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Extra! Extra! Study Proves Musical Leads to Premarital Sex

© Dawn Friedman

You know what my neighbor told me? Kids who are exposed to musical theater are more likely to have sex before the age of nineteen. She is a sociologist-in-training and she has the statistics to back-up this unlikely statement. She was telling me this over the phone and I had to ask her to hold on while I quieted my three-year old and turned down my Rent CD so you can imagine how concerned I was.

"You're kidding," I said when I got back to our call. "That's insane!"

"That's statistics for you," she sighed. "At least you're not the one who has to find a causal link."

OK, so maybe it's easy to laugh off the study that "proves" show tunes can lead to adolescent sex but it got me to thinking about all the things we do to help our kids grow up to be wonderful people; it's a shot in the dark, isn't it? I mean, we all have theories about spanking or daycare or effective communication but parenting is really just a grand experiment that we're perpetuating on our kids.

I have arguments with friends of mine over our parenting choices like whether or not we allow sugar and how much; the suitability of violent toys and Barbie dolls; and what television shows (if any) we let our kids watch. We debate over and over backing ourselves up with anecdotal evidence and articles from parenting magazines. The desperate hold we have on our convictions indicates how much we crave a promise that our kids will be all right, that we can ensure their safety and happiness by keeping our homes television, Barbie and sugar-free.

So I figured out how I wanted to handle sugar (he eats it), guns (we didn't allow them until Grandpa showed up with a much coveted cowboy capgun) and television (one hour a day, PBS only) but now I have to wrestle with this crazy musical theater study. Here I am blasting show tunes in the hopes that it will help my son become more musical and it looks like I'm also making my son more at-risk to be a teenage Casanova. What's a loving parent to do?

Ultimately I think I have to accept that growing up is a risky proposition no matter how perfectly I parent. I can read a million parenting books (and I think that I have) and do all the right things but my son is still going to have to grow up on his own. Sure I have a great deal of influence but my carefully thought out choices have ramifications that I can neither predict nor control. I have to learn to live with that. By the way, we're keeping Rent, Gypsy and West Side Story in our musical collection and just hoping for the best.

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