vii
Copyright 2025 Marline E. Pearson
Woven into the program is new content on navigating relationships and intimate life
in the digital age. Several topics such as the role of texting, sexting, social media, and
internet pornography are explored.
A New Message on Pregnancy Prevention
Many of our pregnancy prevention messages focus on a young person’s self-interest
in how a pregnancy would negatively affect them. Love Notes takes a different track.
It encourages young people to step outside themselves and look more deeply at the
consequences of unintended or poorly timed pregnancy on children. By placing the
child at center stage in a few activities, participants are asked to generate a wish list of
needs and wants “through the eyes of a child”. Further, they are challenged to identify
what might help parents provide these for a child. This approach taps a more powerful
and positive source of motivation to avoid an unintended pregnancy. It helps bring
home to all young people why it matters to be a planner—to wait to have a child (or a
second child)—if children are a part of their vision—until their lives are more settled
with their education/training, employment, and a partnership.
In terms of positive youth development, one’s love life is never neutral it’s one of the
central developmental tasks on the path to adulthood. Unhealthy, abusive, and unstable
relationships, especially if linked with an unintended pregnancy, can derail everything.
Helping young people assess their relationships, choose partners wisely, and acquire
the skills and insights for forming and/or maintaining healthy relationships (and later
healthy marriages if they choose to marry) can help them be successful. Encouraging
deliberate planning for their own sexual decisions can reduce some formidable
barriers in their personal lives as young people work toward their goals in education,
employment, intimate relationships, family, and parenting.
Love Notes is dedicated to the success of young people as much as it is to the success
and well-being of their children. Clearly, children are affected for better or worse by the
parental, partner, and other adult relationships in their families and communities.
Young Parents and Co-Parenting Challenges
The approach embedded in Love Notes is especially important for young parents.
We should not assume these relationships are all viable, nor all doomed. Some have
Copyright 2025 Marline E. Pearson
Woven into the program is new content on navigating relationships and intimate life
in the digital age. Several topics such as the role of texting, sexting, social media, and
internet pornography are explored.
A New Message on Pregnancy Prevention
Many of our pregnancy prevention messages focus on a young person’s self-interest
in how a pregnancy would negatively affect them. Love Notes takes a different track.
It encourages young people to step outside themselves and look more deeply at the
consequences of unintended or poorly timed pregnancy on children. By placing the
child at center stage in a few activities, participants are asked to generate a wish list of
needs and wants “through the eyes of a child”. Further, they are challenged to identify
what might help parents provide these for a child. This approach taps a more powerful
and positive source of motivation to avoid an unintended pregnancy. It helps bring
home to all young people why it matters to be a planner—to wait to have a child (or a
second child)—if children are a part of their vision—until their lives are more settled
with their education/training, employment, and a partnership.
In terms of positive youth development, one’s love life is never neutral it’s one of the
central developmental tasks on the path to adulthood. Unhealthy, abusive, and unstable
relationships, especially if linked with an unintended pregnancy, can derail everything.
Helping young people assess their relationships, choose partners wisely, and acquire
the skills and insights for forming and/or maintaining healthy relationships (and later
healthy marriages if they choose to marry) can help them be successful. Encouraging
deliberate planning for their own sexual decisions can reduce some formidable
barriers in their personal lives as young people work toward their goals in education,
employment, intimate relationships, family, and parenting.
Love Notes is dedicated to the success of young people as much as it is to the success
and well-being of their children. Clearly, children are affected for better or worse by the
parental, partner, and other adult relationships in their families and communities.
Young Parents and Co-Parenting Challenges
The approach embedded in Love Notes is especially important for young parents.
We should not assume these relationships are all viable, nor all doomed. Some have
