Name: Sexploitation
Rating: 4.2 (13 reviews)
Author: Cindy Pierce

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?

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.

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?

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