That Latourneau lady...

[Gail]

Seems to me that I've heard that the Latourneau lady who had two children by her teenaged student lover, and went to jail for it, finally married him.

Does that change what we think about the situation? What was your reaction when you first heard this story, and now at its conclusion?

[Bravus]

This is a really tough one for me to think about, and I was just thinking about it the other day. Three random data:

1. What made me think about it the other day was hearing Van Halen's song 'Hot For Teacher' from the 80s. Admittedly, more innocent days (!), but the idea that a teenage boy might find a teacher attractive is not so outlandish.

2. People were married at 14 a few generations ago, and are maturing sexually much earlier these days too - a 15 year old is a man in all physical senses, so the relationship is not pedophilic in the classical sense.

3. But a teacher is in a position of power, and that makes such a relationship different from, for example, a relationship between a 15 year old boy and a 23 year old woman he met somewhere else.

On balance I think it's a Bad Thing, but that there are many worse things, and that it's not in the same category as other kinds of child sexual abuse. It's also not the same as a 15 year old girl having a relationship with a male teacher: like it or not, in our society the power relations are completely different, and I *would* call such a relationship abusive. That may be sexist, but I think it's just realist.

(And shame on you Gail, getting me judging other people's sex lives again... Gotta focus on my own...)

[Nicodema]

I think the whole thing is a fabulous argument for returning to the ancient practice of regarding persons of age 14 or thereabouts as adults and marking their passage into adult society with a ritual such as the Jewish folk have with their bar-mitzvah or bat-mitzvah. Nature Herself counts most persons of that age "adult" enough to have functional reproductive organs, and God made Nature to function as she does, so clearly if God had not intended a level of maturity and accountability to exist until age 18 or 21, He would not have set the attainment of secondary sex characteristics so much earlier in life.

That is how I see it anyway.

[Halfstep Denise]

The story makes me feel so fortunate that I don't have any sons or daughters to send into the lion's dens of sick teachers! Even SDA schools are not safe from that perverted behavior by a few teachers.

The fact that they got married last week doesn't make her any less of a convicted rapist! She probably has to register as a sex offender every year. They couldn't even leave the state for their honeymoon. She's still on parole.

Denise Farquhar

[Amelia]

I feel for the children. What a sick family to be born into. Can you imagine what kind of adults they will make?

[Nicodema]

Again, a great deal of this falls on society's shoulders, as to what we train our children (not individually in families but as a whole society) to expect at certain ages. We have trained an expectation of this artificial thing called "adolescence" in which we engage in a six-year or more struggle with our kids from the time nature says they are ADULTS to the time the LAW says they are adults. The teens KNOW intuitively that they are adults yet they are expected to spend years "proving themselves" by only adhering to HALF the equation: that is, taking on adult responsibilities at the behest of parents, teachers, etc. but without having adult privileges. The rationale is that they must take on the one before receiving the other. The teens know intuitively this is unfair and unbalanced so they buck against growing up -- or conversely, try to grow up too fast.

If we restructured our expectations as a society to where we trained children that they would be expected to be considered adult at 13 or 14 and to function accordingly, we would see a vast difference. We could do away with this artificial limbo called "adolescence" and instead confer adult status upon them via rite of passage at the age NATURE confers it (via development of abstract reasoning and secondary sexual characteristics), and then deal with them as junior peers instead of as alien creatures expected to adopt adult responsibilities but still treated like children.

I've always felt adolescence was an unhealthy artificial construct. Nature, made by God to function as she does, is trying to tell us something when she confers adult characteristics upon 13-14 year olds. I think we should be listening and preparing our children accordingly. BUT ... it takes a village, so to speak -- it takes a societal shift to do this. One family doing it alone is not going to see the full efficacy because of the surrounding society, existing laws, etc. going against nature.

