Update Sharing for some reason on the video has been disabled but you can still see it here.
Jackie Brewton is a sex educator for High School students. She recently shared a powerful experience she had of girls talking about their fathers:
http://youtu.be/NFIDSO9fxOU
We would say this story is both tragic and unsurprising to us. We would also add this for Jackie, her students, others in her profession, and all adults listening to this tale:
One of the necessary components talking about, and changing, this sort of thing going to be to start openly talking about women who drive the fathers out of their children’s lives–and there’s a very good chance that this why a lot of these girls don’t feel they can talk to mothers about it. We’re going to have to talk about Parental Alienation, which is another thing children of single parents are going to have to hear more about, as are more single parents, or parents-to-be. Yes, there are men who do it, but we all know the reality: since it’s mostly women who get custody, it’s mostly done by women.
Indeed, one of the better choices is that if you’re going to make children and you can’t (for whatever reason) stay together, if you DO break up, you need to talk about how you keep father and child involved through that–and reality is, that usually requires the mother to do things to make sure he stays involved, and not just put it all on the father. Including, by the way, not trying to put his ass in jail if he hits hard times financially.
Still, we sense a cultural awakening is happening when we see videos like this one. But as we recognize the problem, are we going to start holding mothers as accountable as we hold fathers?
We think Jackie will be surprised just how many women in particular won’t want her to talk about any of this. But if so, we hope she stands up to that and talks about it anyway. You can find Jackie Brewton at her web site, and her Facebook as well as her YouTube channel and Twitter.
