Mommy, What Is Bondage?

Your thirteen-year-old has found your copy of "50 Shades Of Grey" and the questions start.

You've got some explainin' to do

You might start with one. For example, you most likely would begin the interrogation by asking where the kid found what you had so carefully hidden and why was he or she in your personal stuff and how would they like it if you rummaged through their private things. By that time you're hoping that the child's question is long forgotten.

If only there was a book that could explain, in scientific and analytic terms. No emotional outburst, no uncomfortable throat-clearing. Just a clear and concise description that any freshly minted teen could understand so you wouldn't have to explain.

Enter YOUR HEALTH TODAY. This is the textbook you've been looking for.

Unless, of course, your child has been kept sheltered or you've done a really fine job of hiding your mommy porn. In which case, would you want a textbook that introduces bondage to your high school freshman?

The people of Fremont, California, where the book was used as a textbook in the health education class, certainly did not. When parents cracked open the text to see what their little darlings would be studying for the semester, many of them went apoplectic.

Books are special because we learn things by reading. Being able to read alters the wiring in the brain and changes the way we think, so books can be very powerful. And no one wants to empower their high school freshman who is already dealing with raging hormones and a changing body.

Do children of this age really need instruction on petting? Some would say the kids already know about "erotic touching" (fancy term, isn't it) but not all do, and their parents would rather that their child not learn until they're maybe fifteen or sixteen or thirty-seven.

How about bondage? The book contains a section that describes bondage as a means of gaining sexual pleasure, but unless you share your collection of novels with your young daughter, you don't much want her to know what bondage is because it doesn't come up much in casual conversation and there is no need to know. Besides, you might think it's not quite a normal practice, along with other sorts of fetishes that are lumped together in the kinky department.

After outrage and a petition to the school board, the book is heading back to McGraw-Hill, to be sold to some other school district that will then face the ire of parents who want to protect their children from the oversexualization of America's youth. The kids have their Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs for that, and the only words in that printed material have to do with fabric content and size. The rest is left to the imagination, and don't we want our kids to be more creative and imaginative?