No, not the film with Hayley Mills, or the remake with Lindsey Lohan.  Were talking about the position parents nowadays find themselves in - between a rock and a hard place.  The government is constantly pushing the view that parents need to be more involved in the upbringing of their children , from the beginning of life until their late teens.   

This call is echoed by teachers who, although provide pastoral care, in the end are not parents to the children . What is clear is that there must be a moral compass provided for children .  Otherwise children run amok.  Look at the case of the teacher who was struck off for secretly filming her pupils bad behaviour:  “I am very disappointed the GTC has chosen to discipline me rather than face up and deal with the serious problems my film uncovered” said teacher Alex Dolan.  The GTC, General Teaching Council, has now struck the teacher off for a year.   

So, parents need to be more involved…and rightly so… 

Yet a recent recommendation is that schoolgirls will be able to request the morning-after pill by text message in a scheme being introduced later this year. Six Oxfordshire schools are to take part in the project after a rise in the number of teenage pregnancies in the county. Any girl at the four schools in Oxford and two in Banbury will be given the opportunity to ask for emergency contraception if they have had unprotected sex, or their contraception has failed”. This report from the Metro, on 25 March 2009 is telling indeed and exposes a contradiction between the role of parents and teachers as guides – and ‘ values -free’ sex education or contraception. 

Also, NHS Sheffield recently published a leaflet, designed to be used by teachers to advise pupils as young as 13.  It carries the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away” encouraging children to have sex or masturbate twice a week.  

So it begs the question: Exactly how are parents supposed to provide this moral compass (and so address some of the problems of today’s youth as the government , education authorities and others demand) when government , education , and health authorities come up with ideas such as this?  

The question being asked today is whether girls should or shouldn’t be able to get contraception more easily. The question of whether girls of 11 to 13 years old should even be having sex seems to be one that government , health and education services have now resigned to accept – which may go headlong in the face of the message many parents wish to send.

The fact that this question is now ignored, it is assumed that it is acceptable and a fact of life and that contraception is now so readily available , removes yet another safeguard to prevent girls being pressured into sex by boys.

Whichever political party has been in charge in government , schools and organisations have failed 15 to 16 year olds.   pregnancy statistics are testament to this; (from the office of National Statistics; there were 41.9 conceptions per 1,000 15- to 17-year-olds in 2007 -- up from 40.9 the year before).  They then thought to catch and educate children at the age of 11 years old.  That’s when many 30 to 40 year olds remember beginning sex education at school, including myself.  Governments and schools have admitted the failure of its schools policy of SRE (Sex and Relationships education ). [1]  If we can’t catch them at 11 years old, lets try and prevent the breakdown at 5 years old. 

Five year old children just want to play, run around, share toys, colour in pictures and do drawings. They are innocent of sex and only know about it when it’s pushed on them by sex/lust/enjoyment crazed adults who think children have the same problems as they do.

Society’s freedom is consuming itself – as the song goes. And adults who insist on more and more liberal societies are effectively making victims of the weakest and most innocent members of it.