How was your love life when you were 11 years old? My childhood friends and I played our fair share of Truth or Dare during sixth-grade recess. We even snuck into a corner of the room and played Spin the Bottle, tucking our lips in as far as they would go in order to avoid the cooties the boys could give us from those quick pecks; most of the time, everyone wussed out and did cheek kisses anyway. I did pluck up the courage to ask my only real guy friend to "go out with me," but he told me he wasn't ready for a girlfriend. "Maybe next year," he said.
Yes, I had my fair share of crushes, even a few online boyfriends (you know, the ones you just smiled sweetly at in person, but poured your heart out to through the mask of your first AIM screen name), but there's one thing I know for sure about my 11-year-old love life: I certainly wasn't having sex under the jungle gym.
The school board in Portland, Maine, voted on Oct. 17 to make birth control pills available through the middle school clinic to girls as young as 11. A scandalous decision, but were they wrong in making it? I certainly wasn't having sex when I was that age. I hope most of us weren't, but that doesn't mean no one was. One of my closest friends had sex for the first time when she was 13, and if no one was going to stop her from doing it, then I sure wish someone had passed her that handy circular pill case.
Portland parents say making birth control available is encouraging their kids to have sex. These parents are underestimating the power they have in molding their children. It's up to parents to dissuade their kids from having sex too young, to talk to them about the dangers of STDs and the risk of pregnancy and to be open about sex so that their kids don't hop on the sexual bandwagon too early. But so many families, especially devoutly religious ones, hear the word "sex" and swab their ears out and then wash their kids' mouths out, as if some deadly virus has entered the room, and they have to stop it from infecting their family with sexual fever.
What are they thinking? That if they don't talk about sex, it won't happen? Maybe they never thought that when a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it still makes a noise. Kids are having sex younger and younger these days. Forget about waiting until marriage; let's hope they wait until they get to high school. Denying this new trend isn't going to make it go away. I certainly don't think that sex at 11 is a good idea, but if no one is telling these kids not to do it, or if they happen to be of the really stubborn breed, why not make sure they are safe? Why not prevent those 11-year-old girls from becoming 12-year-old mothers, or worse, 12-year-olds dead from the exertion of childbirth?
My parents were always open to discussing sex, drugs and everything else that comes with that package. They by no means encouraged me to have sex at a young age, but by my first year of high school, we had had "the talk" at least once. One day, before I left home last year, my mom asked me if I wanted her to pick me up some condoms. I don't know what kinds of decisions I might have made if my parents hadn't been open with me, but if at 12 I had wanted to have sex and felt that I couldn't go to them, I would have liked to have somewhere to go for protection.
This is why Portland is supplying birth control to sexually active children. This rule needs to be upheld for the kids whose parents can't deal with reality and aren't as open about sex as their kids need them to be. I can't picture my middle school nurse handing out LifeStyle condoms in University Health Center style, but I can't fathom my 11-year-old self contemplating having sex either. We might have been squirming at the idea of our first kisses at 11, but if times have changed and parents can't deal with it, at least someone is willing to.
Alexandra Adler is a freshman journalism major. She can be reached at aliadler@umd.edu.
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