Lost Children
January 15, 2023 | Julie Hershey, SRAS, President
When I first became a regional director for a state abstinence education program many years ago, I was introduced to a PBS Frontline documentary film entitled “The Lost Children of Rockdale County.”1 The story was filmed in 1999. However, stories of unsupervised teens without boundaries are the same today and occur everywhere throughout the United States. Rules and boundaries for children from caring parents actually provide freedom for children to live healthy and secure lives.
The featured adolescents in Rockdale County (some as young as 12 and 13 years of age) came from upper middle class neighborhoods where parents were busy with their careers and appeared to be unaware of their children’s activities. The children had freedom without boundaries and had set their own rules for dating and sex, which included group sex, binge drinking, acting out pornographic films, drug use, and violence. The syphilis outbreak discovered by the county health department finally put an end to the dark world of unrestrained teen sex. The health department revealed a chart connecting over 200 infected teens with syphilis along with other sexually transmitted diseases such as genital herpes and gonorrhea.
Health department officials reported most sexual activity took place in empty homes between 3:00PM and 7:00PM while parents were working. Some activities occurred after midnight when parents had gone to sleep for the night. Health care workers described adolescents as lonely children who desperately wanted to belong. One public health official described the community as being in “total denial” while parents admitted being too busy and too tired to discipline, monitor, or talk to their children. The teens were truly ‘lost children,’ and when left to themselves, they suffered dangerous consequences following their own rules for sexual behavior.
Parents and community leaders cannot afford to be in denial and allow children freedom without boundaries because they may very well become “lost children.” Rules and boundaries for children from caring parents provide real freedom for children to live healthy and secure.
We at Live Free encourage active parenting and realize that parents are the single most influential factor affecting a teen’s sexual decisions. We support parents who make the most of every opportunity to positively impact their child’s life. Live Free’s Choosing the Best Parent Education Program empowers parents to be involved in their child’s sexual risk avoidance education. The Choosing the Best Parent Education Program is available upon request at participating schools.
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