Jezebel
When I was sixteen, my mom confessed to me she'd had PREMARITAL SEX. Why I had not assumed she'd had premarital sex when I knew both that she had dated my dad for seven years before they got married and that they still, judging from the Price Club value pack of Trojans underneath the hairdryer in her bathroom, were having sex, basically just speaks to my total cluelessness, and their success in hiding from me the morally degenerative nature of my genes. I had no idea at that point that I would be a drunk, for instance. But I did, upon hearing my mom tell me how, honey, my roommates and I went and got the Pill together... begin to entertain the notion that I might one day be a slut. Remarkably, the thought had never before crossed my mind. Which is all a long way of expressing my opinion on the central question of yesterday's Washington Post Magazine cover story: "If you cop to something, anything, will this give your children tacit permission to try it all? Remarkably few — if any — researchers have explored this topic."
"What I could find on this specific conversation is basically nothing," reported Jennifer Manlove, a senior research associate at Child Trends, a reliable source of data on children and adolescents.I basically just blockquoted that because her name is "Manlove."
"I was a friggin' dealer in ninth grade!" this woman remembered incredulously. That year, she recalled, she and a friend would buy a nickel bag of marijuana and smuggle it to her friend's bedroom. Under the bed was a shoebox of candy — also forbidden in her friend's household — and beside that was a second shoebox in which they would store the contraband. "We would roll joints and put them in Sucrets boxes and bring them to school and sell them for a dollar," she said. The point wasn't getting high — she doesn't remember doing that much — or even making money, but the crafts project aspect. "What was really fun was that we got really good at rolling them." She also remembered stealing. She and her friends took some costume jewelry from a department store and sorted through it at a table at Friendly's.Exactly. As much as I wish my mom had passed on the skill of perfect joint-rolling, I know (thanks to my mom) that weed has only gotten stronger since she was a kid, and I was glad I never heard about how much any of them got high because I have never needed one more reason to squander my potential or indulge in reckless hedonism, and neither, probably, do your kids, so unless you are so pathetic that your children are determined to reject everything you ever did, lie about what exactly that was. (Also probably lie about ever having read the internet at work.) We've got the future of civilization at stake here. Our kids do not need to fucking know.And she would be horrified — horrified! — if her kids did any of these things. She regrets any high school experimentation and doesn't want her children following in her footsteps. This surprised her sister, who doesn't have kids and so doesn't understand the radical change of perspective that comes with parenthood. "She thought I was going to be, like, this really cool parent: When you're ready to try [marijuana], I'll get it for you." Not hardly. It is your children who fully reform you.
The Secret Lives Of Moms [Washington Post]
Maternal Truths: The Online Transcript [Washington Post]
Comments
Man, this is just one more reason for me to not have kids. I can't imagine explaining everything I've done, or not done, with my life to somebody I'll have to see every day for 18 years.
you lie to your kids about all the stuff you did in highschool, they'll do it anyways (but much worse) and they'll keep it from you.
not good parenting.
I don't know - but I need to get me one of those aprons in the pic. Where do they sell that shit? Williams-Sonoma?
I agree. I went through high school totally hiding my pot (ahem, and occasionally other) use, because I was deathly afraid of my parents finding out. (Of course they knew.) I think I sort of knew, in the back of my mind, that, since they were hippies, they had done some stuff, too...but I thank them to this day for keeping that on the DL. I'm pretty sure my fear of repercussions was what kept me from getting into real trouble when I was a teenager.
Thanks for this, Jezebel. I have decided to never have children or believe a word my mom says.
My life thus far has been fairly square in the drugs, alcohol, sex department so I really don't have to lie. I don't know if that's a good thing or not but I have fun.
I would have used it as an excuse before the age of 21. Frankly, it just dawned on me that my parents had childhoods at all. Weren't they born old and rules-oriented?
I hope she has a doctorate because Dr. Manlove has to be the best title ever.
Once, my mom told me that she did poorly on her SATs because she was hungover from the night before. It didn't make me any more honest in return. I still hope I can be a "cool mom" without being a complete failure if I have kids.
Sigh. My mom is a goody-goody. So am I. I think she's very disappointed in me.
my mom used to steal mangoes from her neighbors' trees in Belize. Sometimes, she'd steal coconuts. And that is all I know her youthful delinquency.
So in other words, Great Parent = Big Hypocrite.
My mom was completely honest with me.
"I tried marijuana once, and I got very sick and threw up. You may try it once as well. Also, I had my first kiss at 21. The boy stuck his tongue down my throat, and I slapped him and ran away crying."
