I left the newspaper story about the murder of Franca Barsi
conspicuously displayed on the kitchen table, and as I had hoped,
the bait worked. I caught my 16-year-old daughter reading it.
I left the newspaper story about the murder of Franca Barsi conspicuously displayed on the kitchen table, and as I had hoped, the bait worked. I caught my 16-year-old daughter reading it.
“Too bad she didn’t listen to Dr. Laura,” I remarked, pointedly.
“Yes,” she responded, turning to continued-on-page-A-6.
If I were a better mom, I would have seized the Teachable Moment and bombarded her with a lecture on Morality and the Evils of Domestic Violence. But I wimped out when she agreed with me so quickly. Besides, she has heard it all a zillion times, whenever I give her a ride anywhere between the hours of noon and 3 pm, Monday through Friday, when Dr. Laura is on KSFO.
I was not going to write about the murder. One mustn’t speak ill of the dead. Then the next day, in a follow-up story, a neighbor was quoted as saying she had never noticed any suspicious activity around Barsi’s home and considered the gated community, just north of the First Street shopping corridor, a safe neighborhood.
“She appeared to be a great mother … She worked hard. She was always going to work in the morning, taking her son to school and coming back home with him. … It’s just been so quiet – no arguments, nothing out of the norm.”
Unfortunately, this anonymous neighbor is completely correct. It is completely within the norm in our society today for young women to have pre-marital sex and to bear a son out of wedlock. It is completely within the norm for a single mother to date while raising her child.
It is completely within the norm to have sex with one’s date, and to allow him to move in with oneself and one’s child.
These behaviors are completely within the norm. But, as Dr. Laura would say, they are not right. They are not moral. And, as Franca Barsi’s sad fate clearly demonstrates, they are not safe. In fact, they are dangerous.
I fully expect a barrage of letters telling me that I am mean-spirited and that Franca Barsi was a lovely person. Spare the trees. I am sure she was a lovely person. She would be a lovely, alive person if she had listened to Dr. Laura.
Dr. Laura says people should not have sex before they marry. The reason for this is that sex is the number one cause of pregnancy, and pregnancy is the number one cause of babies. Statistics are quite clear that children have a much better chance at a happy childhood and a healthy adulthood when raised in a two-parent, married family.
Dr. Laura says that if a woman does become pregnant while unmarried, she should marry her impregnator if he is a man of character or give the baby up for adoption if the impregnator is a jerk. Kids raised in a married two-parent adoptive family have the second best chance at a happy childhood and a healthy adulthood.
Dr. Laura says that if a parent does decide to raise a child alone, or if a parent is widowed or divorced, the parent should not date until the child is 18 and out of the house. This is because, statistically, the most common perpetrator of child abuse, both physical and sexual, is the boyfriend of a single mother.
Dr. Laura says that a woman should date – that means dinner, movies, and walks on the beach, not sex – and be engaged – that means a ring and a date, not sex – for a minimum of two years before she marries a man, so she can figure out if he is a man of character or a jerk before she makes babies with him.
A follow-up story in The Dispatch tells us that we are seeing a spike in requests for help in domestic violence cases and in requests for restraining orders as a direct result of the story of Franca Barsi. That is great.
It would be even better if young women would not put themselves and their children at risk for “domestic violence,” rape, child abuse, and murder. They should listen to Dr. Laura. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
