Kids' tendency to want to please adults means that, when confronted by a reporter asking salacious questions, they may feel that they have no choice but to answer. Their desire to appear more sophisticated, worldly and experienced than they actually are may lead them to exaggerate or just plain make stuff up. And their fear of being judged or punished means that they follow every confession with a penitential plea for leniency. But regardless of the answers, no kid should be asked these questions. I'm more shocked by the idea of an adult asking teenagers to reveal the intimate details of their sex lives than I am by the idea that teens have sex lives to be revealed.
Franks is the one who needs remedial education in age-appropriate behavior.
Academic pressure also takes a hit. Oddly enough, in an essay that takes parents to task for undue academic pressure, the solution for Becca is private school. And it goes without saying that this article is not concerned with the kids who don't have the option to leave public schools, nor the kids whose parents aren't around because they are working two jobs to pay the rent. They cheat on their boyfriends and all they want to do is be eaten out. Yet Gore's teenage antics are not portrayed as pathology, but simply the charming exploits of a high-energy schoolgirl.