I wish I had the type of mom who I could talk honestly about sex with. Not the "OMG Have you tried THIS position?!?" type of mom. Just the type where I could ask her to come with me to get BC or support me if I needed an abortion or something.
Hrm, my uncle once fessed up to he and a buddy playing around with early homemade pipe bombs as kids. Including one where a said (cardboard tube) pipe bomb found its way into the basement of a nun convent with a lit fuse.
I've never had an urge to recreate this phenomenon. Nor any of the other things my parents and relatives related to me while I was a child. My parents killed the "thrill" of underage drinking. They also managed to raise me in such a manner that I was afraid to try nearly anything "bad". Even with all of their tales of evil doings. Friends shoplifted around me, but I didn't. Friends did drugs around me, but I didn't. Friends drank around me, I played DD.
@scrumtrulescent: Same goes for teachers? Wasn't it so weird to see your teacher at the grocery store or something? Like, oh, they do stuff? That feeling reminded me of how I felt when I thought of my parents as teenagers/young adults.
I know already that I am going to be such a strict mom.
I was too good at hiding things from my trusting mom, and I got myself in some messy situations.
I am so going to be that mom that busts my daughter/son for stuff. Like, don't think you're clever girl/boy, I know THAT trick!
Also Rated-G movies until they're 18. (ok not really, but for a long time!)
I remember reading an interview with Garry Trudeau that particularly struck me. Since he can't hide any of his indiscretions (he wrote about them all) & his kids are with Jane Pauley (thus, the smarty-pants gene)- his position with his kids was that he survived the rampant drug taking and sex merely b/c he was lucky and they might not be.
As a graduate of a "Dazed & Confused" style youth who prefers not to lie about my formerly slutty/drunken ways- Amen.
This is actually kind of bumming me out because I had just about the tamest teenage years ever. I don't have anything worth lying about. Anything irresponsible I did was, sadly, well into adulthood.
If a parent admits to something and basically says, "hey I tried this and I turned out okay," then that's definitely not going to help steer the kids away from trouble, but I've always been annoyed by the argument, "You can't tell me not to do that because you've done it," especially when the parent/aunt/friend had a bad experience with the behavior and stopped. They are qualified to tell you not to do something because they've experienced the drawbacks first hand.
On the other hand, I found it difficult as a teenager to listen to my aunt who never tried anything in her life telling me what not to do because it all just came off as alarmist.
Just my two cents.
I do believe in honesty in most things, and it's pretty clear that "Just say No" does not work. I mean, seeing anti-drug movies in elementary school where some girl goes into a coma because she smokes a joint definitely did not deter me from becoming a pothead. In fact, once I figured out that I wasn't going to go into a coma, I just kept smoking.
BUT. For reals, I do not think I'm better off for knowing that my mother went to jail in Jamaica for marijuana possession. Or wrote a final term paper high on meth.
There's got to be a happy medium.
Does anyone else feel like the tone of Jez has gotten all somber and society-analyzing today in light of the pettiness that the Style section article accused the site of?
No point in lying. I was a friggin' boy scout until college.
I dunno though, my dad's tales of bad trips in the 60s and 70s scared me off hard drugs pretty effectively. I guess if he'd told stories about how awesome it was, it might have been different.
When my mom tried to initiate these conversations with me I would freak out and make her stop talking. Now I'm sorry I didn't hear what she tried to tell me, and it's too awkward to bring it up, and she doesn't share as much. As a result, I have to get most of my hilarious mom stories on the sly from my dad.
@misssgolightly: That really kind of not goes the wrong way. Having dated someone whose talk about the birds and the bees w/ their mother consisted of, "So I know you're already having sex, but have you figured anal out yet?" (I'm being literal here.)
Rather than, you know you're kind of young and might want to consider having higher standards about who you sleep with.
My mom was honest:
"I tried pot a few times, got fucking paranoid, and just drank. Your father was a nerd who didn't start drinking until he was 19, and he definitely didn't smoke pot. Oh, and I was three months pregnant with you when we got married. And I had a lot of boyfriends."
Then you had me, a virgin until she was 21, no boyfriends to date because she hates everyone, a drinker but didn't start until she was in college...telling the truth really didn't have an effect on me.
My mother's drug talks went kind of like this:
"One time, your father and I did acid. We got these blotter tabs and we went on this long walk in the park, and the trees--they were forming caves over our heads, it was like we were excavating through these tunnels until we reached this bridge. I looked at him and said, ' I bet if I jumped I could fly forever' and he said 'You could, but don't! We have to find the cave dwarves and steal thier gold!'
