[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 15, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2150-H2151]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PARENTS' ROLE IN TEEN PREGNANCY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joined 
on the floor of the House today by the gentlewoman from North Carolina 
(Mrs. Clayton), who is my very dear friend and colleague. The 
gentlewoman and myself and the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and 
the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) have been very active on the 
issue of teen pregnancy, and work closely with the campaign to end teen 
pregnancy to bring attention to the issue throughout the Nation.
  The newest data shows a very interesting fact: Teens listen to their 
parents. Often parents think their teenagers only listen to their 
teenage friends, and sometimes parents give up talking to their 
teenagers about difficult subjects like sex and sexuality and sexual 
activity amongst teens.
  But when your child is in their teen years, that is a time when you 
need to talk with your child. You need to listen to your son or your 
daughter. You need to hear what pressures they feel and face, because 
it is only through that conversation that you can help your teenager 
understand their own growth.
  Of course, they are growing in sexual awareness, but they are also 
growing emotionally towards independence and intellectually towards a 
level of personal power necessary for them to fulfill their dreams.
  When we talk to our kids about sexuality, we rarely talk to them 
about the terrible danger teen pregnancy poses to their growth and 
development, their ability to parent, their ability to provide for 
their child in the way they would want to. We rarely talk to them about 
the sheer lunacy of teen sex because of the devastating impact it can 
have on their lives. For young girls,

[[Page H2151]]

particularly, inappropriate intimacy stunts their growth.
  Teenagers, by their nature, spend their teen years weaning themselves 
from their parents. That is what growing up is all about. It is about 
gaining your independence, gaining a sense of yourself, developing your 
own skills so that you can be your own person in the decades ahead.

                              {time}  1245

  As one weans oneself from the control of one's parents, one also must 
gain that control oneself. For young women particularly, premature 
sexuality has the effect of transferring control to the young man. It 
is simply more true for young girls than it is for a young man. Yet, we 
do not talk with our girls about this at all.
  We do not help them to see that, if they want to succeed in the 
project of growing up, if they want to be their own person, if they 
want to be intellectually strong, they want to be morally strong, they 
want to have a sound body, a sound mind, a sound heart, they have to 
take responsibility for themselves.
  In seeking to leave their parents, it is particularly dangerous for 
young girls to shift that power of control through sexual intimacy to a 
young man. That is unfortunately exactly what happens, and we do not 
even talk about it.
  So it is important to talk to one's teens. It is important to listen 
to the pressures they face. It is important not to be afraid of those 
pressures because, through discussion, one will arm one's child with an 
understanding of the power that abstinence provides them over 
themselves and gives them in shaping their future.
  Now, growing up has always been tough. It is tough all through one's 
life to really grow up well. But it is particularly tough in teen years 
and during that process of adolescence. If we, as parents, cannot talk 
straighter with our children and cannot listen at a level that allows 
us to listen to things we never thought we would hear our kids say, 
then we cannot, with them, help them guide themselves through the 
difficult waters of adolescence in today's world and the many pressures 
that growing up imposes on teenagers.
  So kids need to talk to their folks and folks need to listen to their 
children. We hope that, by investing money in the research necessary to 
better understand teen sexuality and teen growth, we will be better 
able to help kids understand how it is that one becomes empowered to be 
oneself and to determine one's own course and how it is we establish 
healthy, strong, loving relationships throughout one's lifetime. By 
investing money in this very important research project, we will be 
able to talk from an increasingly sound and strong basis of knowledge 
ourselves.
  But we also hope that, through sheer publicity, we will be able to 
help teens understand that premature sexual intimacy is destructive of 
their future.
  I am delighted to be here with the gentlewoman from North Carolina 
(Mrs. Clayton) today.

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