Wooing alive and well, "I do"-ing obsolete Pregnant pausing (please!) It's been a while since I've been in practice, and even longer since I was a teenager, but as I recall, there used to be no small amount of shame and humiliation that accompanied becoming pregnant before marriage - or before your high school graduation. This used to act as a powerful incentive to remain chaste. In fact, I don't recall ANY young women at my high school becoming pregnant out of wedlock (although a few were married and in a motherly way not long after getting their diplomas). But apparently, that's not the case nowadays, if one mid-western high school is any indication. According to a recent Associated Press article, a full 13% of the female student body of Timken Senior High in Canton, Ohio is pregnant! That's 64 of 490 girls in attendance, some presumably as young as 14. What's really shocking about this is that Timken High may not be just an isolated pocket of promiscuity. According to one Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study cited in the AP piece, as much as 14% of the suburban teenage female population and 20% of the city girls have been pregnant at one time or another. Experts cited in the article wonder whether the stigma of being an unwed mother has lost its sting. Gee, you think? One young parent quoted in the piece said the practice of giving birth while still a child is not looked down upon because so many of their parents did the same thing years ago. Of course, the pundits in charge wonder whether Canton's kids are getting "adequate sex education" and access to enough free birth control. Predictably, in this blameless society, no one's asking about why none of these kids seem ashamed to be in their predicament? I've been saying for forty years how sex education in schools IS NOT a public service or aid to parents, but a scheme to create dependency in the form of ever-more illegitimate babies that need taking care of with ever more of YOUR tax dollars. The fact that our elected officials' chosen mechanism to achieve this end (sex ed) also destroys the moral fiber of the nation is simply an acceptable casualty to them. But some things just need to be put under the magnifying glass - like unwed teenage pregnancy. Am I the only person in America who has noticed that the more kids are exposed to sexual influences in school and in the media, the more they have sex, contract STDs, undergo abortions, and bear children? I hope not, but it sure seems so. **************************************************** From the "needless research" file: Timeless rituals of "corkship" Eureka! Finally, empirical science has pinpointed the best technique for wooing women… I wish I were making this up, folks, but I'm not. According to a recent Reuters article, someone - no doubt some bureau in the bloated UK government - actually ponied up good money to fund an Imperial College London study which concluded that a man's best chance with a woman is to "wine and dine" her, as truly savvy men have been doing for millennia. That's right - forget the flowers and chocolates, the jewelry and the gifts. Based on a rigorous mathematical formula, the British researchers concluded that although these other offerings may also be effective, the simple invitation to dinner trumps them all. Whether this is because a woman's more likely to get drunk and let her inhibitions slip or because a fine meal really is the most appealing thing to the fairer sex the study did not isolate, apparently. What the research DID pinpoint is this: Not only is the old wine-and-dine trick the most effective of the courtship rituals, it's also potentially the most "bang for your buck," since the man spends money only if the woman accepts the invitation - which, in turn, is an unmistakable sign of interest… But what's really funny is that this whole study is an unmistakable sign of too much time and grant money in the hands of sexually frustrated Briton professor-geeks. Opining, but not whining, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
