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Are Sex Bracelets Ending Children's Innocence, and Tainting our Legacy?
April, 2004
Raise your hand if you’re a parent of an adolescent girl, and understand the ramifications of girls wearing jelly bracelets in schools. Raise both hands if your daughter has already come home, suggesting you pitch the hula-hoop, jacks, and Nintendo game… and you notice a handful of colorful jelly bracelets on her arm. It might just be time to start worrying. At least that’s what the buzz going around these days. Our schools are now being infiltrated with…not another learning game, but, playful and serious sex games. The fear that both parents and teachers have is that our children’s innocence and learning curves are at risk by one more distraction – this time, colorful sex bracelets. As if our children can afford one more distraction. Every education poll ever done agrees on just one thing – when it comes to educational progress, our children perform below most other groups… many times, behind the last wave of immigrants to arrive on American soil…whoever they may be. Yes, there are more than one reason for our child’s poor school performances; and, yes, integration didn’t guarantee equal education or opportunity for 100% of our children, after all. But, how long can we repeat that same refrain without realizing that, in the final analysis… the onus is on “us,” and not “them,” to make things better for ourselves and our children? There are a myriad of reasons, and variables that contribute to our children’s failures in schools, their ongoing trailing behind; but one of those reasons has to be that our children’s priorities are sorely out of line with others. Enter… the jelly bracelets. According to some teachers and parents, the colorful jelly bracelets game is a courting ritual of sorts, that can be as innocent as stealing a kiss, or as serious as inviting sex acts that many of us learned much further down the road. For certain, it seems that our children’s innocent boy-girl interactions are being tainted with the allure of “real” sex. The bracelets, in fact, allow children to take their childish flirting a giant step further. For the bold child, there are the multiple jelly bracelets that says the child is adventurous and open to trying new things. The color of each bracelet determines a young girl’s sexual experiences, or interests. The number, demonstrate her commitment to the game. Harriet Tubman must be turning over in her grave. Is this what she sacrificed hers and others’ lives for? What a memorial. Sadly, this game is a signal that our girls are reverting back to square one – lowering their own values, for the attention and elusive love of male partners. After a month of paying tribute to great women and their amazing lives, it behooves me to imagine that any of these women started out this way. Most, I’d venture to guess, began their ascent into greatness at these very girls’ ages; began thinking of the larger community, rather than just their own back yards, early on. Memorials from their teachers, parents, and church elders, bare that out. Outrage is such a stuffy word, but outrage exactly describes what mothers and teachers should be feeling about such a demeaning act for our girls. In fact, two articles received about the new “sex bracelets,” game were outpourings of outrage from a mother, and a concerned teacher, who described the “game,” firsthand. Both women grieved our young girls’ loss of innocence. This is another example of our children’s lost innocence, and their sexual and moral confusion. Not so long ago, certainly during my own childhood, innocence was a right of birth for children brought into this world…giving us something to look forward to, as adults; and, to look back on, in our sunset years. Sadly, this will hardly be the case for many women, in this new Millennium. As adults, we must accept at least partial blame for our children losing their way. We can start by asking ourselves some questions: Are we expecting too much of our young children? Should they be able to sift through all the mixed messages, and judge which is good and which is bad; which is for their immediate use, and which is for safekeeping until adulthood? Should our children be mature enough to catalog the endless influx of information and visuals from television, radio, internet, and books, and make wise adult-like, life choices? Like it or not, the responsibility of judging what is and isn’t an appropriate action still begins with good parenting. No, our children won’t mimic our own good behavior 100% of the time, outside our homes&133;but, nine times out of ten, if we’ve done our jobs right, they will. Parents…good parents, bad parents or in-betweens, all have the same responsibility. We remain, in most cases, the first and most important of our children’s caretakers, and do have some measure of influence on what our children do outside our homes. Let’s not wash our hands of that responsibility, or give up on our future, so fast. Finally, being a parent and caretaker is harder today. Our children are smarter, more worldly, and technically savvy than most of us born during the dark ages. We can only pray that most of our children will use this knowledge to make their futures brighter than ours. Hopefully, we can see the benefit of their “knowing more,” in their college classrooms, their executive offices, and later in the boardrooms. I still believe knowledge is empowerment, and our tomorrows, our legacy is dependent on the wise or unwise choices of our youth. It is this group of young women…and, men, who will lead our country, make a difference in our communities and our world. Now, is the time, before it is too late; to remind them: Great women think larger thoughts, and jelly bracelets were never their tools of empowerment. Janis F. Kearney is a Chicago writer, former journalist and diarist to President Bill Clinton. A Harvard W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow, she is currently completing William Jefferson Clinton from Hope to Harlem; and a personal memoir, Cotton Field of Dreams. Kearney Communications 5138 S. Kenwood Ave.#2 Chicago, IL 60615 (773) 493-2007 --ph (773) 493-5747 --fax janisfk@aol.com |
