Bristol Palin, the daughter of the Governor of Alaska and former VP Candidate, Sarah Palin, is back in the news again. Last summer her out-of-wedlock pregnancy made national news. Since the election she has given birth to a baby boy and broken her engagement to the child's father. Last week the attention was on her public stand promoting abstinence.
I find her honesty and personal stand refreshing. First-off she did not compound the problem by entering into a marriage relationship she was uncomfortable with. Secondly, she has taken responsibility for her actions and seems to have learned from the experience.
There is a lesson to be learned here for all parents. We need to be mindful of the maturity level of our teens and their inability to act rationally on their emotions. The latest research on the adolescent brain indicates that the pre-frontal context, the portion of the brain that connects feeling and emotions with the long-term memory, is underdeveloped. The pre-frontal cortex really functions as the executive portion of the brain, helping individuals make decisions based on past experience and long-term goals. This helps explain a teenager's impulsive nature. God, in his infinite wisdom, has given teens the ability to be sexually active, along with the feelings to go with it but they are not mentally prepared to make good decisions. Bristol Palin is living proof of that.
This raises the stakes for parents of teenagers. It is our responsibility to help them be ready to make wholesome choices and be ready to forgive them when they don't. One way is to educate them. The other is to monitor their behavior and make sure they are surrounded by a support system of both peers and other adults.
Instead of criticism, Bristol Palin needs to be forgiven. I suspect her parents have already don that. She also deserves our praise and respect. She learned the importance of teen abstinence the hard way. Now she is speaking out about it and that is something we should all support.
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