What’s in it for me? Real talk about kids and sex
What was your sex ed experience? A mumbled talk from an awkward parent about what happens when “a man and a woman love each other very much”? A banana and a condom? Nothing at all?
Thankfully, sex ed has come a long way in the past few decades. A whole conversation about sex, sexual identity, and consent has opened up. This generation of children is set to be far more sexually literate than their parents or teachers ever were at their age. Yet, they’re also navigating pressures and pitfalls completely foreign to anyone who came of age in the years before wifi, smartphones, and social media: porn on demand, live sex cams, and a barrage of highly sexualized media content.
It’s easy to feel alienated, confused, and concerned about the new sexual landscape our kids are navigating. But to help today’s young people make smart, healthy, and even enjoyable sexual choices, it's crucial for parents and educators to be informed and open-minded about contemporary sexual culture. Consider this your invitation to become an active ally in your child’s sexual development.
We need to talk about “the talk”
When do you have “the talk”? When children hit puberty? When they start middle school? When they first start showing curiosity about their bodies? It’s a question that has plagued parents for generations. Luckily, there’s an answer, and it’s this: you shouldn’t. That is to say, you shouldn’t have the talk, singular. In your role as sex educator, you should talk with your children openly and often about all things sex. And you should start pretty much from the time your kid is able to hold a conversation.
Before we get into what you should be talking about, let’s dig into why this approach is best.
Initiating a series of ongoing low-stakes conversations takes the pressure off. You don’t have to cover all bases in one intense discussion. It also signals you’re comfortable talking about sex and want them to feel comfortable doing so, too. And talking with your kids about sex in an age appropriate way from the time they’re toddlers means that when things get a bit more complicated, they’ll be in the habit of coming to you with questions.
Now, onto the “what.” With little kids, there’s no need to go into graphic detail. Start from toddlerhood by labeling body parts accurately and without shame: penis, testicles, vulva, vagina, breasts, and so on. No “pee-pees” or “down-there”s, please!
Around the time your child is in first grade, pediatricians recommend sharing simple explanations of how sex works and how babies are made. It’s important to share this information early, in a comforting and supportive context, because explicit and age-inappropriate sexual content is simply so easy to access these days. You can build on these conversations by talking about different relationship configurations – sex can happen between a man and a woman, two women, two men, and so on. Babies can be made through IVF, or they can be adopted or fostered.
Bath time is a great opportunity to introduce concepts like personal space and consent. If siblings touch each other's genitals, remind them to respect each other's space and reinforce that no-one can touch these parts of your body without permission. If your children touch their own genitals, emphasize that this is a perfectly normal activity, but that people do it in private.
Just as important as what you say is the behavior you model around sex, love, and body image. For example, some families are comfortable being totally naked around each other – that’s great, and signals a healthy level of comfort with the body. You might not be comfortable doing that – and that’s fine. But if your child walks in on you while you’re undressed, make a point of staying calm and relaxed. There’s nothing wrong with a naked human body. After all, we’ve all got one! The same advice applies if your kids catch you having sex – address what they saw calmly, then move on.
Talking sex with teens might not be as hard as you think
If you’ve been talking about sex with your kids openly and often from the time they were in preschool, then it should feel natural for the two of you to keep this conversation going, even as their concerns become more adult and your talks get more graphic. But what if you’re just starting the conversation now, with your tweens or teens? Don’t stress. You haven’t missed your window.
So … how do you broach the topic?
Be frank. You could admit to your children that you thought you were protecting them by not talking about this stuff earlier, but now you realize you were wrong, so you’re changing your approach.
Seize your chances. When you start to look for them, opportunities to work sex into the conversation are everywhere. Use sexual innuendo in a song lyric or sexually suggestive scenes in tv or movies as your conversational “in.” You can ask questions like, “Do you know what sex act that lyric is actually referring to?” or “Did that scene look like good sex to you?”
Set a positive tone. Remind your kids that, no matter how awkward these conversations might seem, you’re having them in service of an important objective: you want your kids to have a healthy, fun, and pleasurable relationship with sex.
Be persistent. Remember how, when your kids were babies, you weaned them onto solid food? Sometimes they might have spit something out half-a-dozen times or more before they finally accepted a spoonful. Well, introducing sex into the conversation can play out in just the same way – they’re resistant at first, and it can feel frustrating for both of you, but you’ll get there in the end.
Don’t just talk about the physical side of things – because your tweens and teens are thinking about far more than what body part goes where. This might involve expanding your ideas of what sex education can be. Topics like crushes, relationships, masturbation, pornography, protection, sexual identity, gender identity, and sexually transmitted infections (or STIs) should all be on the table.
Remember – you don’t have to do this all by yourself. Provide books and other resources to supplement your discussions, seek out advice from your kids’ pediatrician, and advocate for comprehensive sex ed in your kids’ schools if there’s none in place already.
Finally, never underestimate the value of a captive audience. There’s no better place to talk sex with your kids than while driving. They can look at the road instead of making eye contact with you, and, as a bonus, even if they’re cringing with embarrassment, they can’t escape.
Porn culture is affecting young people in unprecedented ways
On the list of topics you might want to discuss with your kid, the consumption of porn probably ranks somewhere near the bottom. But you and your young adult children need to be talking about porn, and often. Here’s why:
Your children are almost certainly watching, or have been exposed to, porn. The average age at which a boy in the US first views porn is eleven. This means they’re not coming to porn with a wealth of sexual experience and well-defined preferences and desires. Porn is teaching kids about sex, and shaping their sexual preferences. Boys, in particular, consume a lot of porn – they tend to encounter it as they first get into the healthy and natural habit of masturbation, and develop the two habits in tandem. This means the average boy has seen upwards of a thousand explicit sexual acts in porn before he has his first actual sexual experience.
