This Is Why My Daughters Will Not Be Allowed To Date Until They're Twenty-Five

Infant bikini and other fashinable ho-wear for your one-year-old

Sorry about the link, I tried to find the bikini on Gap.com but could not. If anyone can find it, please post in comments.

I remember the South Park episode a few years ago where a new children's clothing store opens in South Park, and all of the little fourth-grade girls shop there, and begin dressing like sluts. That episode resonated with me, because I have found myself in discussions about children's fashions of late, and I am starting to sound like my grandmother.

Invariably, I or someone with whom I am speaking will at one point utter the phrase "they didn't dress like that when I was their age." The problem with that statement is that we were their age ten years ago!

When I was thirteen, about three girls (in a collective grade of 120) had breasts that peeked through their t-shirts. I remember because the guys in my grade made a huge deal about it; we had only seen breasts, which at that time we called "boobies", when our parents were asleep and we were watching Cinemax after dark (ah, the days before the V-Chip). But it wasn't until junior prom where we saw any clothing that could be described as "sexy", and even then that was maybe more leg showing than normal, a deeper-plunging neckline, a backless dress. I hate sounding like my parents, but by the time kids hit the sixteen year old mark nowadays, those darned kids are prob'ly gettin' on the sex. (Okay, maybe that sounded more like grandparents, apparently from the Deep South, but you get my point)

Add this to the fact that eleven-year-olds are gettin blowjobs at the back of the schoolbus, fourteen-year-olds are playing snap-bracelet and rainbow (colored wristbands that indicate a sexual act and a competition to see who can get the most colors of lipstick on their wee-wees, respectively), and you will see where I'm going with this:

We all should have been born ten years later.

No, seriously, I really think that our society, both American and globally, are not doing a good enough job of impressing upon kids the sacredness of love and marriage. I'm not saying you should wait till you get married until you have sex, but there needs to be some kind of semblance of intimacy within a working relationship.

Sorry if you think I sound old fashioned, but the happiest people I've ever known were the ones in monogamous, loving relationships. I'm not talking about that money/power hollow happiness, I mean real happiness, the kind that fills you up with an adoration for the world around you, for the people in your life, and for yourself, the kind of happiness that, when you lie on your deathbed, you can look back and smile, knowing that you lived life the way it was meant to be lived.

And trust me, if you doubt the power of love, it's because you've never been in love. And for once, this isn' t me thinking that I've experienced enough to know this. This is the opinion of many of the greatest minds in history: writers, philosophers, spiritual leaders...read anything from Kirkegaard to Shakespeare, and you'll see what I mean.