[NormF]

Dear Nico,

I think there's a yes-but-no to this. You wrote:

</font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />

We could do away with this artificial limbo called "adolescence" and instead confer adult status upon them via rite of passage at the age NATURE confers it (via development of abstract reasoning and secondary sexual characteristics), and then deal with them as junior peers instead of as alien creatures expected to adopt adult responsibilities but still treated like children.

.

[emphasis supplied - NF]

<hr /></blockquote><font class="post">

There is clear clinical evidence that the frontal cerebral lobes and/or their cortex is the last part of the brain to mature. Generally, it doesn't begin to reach adult "dimensions" until the early 20s, at the earliest. Often, that threshhold isn't reached until mid- to late-20s. In some cases, it never happens at all, in contrast to all the rest of bodily and mental functions having reached adulthood.

This part of the brain is where logic, the ability to see and evaluate consequences, moral judgement, and the cluster of characteristics we call personality and character reside - in essense, adulthood in terms of the mind, not the body. That lack of ability to see and evaluate consequences is why armies are populated with 18-year-old soldiers, not 40-year-olds. The 40-year-olds, who do have far more savvy in how to accomplish tasks, have lost (so to speak) their sense of immortality. 18-year-olds will rush into combat on their CO's orders; 40-year-olds tend to have more of a problem with that.

Like all things human, there is a wide variety in the range and timing of this aspect of development. So that not only can it be very late or not at all in coming, but sometimes very early - there are 13-year-olds as mature as a 30-year-old adult. But in general, this development is far behind puberty and secondary sexual characteristics.

In a large measure, adolescence as we know it is an unhealthy artificial construct; you are right. Unfortunately, society at large has not yet been able to develop a better model to deal with the phenomenon. And in general, people tend to abide by the constructs society gives them. Seeing the problem for what it is is a step in the process of "building a better mousetrap," but so far a superior construct has not really emerged. (Apologies extended to the mice.)

The best that can be hoped for now, in my opinion, is that children as they grow be treated by their parents, and by their peers and the adults around them, as the individuals that they are and not as identical cookies from a cookie cutter. Sadly, the bakery prevails - there is much of pie in the sky even in that.

Regards,

Norm

[Ms. Greenjeans]

Hi!

My thoughts on the Latourneu lady...She needs a swift kick in the pants! There is something going on in her psyche that needs some serious attention! Having a student father your first two children, then getting married to that student?! Sick, gross, nasty, disgusting!! Of course, he'd also need a good looking over. It's natural, at that age, to be attracted to teachers. Somebody just needed to let this guy in on the illogical nature of doing what he did. As has been said before...Teenagers don't always know where the consequences will lead them. Thanks for listening.

Ms. Greenjeans

[Bravus]

Some musings on this topic from a slightly different perspective: http://bravus.port5.com/blog/index.php?p=275

Promise not to tar and feather me?

[K]

Mrs. Greenjeans,

I loved your comments.

Wasn't she married at the time all this happened?

K

[Naomi]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />

Seems to me that I've heard that the Latourneau lady who had two children by her teenaged student lover, and went to jail for it, finally married him.

Does that change what we think about the situation? What was your reaction when you first heard this story, and now at its conclusion?

<hr /></blockquote><font class="post">

My reaction was, right, wrong or somewhere in between, those two do seem to have a "bond" "love" or whatever tag you wish to attach to their emotions.

And, I shall never forget the time when I was closing a loan for a couple whose finances were not the greatest. She was 39 years older than he and had been married for 21 years. They had three children, all well mannered and appearing to be well-adjusted. He was 15 when they went to another country and married. He treated her as though she was a queen. They told me their story. When we were alone this handsome man he told me, seriously, if he had it to do all over again he would do the very same thing.

Do I agree with their choice? How would I feel if it were my child? Don't know. Have had enough problems making good choices for myself ... as an adult with "adults".

[Amelia]

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[cricket]

Ahem...and Adventist "coverage" (i.e. on Club Adventist) as well?