Religion & Law

.... wonders Jennifer Moses in this rather poignant Wall Street Journal piece subtitled: "Women of a liberated generations wrestle with their eager-to-grow-up daughters -- and their own pasts." 

Her theory: 

It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?"

We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret?I know women of my generation who waited until marriage?but that's certainly the norm among my peers.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don't know one of them who doesn't have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she'd "experimented" more.

My tip for women (and men) who don't know how to teach their kids 'not to give away their bodies so readily' is to take this advice fom the always wise Helen Alvare, and buy them a copy of Kristin Lavransdatter, by Nobel prize winning author Sigrid Undset.  (And if you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a copy, too.)