Giving condoms to kids is taking the easy, irresponsible way out

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

There were two of them, one about 9, the other 11 or 12. Brothers seeing a baseball game. They sat in front of us, beside their parents in a front row. They were nasty kids, poking at each other, spilling their drinks, yelling insults at the players, throwing their candy, getting ice cream all over the place.

When they got their Cokes, they put them on the wall in front of them. An usher came along and told them food wasn't allowed there. The 9-year-old put his Coke right back where he had it seconds after the usher walked away. His parents looked and said nothing. When the usher returned and told the kid once again to move his Coke, his mother just rolled her eyes.

This happened four more times. Finally, when the kid did it again, the mother reached over and took the offensive container off the wall. And that was it. The solution to the problem.

She didn't confront the child. She didn't say, "Why are you doing this?" She didn't threaten to cut off his supply of junk or his supply of air. She just sighed, shook her head and put up with it. Her husband did the same.

I sat watching this, thinking how often lately I have seen mothers and fathers throw up their hands and sigh and let their kids do exactly what they want to do. In an ice cream store a few weeks ago, a little girl was screaming her head off because she wanted mint chocolate chip and there was none.

"Why don't you try something else?" the mother suggested. But the child just wailed. So the mother said, "OK, honey. We'll go to a different store if that's what you want."

And apparently that's what she did.

I saw a father buy his little boy a T-shirt only because the boy insisted he buy it.

"I want that T-shirt, Daddy. Buy me that T-shirt now!"

"No," the father said. "You have plenty of shirts at home."

"But I want it," the kid screamed. And continued to scream.

So the father bought him the shirt. "It's easier than listening to him," he said to the clerk.

It's this pattern of indulging a child, of always giving in instead of saying, "No, you can't have it," and "No, you can't do it," that has got us in the mess we're in today.

Little kids want T-shirts and ice cream. Big kids want other things. They want to have sex. So the modern parent tells them, "Fine, OK, as long as you're careful. As long as you use a condom. As long as you act responsibly."

Previously intelligent adults, who were obsessed over seat belts, day care, smoke detectors and secondhand smoke, are nonchalant about AIDS. They give permission for potentially deadly behavior, in the same cavalier way they've handed over cash for a T-shirt, simply to shut the kid up. They continue to choose the easy way out, the quick-fix, over the right thing, the difficult thing.

The old saw that kids are going to have sex anyway, therefore, adults need to teach them to use condoms as well as supply them with condoms, is utterly ridiculous. What about teaching kids not to have sex? What about teaching them the facts: AIDS is a killer disease, and condoms have a failure rate of 14 percent, a number that invalidates the notion of "safe sex."

Steven J. Sainsbury is a doctor. He's horrified that condoms are being touted as a safeguard against AIDS. This is what he wrote about condoms and safe sex for the Los Angeles Times: "Suppose that, for unknown reasons, automobiles suddenly began to explode every time someone turned the ignition. Motorists were getting blown up all over the country. Finally, the government comes out with a solution. Just put this additive in the fuel, they say, and the risk of explosion will go down 90 percent. Would you consider the problem solved? Would you still keep driving your car? I doubt it. Then why do we accept condoms as the solution for AIDS?"

Why? Because not to believe in condoms would mean confrontation. Adults would have to start saying no to kids. And no is an unpopular word. How much easier it is to appease, to buy the ice cream, the shirt, to hand kids condoms and say, "Be careful."

Easier, but irresponsible - and in the case of AIDS, deadly.