call me conservative

I currently drive into Chicago three days a week for classes, and I pass the same exits, traffic, and billboards every time--so when a billboard changes I usually notice. Especially if it happens to be a billboard that informs you that should you have questions about your baby daddy, paternity tests are now available over the counter.

Let's pause for a moment. You might wonder why this has upset me...as it seems that I primarily blog about things that upset me.

What this means to me is that we are living in a society in which a woman may sleep with so many different men that she would not know whose child she gave birth to.

Call me conservative. I have a problem with this.

I firmly believe that there are reasons why sex outside the confines of marriage is a bad idea--STDs, unwanted pregnancies/abortions, emotional trauma, etc. Here is yet another factor. Clearly, in today's culture, it is so common for women to have doubts about their child's paternity, that these tests are now available OTC. There goes all of the appeal of Maury Pauvich. Just hop on into your local Walgreens and pick up a test--no need for national televisation any more!

And yet--and yet--this is a trend that is only perpetuating itself. I subbed for a middle school teacher on Monday, and the cheerleaders were all in uniform, begging the question: Why are mini-skirt against the dress code and not cheerleading uniforms? The obvious answer may be that the girls wear something under their cheerleading skirts. Well, good grief, I hope that the girls wear something under their mini-skirts too. The issue is that although it's not quite such a big deal in middle school, by the time these girls are in high school, it's a perfect opportunity to flaunt their youthful legs, and I do not doubt for one second that horny teenage boys are taking every opportunity to try to see what really is under that cheerleading skirt.

And if the girls let them, well, that is how we come full circle to the paternity test dilemma.

This is what terrifies me about being a parent--not how to keep my child from making bad decisions, but how to instill them with a value system that will not allow bad decisions to even enter their minds.

And then I pray to God that no child of mine will ever need to buy an OTC paternity test.