I raised my two grown kids in Southern California and was always hypersensitive, as a single working Mr. Mom, to things that could make me lose custody -- aka the "awesome power of the state."
I consider myself sensitive and deferential to what parents want, to their rights as parents to control the lives and environment of their children while these kids are growing up as minors.
When my kids and I used to discuss it and they were very young, I explained that if they wanted to dump me as a dad that would NOT be hard -- they would just need to speak up and explain some reasonable reason other people would support. I felt it was always my job to convince and reassure them that I was considering their welfare and living-breathing-thinking-feeling lives in a way where we could work as a team and maybe do better than the alternatives. I never thought I'd keep custody the WHOLE time!
But we also discussed whether children really do have any rights of their own or whether for all practical purposes they are just the property of their parents until their majority. Like women used to be the property of their husbands and could not be beaten with a stick thicker than the "Rule of Thumb." Scary stuff, but the point was that if their welfare was being decided by others, other relatives or judges or teachers, then this would ultimately be the same as having their lives controlled by that person's judgements (and/or judgments in actual cases).
Back to the theme. My premise -- and I invite you to disagree with me -- is that children basically have no right to be anything or know anything on their own, for themselves, without the consent of their parents, unless it's something basic like homeschooling minimal requirements. I suppose this is all me leading up to SEX ED.
I was born in 1958. In 4th grade they tried out a sex ed class on my grade. They repeated this in 5th AND 6th, I believe, because they were trying out different textbooks and approaches and NOT educating all the other grades about all this stuff. It was especially funny because I never learned anything in these classes since my mom was a big Freudian who thought accurate knowledge about sex was well-adjusted and empowering, so I got lectures on embryonic development by the time I was 6 with emphasis on what a cool miracle sex and babies are (about which !!!).
In my opinion there is an NRA-like wall of prevention preventing girls from knowing what makes them pregnant or even how to form a self-aware picture of who they are physically. I'm sure we've all seen references to groups where women use mirrors to see their own vaginas and sometimes this has a very strong emotional impact like a revelation. I saw something yesterday that said 97% of women think to themselves that they hate their own bodies at least once a day.
Today I mentioned that 97% statistic to a co-worker. I said, "I would never want my daughter to think like that." She said something along the lines of, "But how do you get out of it?" Meaning how can you avoid being sucked in? So U.S. girls can be told whatever their parents like and kept in hideous ignorance until they are 18 or a little younger in some states. Add in a reasonable estimate of incidents of rape and molestation, just to make the pitiful more real and the real more pitiful.
As for boys, this stuff certainly applies to hard-ons, ejaculation, and anything touching on feeling gay feelings.
So once again oh WONDERFUL community, I'm kinda on the ledge about this premise in my title. AM I WRONG?