The Talk

Do you have children heading into puberty, or maybe already there? Have you had "The Talk" with them yet? I didn't think so.

When I asked one of my friends if he'd had the talk with his fifteen-year-old son, he replied that the prospect terrified him too much. Another friend has taken the approach of actively teaching her children that sex is evil, and gleefully acknowledges, "My hypocrisy has no bounds."

Unfortunately, there's a price to be paid for both ignorance and hypocrisy.

Growing up, no one ever told me that girls didn't like sex. I rediscovered that medieval notion all by myself. Where do you think bizarre ideas like that come from, anyway? In the absence of clear information, people make up answers as required. As I got older, more data became available, and I realized that girls did like sex, they just weren't able to admit to liking it. That is, when they said "no," they were just maintaining a pretense....

Comfortable having your kid wandering around with that sort of misconception?

Luckily, I never wound up in prison as a result of my keen insight into human nature, and eventually I realized that, while some girls were repressed, inhibited, and hypocritical, this wasn't a universal condition. Plenty of them could consciously make the decision to have sex and could openly admit as much. It just took me until my mid-20s to complete this evolution of belief.

What scares a lot of parents, I think, is the thought of describing the mechanical aspects of sex with their kids. The good news is, those details are of relatively small importance and can easily be conveyed by simply handing your kid a book like Sex for Dummies.

The more important responsibility that parents have is to overtly make certain statements regarding sex. The two most important statements are: (a) Sex isn't evil, but is a natural part of being an adult. And (b), that masturbation in particular isn't evil.

Failure to come out of the closet on this issue means your kids will approach sex with whatever attitudes they've manufactured themselves or picked up from the locker room. Our sexuality is wired deeply in our brains, is driven powerfully by hormones in our bloodstream. We either consciously control it, or it will control us.

Denial isn't control, any more than a starvation diet is a good way to lose weight. Sooner or later our hunger (of whichever variety) will express itself. When it comes to sexuality, the "binge" that results can be very dangerous indeed.

Is it really so hard, as a parent, to sit your kid down and say, "Sex isn't evil?"

Various other statements might go a long way toward keeping good kids from doing dumb things: (c) Kids who have sex aren't bad kids. Neither are they necessarily cool, hot, hip, macho, etc. Don't expect to counter peer pressure with, "Just say no." If you want traction, you have to establish that you are a believable, trustworthy source of information.

(d) Homosexuals aren't evil. I remember the tough guys at high school talking about their gay bashing forays. No doubt that sort of thing still happens, especially with so many God-fearing religious people wandering around our culture. If you're comfortable having your kid being arrested for assault; if you're comfortable being estranged with your kid, or having your kid commit suicide, because he/she turns out to be gay: fine. Otherwise, you might want to make your position clear on this point.

(e) While the world contains plenty of sexually-sick people, their sickness stems more from how they approach sex than what forms of sex they pursue. A married couple having sex in the missionary position with the lights off still qualifies as sick, if one of them has the attitude of, "You're a disgusting pig / cunt." A another pair of people could be slavered in cooking oil in a room with a Shetland pony, and-- Well, the point is, if two people treat each other with compassion, respect, and empathy, they're going to have a healthy relationship.

By overtly stepping out of the shadows, parents achieve a level of believability when they talk about various caveats to the practice of sex, such as the need to keep one's sexual behavior private, especially with regard to younger children, whether siblings still in the home or neighbor kids. The danger of STDs, pregnancy, and so forth will all be listened to and treated more seriously by your kids if they suspect you of being open and truthful with them. The opposite, of course, is also true.