Don't ever do acid. It's a horrible, stupid drug. I'll kill you if you try it and do something dumb like jump off a bridge."
I'm from an afghan household, so telling my parents what I get up to is not even an option unless I want the shit kicked out of me.
I have a friend with teenage children who remembers sneaking out, drinking, and having sex in high school - so she feels even if her kids do those things, they'll turn out alright. My argument is her mother didn't let her do those things, she just managed to get away with them. Permitting them is totally different. If my parents had let me have boys in my room with the door shut, I gurantee I wouldn't have been a virgin the day I graduated high school.
@scrumtrulescent: My HS English teacher used to play The Doors and Rolling Stones in the early morning, just before class. She also had snake-skin belts (from snakes she caught when younger) and would sometimes let her hippy side show.
It was very confusing reconciling the mean harsh English teacher with the pot-smoking hippy free love women I know she was/is.
My mom, who is generally pretty cool but was defintely a "good girl", never smoked pot and always assumed (incorrectly) that I never tried it in college. I was home recently and it came up, and I finally came clean to her. And she was so surprised and disappointed! Anything she did in high school or college I've done tenfold, and I still would generally be considered a "good girl", whatever this really means.
She swears she didn't have sex before marraige. I'm not sure if I believe her, but I'm okay with not knowing.
My parents were totally honest with me from Junior High on, and all it did was reinforce that if I was ever going to rebel, the only way to do so was to be a good kid and stay in school. And while I finally started exerimenting in college, I could never approach the things (drugs) my parents did. The one time I scared them by telling them about the one time I tried E, my dad told me about his "funny PCP story" and that managed to put things in perspective for my mom.
The lesson? Be honest with your kids, and they'll be honest with you. Doesn't mean that they won't make mistakes, but it means they'll come to you and listen to you when they do. Also, and I know this from experience, I will never roll a joint as perfect as my dad.
my mom found my sister's bag of shrooms. and she um...knew the latin name for them.
yeah my parents were totally hippies.
Hmm. I think this falls into the the "find the middle ground" area. But my childhood wasn't exactly Leave-It-To-Beaver. My father was a major dealer in the early 80's (after I was born)- like flying back and forth to Columbia major, not rolling doobies under the bed.
My parents never discussed it, or the jail time he did, but they didn't try to hide it either. I think that would have been worse. He was pretty upfront about how wrong it was. And if we asked questions he would answer them. We all avoided drugs except for the occasional curious foray, and I think it was because they were honest about it, but also honest about what bad problems it caused.
My parents were honest to a point - admitted to making mistakes, but with very few specifics. I drank some, but didn't start drinking heavily or regularly til college. But now that I'm "of age" my mom occasionally tells me some stuff I wish she wouldn't. Over Christmas she told me she made my Dad stop growing pot in the basement when she found out she was pregnant with me. I'm not completely surprised, but I could have lived a looooong time without knowing that.
Ah, reminds me of doing the math when I was 12 to figure out that my parents did have sex before they were married.
42 weeks Mom. Fourty.Two.
@scrumtrulescent: I love seeing teachers outside of school. It's like seeing a dog walk on their hind legs.
I think you just have to wait until the kid is in college. Once I got to college my mom told me about how she once dropped acid and ran through the library of the college I was at (UC Davis) handing out flowers with her friends. Oh, the '60s. It made me no more inclined to do acid, but did make studying there a lot more interesting.
Basically, I thought my parents were your normal everyday parents until I moved out of the house. Only then did I hear stories of all the stupid shit they did when they were young. And it made them more human...and I kind of think that that's what a relationship between adult kids and parents should be like. They spend your formative years being boring and authoritarian, and then once you're old enough that your moral compass has already been formed, they tell you all the fun stuff that makes them just like everyone else you know.
I for one learned not to be a fuck-up in the very few areas of my life in which I'm not a fuck-up by observing my mom be a fuck-up in her adult years.
She never really hid her teenage "escapades," but I think I found them to be so embarassing to hear about--plus watching a lot of sensationalist made-for-tv movies about how being a woman is inherently dangerous--that I never bothered to try for myself. Plus, the 60's and 70's sounded sort of lame to my jaded little ears.
