Talking About Sex With Your Children It Should Be More Than Just Don’t Do It Discuss Feelings And Responsibilities

By Tony Best

I love my mother dearly but I wish she had discussed issues about sex with me at a much earlier age.

Norma, a West Indian in Massachusetts, may be one of the lucky ones, meaning that she didn’t get pregnant and she didn’t end up with a sexually transmitted disease in her teenage years, but she isn’t alone.

Mom was too embarrassed to discuss sex, except to tell me that if I did it, I could get pregnant, said Althea, who has been living in New York ever since she came to the City from the Caribbean more than 30 years ago. If she had, I wouldn’t have had my first child before I reached 20 years old. I adore my own daughter, don’t get me wrong. She has changed my life in many ways. But looking back on it I would have preferred to wait because it made things much more difficult than it otherwise would have been.

These two Caribbean immigrants and a host of men expressed a common concern: the refusal, perhaps inability, of mothers and fathers to discuss sexual issues with them when they were in their early teenage years.

As the experts tell it, the failure of Caribbean parents to talk with their children about sex isn?t a West Indian thing, it’s a universal challenge.

Usually, social scientists and those who specialize in grappling with the teenage pregnancy complain, a discussion between a parent and a 14 year old daughter or 16 year old son usually begins and ends with one word: don’t. Girls, whose interest in sex spawns fears about pregnancy at too early an age, a disruption of education and a roadblock to an exciting career bear the brunt of their parent’s fears. For in addition to the issue of teenage motherhood and the cost of having another mouth to feed in a household already having trouble making ends meet, parents are worried that their daughters would get a bad reputation, one of being too quick and easy to get into bed and drop their underwear.

When it comes to sons, the double standard kicks in. Fathers may respond to their pre-teen’s interest in girls with smiles on their faces as if to say, a chip off the old block. Some even remark silently my boy can’t get pregnant. That’s somebody else???s problem. Of course, that attitude is prevalent in households where daughters are absent.

Put another way, a boy’s interest in sex is often seen by parents as an exciting development, a coming of age. Yes, in a world in which HIV/AIDS is taking the lives of more and more young men and women, parents are concerned about contracting the disease and would even introduce them to condoms with the bit of advice please be careful.

But seldom do parents talk with sons or daughters or both about grappling with their feelings, the racing hormones that propel them into early sex.

The trouble is that teenagers need the advice more now than ever before because of the flood of television programs with simulated sex coming right into their living, the ease with which the youths can download sexually explicit shows on their computers or read books and magazines in which getting laid is common place.

Just think of the television program, Sex and the City, in which a couple would jump into bed within an hour or two of meeting for the first time and the woman never gets pregnant, the man leaves with a smile on his face, STD’s aren’t considered  and there is no thought of the responsibilities that may come later.

I think it is important that we talk to our children early about sex, the responsibilities of sexual activity and about the importance of delaying the start of our sexual lives,said Canon Percy Brathwaite, whose Episcopal Church in New York City conducts a program to reach parents and children so they can grapple with human sexuality in and out of the household. It makes little sense for us to be simply telling children don’t have sex unless we tell them why and be honest about it. We owe our children that discussion and it shouldn’t simply be don’t do it. It has to be much more than that.

For instance, the advice parents give should encourage youths, both girls and boys to reflect on what sex really means.

For girls, in particular, the discussion should be how they can ensure that their daughters are making informed decisions and not just allowing it to happen to them.

It is not about whether they should have sex. It’s about entering, with eyes wide open, that stage of life where sexual activity becomes a real possibility, writes Dr. Anthony Wolf, author of six book on parenting. It’s about allowing teenage girls to be more thoughtful, hence more in control of their own sex life.

Dr. Wolf warns against a game teenage boys have been playing on girls for cenprove your love by having sex with me.

Of course, the usually trend is that once it happens, the boy expects more of the same before he moves on to someone else.

Dr. Myrna Lashley, a West Indian psychologist in Montreal, is quick to remind teenagers that sex doesn’t bind a relationship. It just opens the door to more sex.

Don’t assume that having sex with a boy makes a relationship any more than it was, other than the guy thinks he can have sex with you again, warned Dr. Wolf. Guys often mean what they say at the time, but don?’t assume he feels that way later, even a little later. Sexuality and the intimacy that comes with it can influence how people feel. But once the physical intimacy ends, so can many of the feelings.

Another thing, parents should advise their daughters against assuming that a sexual encounter remains a private matter. In the age of text-messages and the Internet what you did last night in the back seat of a car or in your parent’s home while they were visiting friends can be known by all and sundry the next morning, if not immediately after you put on your clothes.

 

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