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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <span style="font-style: italic">Michael Moran, Times Online's books editor and the author of Sod Abroad: Why You'd Be Mad to Leave the Comfort of Your Own Home</span>, has written to us about the American practice of purity balls, to encourage young girls to maintain virginity until marriage.
This weekend, I came across a story in the Sunday Times News Review about ‘Virgin Balls', where American girls as young as 6 are dressed in pure white ‘wedding dress’ style outfits and encouraged by their fathers to swear an oath of chastity which is expected to hold until their wedding night. Indeed the entire business has the air of a peculiar marriage of father and daughter. As a father of a 6-year old myself, it gave me and unpleasant chill, and pause for thought. (See the Father-Daughter Purity Ball website here.)
I’m acutely aware how easy it is to brainwash a child of that age. My little girl is at a faith school, not through my choice, and she regularly admonishes me for not believing in God. She assures me that Jesus would be very upset to hear that I didn’t believe in him. She also believes in Batman, and is eager to read my ancient (and I always fancied, valuable) collection of comics.
She’s always pestering me to watch my Batman Begins DVD, but I think it’s too scary for a child of that age. If she watches a movie where the hero kisses the girl at the end though, she always puts her hand over her eyes.
I wouldn’t have to try very hard to talk her into going to one of these balls. I’d just have to show her the dress.
I wouldn’t have to tell her about sex to get her to put on one of those purity rings either. It would be as thrilling for her to get one as it was to get the free plastic necklace from a Disney Princess comic or the Batman wristband I got in a Dark Knight press pack. I wouldn’t need to talk to her about sex, too, because she doesn’t need to know.
All that will come later. As it evidently came to all of us parents sooner or later. I’m not quite sure how old a child has to be before that ‘birds and bees’ conversation happens. I suspect that in many households the information is absorbed gradually over the course of a number of years, with more detail being added as it becomes relevant to the child.
Although I fully expect a certain amount of friction between us regarding her choices of boyfriend somewhere along the line, <span style="font-weight: bold">Honestly I think I'll have failed as a parent</span> <span style="font-style: italic">if my daughter were to remain a virgin until she got married:</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">Men shouldn't be something for teenage girls to fear. </span><span style="font-style: italic">Yes, unwise choices of sexual partners can be harmful, even dangerous for an <span style="font-weight: bold">unlucky few</span></span>. <span style="font-style: italic">Equally, for a vast majority of sane, stable, sensibly brought-up girls they can be educational, and quite a bit of fun. A lot more fun, I would suggest, than a sinister novitiate virgin ritual.</span></div></div>
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