Well, yeah. I think you ask your parents but you don't really want to know, unless these are things you've already done, because then they're just confirming your normalcy. I'd ask my mom about sex questions when I was little, but I didn't need her personal details. I wanted honesty without the anecdotes, which she was good at delivering. I do know that if she were here, that NOW I'd want to hear her personal stories. It's all about age-appropriate story-telling. Knowing your parents rebelled is necessary, but a teenager can't handle knowing the extent/details of that rebellion until later. You want to create your own identity first.
@lkhorgan: Hey fellow UCD alum! Both of my boyfriend's parents went to Davis and I am 90% certain they hung out with your mom.
When I confronted my mother about her experience at Woodstock in 1969, she tried to convince me that she "didn't smoke any marijuana!!!or any other drugs!!" Sure mom.....
I will choose to lie by omission about some things--full disclosure on others. Especially about drugs. My kids are very small but I think about these future conversations quite often. Here's what I plan to tell them. "The worst pot will do is make you waste many many years of your life doing absolutely nothing. You will be broke and have a crap job for far too long. There's a reason mommy didn't graduate from college til her late 20's and she's not proud of it. If you become a major pothead, don't expect to still live at home when you are in your mid-20s and beyond. Alcohol is something I know you will do, but you must be careful. You have bad genes. There is practically an 80% chance you will become alcoholics if you don't watch it. As far as hard drugs, they are completely worthless and you should just stay away." Then I will list the number of friends I have had OD and die on me/contract HIV/go homeless/meth crazy, etc. I will give full gory details. Because the best my mom said to me was "Don't do LSD because Art Linkletter's daughter did it and thought she could fly and she jumped out a window and died." And all I could think was, "Who the fuck is Art Linkletter?" It did nothing to stop my future years of experimentation and barely-escaped trauma. If mom had real live negative experiences to share, it might have made some kind of difference.
There is absolutely no way I'll be telling my kids the stuff we did. I did just enough to make it all sound very enticing.
I don't think I'll tell my children about the times I played Pictionary with my parents while tripping...or the time my mom told me how unlucky I was that she could spot a "doper" from a mile away. She didn't notice my giant pupils in the passenger seat at the time. I think I'll just lock my children in the house.
Well, I prefer my mom who would rather die than admit she did drugs (even though I know she did, from other sources) to the mother of a girl I knew in high school. Her mother used to pick her (and her friends, sometimes me) up from school at lunch time, and she'd drive around all lunch period as they/we got smokey. 4th hour geometry took on a whole new meaning. But, that said, I got an A+, nevertheless.
I never discussed my naughty past with my teenage daughters but when the younger one told me that the older one, then 16, had had sex with this lovely boy her age, I was overjoyed for her and forgot to hide that fact. And even though they know I was a raging hippie back in the day, they never asked me about drugs and stuff.
According to my mom she never smoked weed.
According to my aunt they had a fish bowl filled with different expired drugs from her work (shes a pharmacist). I guess they used to get wasted and grab handfulls and go sell them on the street.
Yeah...I like my mom's side better.
It's interesting to read your stories about your parents. My mother is (and was) an absolute square. No sex before marriage, no drugs, BARELY any drinking.
That woman has caught me doing some pretty naughty shit, and she's MORE understanding than my father, who does have experience with drugs.
@hamburgerhotdog: Heh...
When I turned 18 my devoutly catholic mother pulled me aside and said, "When I was 18 I could drink, so I'm OK if you do. I trust you to be responsible, just don't hide it from us or drink and drive. But if I ever catch you smoking I'm going to kick your fucking ass!"
First time I'd ever heard her swear like that, so I KNEW she was serious.
I'm going to preach moderation here, because Lord knows you do not want to be That Mom who is so eager to be BFF that no secret shall be left unturned. However, most of the kids that went batshit in college with partying and straight-up unwise sexcapades were the ones who had no dialogue with their parents, just Rules.
Sometimes, a little discussion of how mixing alcohol and meds was a very bad idea could be constructive.
My mom was pretty cool in this way, although I NEVER needed to know about my grandfather walking in on my parents having sex. That is three kinds of mentally scarring.
When the local newspaper wanted photos of hippies, they called mom and dad. We don't have drug talks, but stuff slips out now and then.
@TheyCallMeLibrarianHot:
I should note that about a year ago my mom recommended that if I wanted to have fun,I should try doing shrooms, blowing a couple rails and downing some sort of shot called a Hawaiian Shooter. She then said, "I can't believe I just told my daughter to try that. But seriously, its fun."
I said, "I can't believe you told me that either. And no, I'm not gonna do that." I'm never gonna have the guts be as awesome as my mom.