Sen. Haugen tells her story to support sex education bill

Pregnant and unmarried at 18, she had to face him. She’ll never forget the look in his eyes.

“I felt I was disappointing my folks, my father particularly. But he forgave me, no question,” said state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island.

Haugen, 66, spoke by phone from the Senate floor Thursday, the day after she publicly detailed that painful time so long ago. Her memory was included in hours of debate on a sex education measure the Senate passed Wednesday.

Not long after graduating from Stanwood High School in 1959, she discovered she was pregnant. “We got married right away, and had the baby. I accepted my responsibility,” Haugen said.

Her daughter was born in 1960. Mary Margaret and Jerry Haugen went on to have three other children. “I had a wonderful man who stood with me,” Haugen said.

“I became a hairdresser. He started out working in a service station. For a lot of years, we struggled,” she said.

Haugen and her husband divorced after their children were grown. She is remarried, with a blended family that includes 10 adult children.

The lawmaker brought her distant past into the political spotlight to push legislation she believes will spare young people from difficulties like hers or worse. The disclosure will be worth it, she said, “if I prevent one other girl from having to look her dad in the eye like I had to.”

“Ignorance is not bliss,” Haugen said during the Senate’s sex education debate. “Ignorance is unplanned pregnancies, and I can assure you that no one knows better than I.”

Some public schools now take an abstinence-only approach to sex education. The bill passed Wednesday would require schools that choose to teach abstinence to include medically accurate information – about condoms, other forms of birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

Under the bill, which has moved to the House, schools could offer nothing. As they can now, parents could keep children out of any sex education.

“It was the first time I ever talked about it,” Haugen said Thursday. “I was taught that you don’t gossip about yourself, especially about a part of your life you’re not real proud of.

“Even when I ran for office at 42 years old, it was my little dark secret,” she said. “I’m not ashamed now. I understand it now.”

In the late 1950s and early ’60s, sex was simply not discussed, Haugen said. “My mother was ignorant about it, she didn’t really know what to tell me. Nobody talked about it.

“The ramifications of not having knowledge, no one knows better than I,” she added.

A critic of comprehensive sex education, Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, countered Wednesday that teaching both abstinence and about birth control is incongruous. “You can’t put the two together and have success in one or the other,” he said during the debate.

Haugen isn’t alone in her view that knowledge of sex doesn’t translate into sexual activity.

“We do have research that shows students who receive what we call comprehensive sexuality education … are no more likely to have early engagement of sexual activity than those who have abstinence-only education,” Pam Tollefsen, school health programs coordinator with the state superintendent’s office, told The Herald in January.

Other foes of the bill decry the loss of local control over curriculum.

“I believe in local control,” Haugen said. “I was on the school board, my father and grandfather were on the school board. But whatever they teach, it has to be comprehensive. It’s just basic.”

I was a little girl when Haugen had her first baby. I am old enough to remember the bad old days when kids learned next to nothing about sex. My mother would tell my sister and me, “Girls, all you have is your reputation.” End of lesson.

While times have changed, parents haven’t changed all that much. It’s not easy to talk frankly with your kids about sex.

“Some parents do a better job than others,” Haugen said. “For those who want their children to have a comprehensive education, it’s not enough to have only abstinence. What they need is factual information.”

What kids deserve is the truth. Haugen was courageous to tell hers.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.