Porn is designed to be fast-paced, arousing, and sensational. In stereotypical porn, there’s not a lot of room for tenderness, consideration, or consent – all factors that can be important for fulfilling sexual experiences in real life. In fact, a study of over 300 porn scenes found that 88 percent of them depicted aggression, especially spanking, slapping, and gagging, while 47 percent also featured verbal abuse. Without the context of lived experience, it's easy for kids to assume this kind of rough, aggressive sex is typically enjoyable. In heterosexual porn, men are shown penetrating women at a pace which real women rarely report enjoying. Both vaginal and anal sex are shown as easy and comfortable to perform without foreplay or preparation. When it comes to their early sexual experiences, many young people report feeling pressure to perform, and enjoy, the style of sex they have seen in porn rather than feeling empowered to explore their own desires. What’s more, many are left feeling disappointed and ashamed when they don’t experience the ecstatic enjoyment porn actors appear to demonstrate.
Porn is influencing the way kids feel about their bodies. It's commonplace for porn actors to be sexually augmented. In particular, female actors have augmented breasts and surgically altered labia. Many girls feel their breasts are too small and their labia too large by comparison. Male actors have augmented penises – the average size of a porn star’s erect penis is 8 inches, 2.2 inches larger than the average erect penis. Many boys feel their penises are too small by comparison. Additionally, porn actors usually sport hairless genitals and bleached anuses, leading many young viewers to assume these grooming habits are standard.
Don’t despair. Despite the sometimes harmful influence of porn, young people do want respectful relationships and fulfilling sexual experiences. In interviews conducted among college-age men, the majority reported wanting meaningful, harmonious sexual relationships and felt able to separate the porn they consumed from the sex they experienced in real life. But you can’t assume your kids are going to get to a similarly healthy place on their own, or without years of confusion, shame, and – to be frank – bad sex.
Parental controls are not enough – short of going off-grid somewhere in the Siberian wilderness, you’re not going to stop your kids from accessing porn. The best way to counter porn’s harmful effects? Honest, open conversation. While porn has its place, situate it in a host of other healthy sexual practices – like using your own imagination when you masturbate, exploring your body without a video on in the background, and following your own desires.
Help your kid navigate hook-ups
By the time your kids are high-school or college-aged, sex will stop being simply a topic of discussion – it will likely be something they’re doing, and certainly something their peers are doing. They will also be exposed to hook-up culture, in which casual, commitment-free sexual encounters are the norm. Hooking up – in other words, experimenting in a low-stakes, casual way – can be a positive part of your child’s sexual development. Hook-up culture, however, is problematic. It often goes hand-in-hand with heavy drinking and drug use. Alcohol and drugs lower inhibitions and impair judgment. As a result, many young adults report feeling ashamed, disappointed, or unsatisfied after engaging in a sexual encounter they would not have pursued sober. Worse, the majority of campus sexual assaults occur in a hook-up situation.
How can you support your children as they navigate this phase?
Consent is key. Your kids have probably heard the phrase “No means no.” But it’s time to go beyond this. Teach your kids about the concept of enthusiastic consent: they should never engage in a sex act if their partner hasn’t clearly, verbally, and willingly consented to it. By the same token, they shouldn’t feel pressured to consent to any sex act they don’t feel enthusiastic about and comfortable with themselves.
Lots of teens report feeling unfulfilled by their hook-ups. While most boys and men reach climax during this type of encounter, research into hook-up culture has found that they nevertheless often feel disappointed by and disconnected from the sex itself. It's common for girls and women not to reach orgasm during a hook-up. Whether you’re the parent of boys or girls, talk with them about female orgasm. Here’s what you can tell them:
On average, women take longer than men to climax. Engaging in foreplay before penetrative sex can help women and men reach orgasm at the same time. Some women can achieve vaginal orgasm when their G-spot, located in the vagina’s front wall is stimulated. Seventy to 80 percent of women need clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm. The clitoris is located above the vaginal opening and urethra and is protected by a hood. Without preparation, foreplay, and clitoral stimulation, the type of sex acts shown in porn are unlikely to result in female orgasm.
Hook-ups are often framed as “experimentation,” but real experimentation tends to occur only when true Intimacy has been established. People who know each others’ bodies well, can communicate openly about their desires and dislikes, and trust each other enough to try new things together generally have far more inventive and enjoyable sex than strangers having sex for the first time. Be frank with your kids about how valuing intimacy, connection, and communication can positively affect their sex lives.
Emphasize the vital importance of safe sex. Remind your kids to always use condoms when hooking up. While the pill, the NuvaRing and other contraceptive methods can protect against unwanted pregnancy, only condoms can reduce the transmission of STIs.
Feeling overwhelmed? Take a deep breath. Talking openly about porn, hook-up culture, and other aspects of sex might feel tough. But if you try to avoid all the tough stuff, you’ll miss out on something wonderful – the opportunity to forge a deep and honest connection with your children.
Final summary
Talking about sex often, openly, and positively with your kids is the best way to support them in developing a healthy attitude to sex and sexuality. Start the conversation when they’re young and build up to frank conversations about consent, porn, hook-ups, intimacy, pleasure, and more.