Like what? Like prostitutes, says American mother and writer Jennifer Moses
in a frank article
in the Wall Street Journal -- a paper, by the way, which seems to enjoy challenging US parents.

Jennifer Moses is not the first one to talk about the way young girls tart
themselves up but she might be the first I’ve read in a major newspaper to
acknowledge that it’s the moms’ and dads’ fault. After all, who pays for “the
plunging necklines…push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos”
that 12- and 13-year-olds are wearing to parties? We do, she says.

But why? Her friend says it’s about mother-daughter bonding. “It starts with
the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there.” But Moses has a more
courageous answer.

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own
generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that
we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I
could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before
marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did
we know?"

It was the pill that did it, created the opportunity and the peer pressure “to
find out true womanhood in the bedroom”. But it wasn’t “true” and it led to regret.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We
somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't),
and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews,
scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away
their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God
forbid, hypocrites.

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the
desire to push back is strong. I don't know one of them who doesn't have
feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one
woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she'd
"experimented" more.

Their daughters don’t get it. They want to be popular. And even Moses wants
hers to look gorgeous.

But it's easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn't dream of dropping
our daughters off at college and saying: "Study hard and floss every
night, honey—and for heaven's sake, get laid!" But that's essentially what
we're saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they're still
living under our own roofs.

Gee, these moms have to develop more nerve. They have to tell their
daughters with conviction about their regrets and how you really can wait for
marriage. Maybe among the 7029 comments the article has garnered as of now
(yes, over 7000!) there are people saying that.

Anyway, well done, Jennifer Moses.