Initial Post

The article "Children Having Children" is Jessica Fields' ethnographic research on a North Carolina school district and their sex education program that they offer. The area in question, Southern County, is an area that demographically consists of 40% African Americans, 57% of which live in poverty, and is considered to be the least desirable of the surrounding areas to live. Fields attends school board meetings and takes careful notes, as well as conducts interviews with several members involved in the debate on whether or not their sex education programs should consist of abstinence-only or abstinence-plus teachings. She informs the reader with both sides of the argument, and discusses the inequalities that exist within the community, specifically racial inequality. She asserts that African American girls were the most targeted as "the problem" and further limits their ability socially and economically to experience sex in a positive way. "The Southern County sexuality education debate did little to address the sexual and social inequalities with which African American young people contend. Concern for boys and young men of any race dropped from the public debate almost entirely. The consistent use of "children having children" to describe Southern County students, many of whom were on the verge of adulthood, suggests that: (1) girls and women--and African American girls and women in particular--were the constituents of Southern County sexuality education; and (2) being a child was the only redeemable position from which the students--who were predom- inantly African American in Southern County schools--could invoke compassion. "Children having children" did not allow for the possibility of having full, complicated, active sexual lives that might include desires, pleasure, violence, agency, missteps, and respect and care from adults in their communities." (Fields, p.567)