Parents concerned about the welfare of their children have been forbidding sex, drugs and rock n' roll in one form or another for as long as modern society has existed. For the Puritans, it was bans on touching the opposite sex, all mind-altering substances, dancing and singing. For a lot of my friends back home in Tennessee with religiously conservative parents, it was forbidding premarital sex, alcohol, drugs and vulgar songs (though I'm sure "scream-o" wouldn't have gone over well, either). Parents are attempting to protect their children from the very real dangers that come with such things and the loss of morality that they view as the root of such deviant behavior. However, parents who demonize acts such as drinking, smoking, sex and cursing instill a sense of guilt and a tendency of repression in their children that can be much more detrimental to their mental health than the acts themselves. I've seen many of my former classmates and friends develop depression and other emotional problems due to these values forced upon them by their strict, religious parents.
I'm not denying that these acts have consequences. We all know from "Mean Girls" that if you have sex, "You will get pregnant. And die." All joking aside, unsafe sex can pave the way for sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and even some types of cancer. Especially here at Dartmouth, we can see the unfortunate repercussions of alcohol abuse. On a lesser scale, I have felt the regret of uttering a curse word at an inopportune time. Parents are understandably, and perhaps nobly, endeavoring to shield their children from harm by forbidding such transgressions. It makes sense, to a degree.
Regrettably, though, these restrictions often create an oppressive culture of guilt, denying young people the forgiveness they need. Adding religion into the mix burdens the youth of America's religious population who often make mistakes, as kids do with a profound sense of shame. Now, an errant teen disappoints not only his conscience and sense of reason, but also his god and church community.
Heavy shame perverts what could have been a healthy learning experience into perhaps irreparable psychological trauma. You can see this especially in the "helicopter parenting" (so-called because the parents "hover" over their children) of the current generation of young people. In a USA Today article, Kathleen Elliott Vinson, who teaches at Suffolk University Law School, elucidates this risk, saying, "What happens is that we've got a generation of kids that have a great anxiety of failing."
I do not mean to say that a strong sense of morality, religious or otherwise, itself drives young people to depression or other unhealthy mental states. Morality is a necessary component to every person's life. It's not striving for perfection that hurts it's the incredibly long fall when one fails, and, without the safety net of understanding family and friends, that fall will cause a considerable amount of damage. When parents instill this shame-heavy morality in their children, they are shaking a Coke bottle of questionable ethics and placing it on the table for the next generation to open.
This pressure sometimes leads to an explosion of regret and self-condemnation, leaving depression and emptiness in its wake. For example, a friend of mine was raised in a family of rigid religious conservatives (both her grandfathers were preachers). Some time ago, she "hooked up" with a person whom she was not dating. Coupled with the regret she felt about not knowing him very well was the alienation she felt she caused between herself and God. Wracked with this perception that her very morality was weakened, she grew depressed, even though she had learned from the experience. Her upbringing shrouded the constructive aspects of making mistakes, and she couldn't turn to her family for guidance. Implicit in this line of thinking is the idea that growing is not what's important. Adolescent individuals are told that they are not supposed to make mistakes, but rather that they've failed. But being perfect is impossible, and if my friend is going to try, she requires forgiveness along the way, not harsh judgment, reproach and guilt.
