We’re products of the sexual revolution, part of the society that plasters what once was unmentionable on most every sitcom, popular song and fashion ad.
We’re hip, cool and modern.
Yet we’re doing a lousy job of talking to and teaching our children what they really need to know about sex.
Our sons and daughters ask about President Clinton and oral sex, about what condoms are for, and about what “gay” means.
So we start the tap dance: “We’ll talk when you’re older,” “That’s not something you need to know about,” or “Who told you that?”
If only it were as simple as birds and bees.
Statistics show that more than 90 percent of parents say they are uncomfortable talking to their children about sex. Less than 20 percent do so with any ease or regularity.
“Most kids would like to get the information from their parents. But I don’t think they’re getting it from them, primarily because of us being uncomfortable,” said Dr. Vicki Knight-Mathis, an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
The numbers paint a rather bleak picture of the job parents and educational systems are doing:
Nationally, 1 in 4 U.S. girls will become pregnant at least once by the age of 18. About 3 million teens — 25 percent of the sexually experienced teens — contract a sexually transmitted disease each year. Two teens contract HIV, a virus that can lead to AIDS, every hour of every day in the United States.
“We’re doing horrible,” said Barbara Lively of Midway, Ky., mother of a 13-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. “We slather the airwaves in sexual innuendo; we make 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds think they should have a boyfriend or girlfriend; we give them messages to be adults without any of the safeguards.”
Lively feels strongly that Americans’ Puritan background harms children because she herself was hurt. She was sexually abused, fondled by a neighbor’s relative as a child and forced by a boy to have sex at 14 without realizing what was happening. “My parents didn’t teach me anything about sex,” said Lively, an office manager for admissions at Midway College in Midway, Ky.
“I swore that when I had kids they would never be victims. You teach them the correct terms, teach them what bodily functions are for, teach them the difference between love and sex and relationships. . . . Kids need to know they have someone to go to,” she said.
Why do today’s parents, who consider themselves so enlightened, do such a poor job of educating their children about sexuality?
“I don’t think parents think it’s not happening out there; I think they think it’s not happening to their children,” said Willie Davis, 18, a recent graduate of Henry Clay High School, who tried with several other students to start a program where students could get condoms at school. It was killed by the school’s site-based council, but the students later organized an AIDS awareness program.
Whether they intend to or not, parents usually do things similarly to the way they were raised. “Most of us didn’t have parents who talked to us. Parents are uncomfortable about what to say. Parents don’t know what to say,” said Peggy Blythe, a social worker with the Lexington health department who also teaches programs in middle schools on postponing sexual involvement.
Christine Endicott, of Nicholasville, Ky., is mother of an 18-month-old with another child due this summer. She said she and her husbandhave “decided you’ve got to continually talk to your children.
“You don’t say too much, but there should be questions both ways. I plan to tell them the mistakes I made. We talked before we had children about how we would teach them about sexuality.”
Parents should not assume their children will learn the facts of life in school.
Kentucky, for example, is one of 13 states that do not require schools to provide sexuality or STD/HIV education.
Robin Ayres, a Lexington father of two daughters, 20 and 11, is glad that is so, based on his Christian beliefs. “We should teach our children about the human body at school, but they should not learn about sex,” he said. “It should be abstinence until marriage. You can’t compromise and say they’re going to do it anyway. There’s no such thing as safe sex outside of marriage.”
Parents who don’t talk openly about sex miss an opportunity to help mold their child’s values, said Jenny O’Neill, a 5th-grade teacher at the Lexington School who also has taught sex education for the health department. “Talking about sex can be a value-laden thing. If you want to talk about your values and why you have them, that’s tremendously powerful, and it’s an opportunity parents are missing.”
Students frequently come to O’Neill, who is also Willie Davis’ mother, with questions.
Her message to parents is simple: “You need to be jumping in and doing this rather than getting mad at the teacher for answering their questions.”
