14 yo son has had sex for the first time...now what?

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by MzSJP

Also, I found a very positive/inspirational book about 3 young men who fulfilled their childhood dream of becoming doctors. I told him that he can get his phone back after he reads it (he's been reading it, and likes it!). We've been going to church and the messages have seemed to be speaking on our situation every time.

I'm very glad to hear that things are getting better. Since you go to church and your son is an athlete...

There are a lot of Christian athletes who talk about abstinence and, generally, living a value-filled life. Off the top of my head, A.C. Greene who played with the Lakers, Troy Polamalu who is going to the Super Bowl with the Steelers (again), and Kurt Warner (of Dancing With the Stars and Rams/Cardinals fame) and Tim Hightower of the Cardinals.

I'd give him the book "All Things Possible" by Kurt Warner to start with, It's about his journey as an athlete, a Christian and a man. You yourself might want to read "First Things First" by Kurt and his wife Brenda. It's about how they met, Kurt as an athlete, and how they are raising their children. (They've got seven!)

[purehuman]

I think having your friends brother (father at 15)talk to your son is a really good idea..Also, if you can, I'd try and get one of those realistic baby dolls that cry when they're hungry etc, and also record how they are handled.Let your son take fulltime care of that for a while, almost a guarantee that he'll "suit-up" for his next encounters.

[MzSJP]

Thank you everyone for your kind words and encouragement...that goes for the reputation comments as well. They are all very reassuring and appreciated!!

@ DewDrop, I will look up those readings, thanks. I've also found a Rites of Passage mentoring program for teen males at our church. He will be starting that this Sat., and he's all for it, so I'm excited about that.

P.S. Anyone who may come across this and are having problems with their teen(s)...I know it's hard, but I encourage you to hang in there and hang on to your teen by any means necessary!! Don't give up, because there is light at the end of the tunnel. <3

[Agnapostate]

Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment

In this paper, we exploit a 'natural experiment' associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women, who had a miscarriage as a teen, would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short- lived. By the time a teen mother reachers her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience and labor market earnings and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for pre- existing socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.