My Parents Hid A Dark Secret While Preaching Purity That Nearly Destroyed Our Family

"My first sexual intercourse, just before I started college, was unplanned. It would have been largely forgettable if we'd used birth control. Looking back, it's hard to admit to my own foolishness. I'd had the same boyfriend for 18 months. While our Catholic upbringings were a factor in this long period of chastity, my unpreparedness was also due to my mother's admonition that a girl using birth control is sinning by anticipating sex."

"Five years before, my parents relentlessly belittled my older sisters after finding out that they were sexually active. Our household exploded in screaming and lectures on the "type of girl no decent man wanted." Drawers were regularly searched. "I'd feel better if you weren't using birth control and got pregnant," our mother yelled. "At least your intentions would be good." My sisters gave our mother's advice all the consideration it deserved, but as a slowly maturing 12 year old, I took it seriously."

"By the time I was 17, my parents' dysfunctional marriage had become a vicious, albeit silent, war. My philandering father often stayed out all night. My mother lost so much weight that her co-workers thought she had cancer. Yet she would stand in the doorway when Mitch dropped me off from dates, making sure I didn't linger in the car parked in the driveway. She had begun emptying my drawers."

The narrator experienced unplanned first intercourse just before starting college and lacked birth control due to parental and religious beliefs framing contraception as sinful. Parents harshly reprimanded older sisters for sexual activity, searched drawers, and equated pregnancy with better intentions. The household atmosphere was controlled and punitive, and the parents' marriage was deeply dysfunctional, with a philandering father and an anxious, controlling mother. The mother's surveillance extended to curbside monitoring of dates. The narrator left home for college, lived temporarily with family friends, and encountered a more permissive peer environment.

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