his decision? Of course. But the situation isn’t about me, it’s about my son. Would I then start preaching to other kids that it’s okay to do drugs because my son made a bad choice and is now doing drugs just so I don’t appear hypocritical?
Do you see how asinine that argument is?
Please stop being so judgmental and let’s look at the bigger picture here. Let’s support our young people and concentrate on making sure they have all of the information they need to begin with so they will HOPEFULLY make the right decision WHEN (and don’t fool yourself, the time will come) that happens.
And by the way, I’d feel this way if it was the Obama family. This issue isn’t about whose side of the political fence you’re on, it’s about taking responsibility, standing up for what you believe is right and it’s about helping a young girl who made a mistake and didn’t heed her parents wishes.
Sidenote: My opinion for Senator Obama just went up about five notches. Here’s what he said about the Palin pregnancy “scandal”:
“Let me be as clear as possible,” Obama said. “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.”
Obama said reporters should “back off these kinds of stories” and noted that he was born to an 18-year-old mother.
“How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off-limits.”
Bravo Senator, bravo.
Okay sorry. Rant is over.