Saw a comic recently about this topic and got me thinking. I know what “the talk” is about since it appears in so many media but I don’t ever recall having such an experience personally. Did you? What was it like?
I was a late 80s kid, just for context. As far as my experience goes, my parents were very open about sex as a natural process for reproduction. They answered openly any questions I had whenever I had them, keeping to the bare minimum necessary but never avoiding the topic- also never using metaphors as a substitute for plain facts ie. “the birds and the bees”.
So at about age 5 or so I was already aware about how reproduction worked on animals, us humans included. As I kept growing up of course I kept connecting the dots on any social aspects of sex and relationships (ie that is supposed to be pleasant, that people do it even if they’re not planning to have babies, etc) but I never had a moment of shocking realization regarding sex. I often found it stupid how some of my classmates would giggle or lower their voice when talking about anything sexual like, well, like it’s a taboo. And I was often disappointed at how much of what my classmates knew wasn’t exactly true, which at the time I chalked to their stupidity, although obviously it wasn’t their fault. They were misinformed.
By the time kids got to sex ed in highschool they already had their facts pretty much right though, fortunately.
So I’m curious about your experiences about this while growing up. Was yours similar to mine or did you sit through some awkward conversations? How did you feel about it all?
I never got “the talk”. Dad considered it to be mom’s job. Mom forgot she never had it with me; I’m one of over a half dozen kids and i believe her that she forgot me on top of her being very Catholic and very uncomfortable talking about sex.
I learned from reading on my own, picking up tidbits from friends (who barely knew more than me), and making mistakes. Having a bajillion younger siblings went a long way in teaching me to take safe sex seriously. I’ve changed diapers on enough younger siblings to last me three motherhoods. Hard pass.
My parents raised me out in the wilderness in a literal compound and hour from the nearest convenience store with no phone or even a mailbox.
So yeah… I had to learn everything about the world through a little black-and-white TV in my room that had big ol’ rabbit ear antenna that if I moved just right, I could get PBS from another town that had a lot of educational programming. As long as it wasn’t about “evolution” they were fine with me watching PBS.
If it wasn’t for PBS I would probably be dead. Seriously, that life doesn’t do a person well, both my parents and a sibling drank themselves to death, others are on the way. I however, learned science, and biology, and how to read and how to do math and a host of other topics that I am going to be an eternal sponsor of PBS for. There was one special that explained sex to some degree, but was still heavily censored. My parents were too busy being high and religious to dream of having an awkward talk with their son, so I was totally on my own.
Thankfully, I learned where to find the “relationship” books on my rare ventures into town to visit places like bookstores and managed to learn a lot about sex from pilfering a book from the sex and relationship section and reading it in the kid’s books section.
My mom peaked in my room and left me with the American Girl book about hygiene and female anatomy. I don’t think it said anything about sex. Just had to navigate that part of life armed with (mis)information from whispered conversations with friends over sleepovers.
I think back on how many experiences I had growing up that could have gone wrong. This was all happening just as AIM chatrooms and chat roullette were popular. And there were so many creeps that my friends and I talked to because we were curious. No normal adult was giving us the information, but plenty of adults online were happy to talk and ask for favors in return. Shivers down my fucking spine.
I am so thankful that I was too nervous to do anything and usually ended conversations quickly. But the risk of genuine harm was right there, and our parents had no idea. We laughed whenever we saw a penis appear on chat roullete and clicked away, but we were not mature enough to know how fucked up it was. It was our parents’ job to guard us from that. Not by putting blinders on us. But by affording us the respect of an important conversation.
I am so passionate about people having this discussion with their kids. Kids are curious. The fact that the subject is taboo makes it even more exciting for kids. It is such a crucial moment in the transition to adulthood. Ignoring the conversation endangers them by making the subject seem exotic and inticing.
Have the conversation with your kids or someone else will. And you will have no control over how and when that happens.
Nice write up. Yes, I couldn’t agree more. I guess it’s the potential for abuse where things get really complicated, not so much the biological and mechanical side of sex- which makes even more baffling to see being avoided as a topic. Getting a child to understand the many ways they are vulnerable is certainly difficult no matter the topic.
Glad to know nothing happened to you, scary to see how easily someone could get groomed online. I’ve had a close call with a pedophile when I was a kid, in spite of being well aware of sex in many ways at that age, but at the time I didn’t recognize his attempt at manipulation for what it was- precisely because there was no mention of anything sexual at all. I got really lucky that nothing happened to me either, and walked out if it absolutely oblivious to everything, but unlike you I do owe some of that to good parenting though. A few years later when I remembered the incident and realized what had been going on it hit me like a truck. An “oh shit” moment.
I didn’t reflect on all of this until my 20’s. I coach girls from around 8-18 years old, and the standards for interacting with kids nowadays means you have to take a lot of abuse training courses. That coupled with watching the girls I coach try to navigate social media and coming of age made me realise how abnormal my own upbringing was.
Its crazy how protective I feel about these kids that aren’t even my own. But looking back on the dangers lurking in the corners, I know how important it is to keep kids in the loop. Not to scare them, or try to keep them isolated. But safety starts with communicating freely with the safe adults in your life. I think things are trending towards more quality information about sex being readily available. Most (non religious) parents seem to realize they need to raise confident kids that they have an open dialogue about important things with.
Never did.
Parents never really talked about relationships or anything with my siblings or anything. But we had a whole course in middle school that taught us the ins and outs, I guess.
Got the talk at ~17, about 5-7 years too late.
No. I’m first generation Indian in California so no. Thank god for schools in the early 2000s
I grew up in rural Ohio, USA. We had sex ed in 5th grade ('91, maybe?) that covered the very basic biological stuff. I think the following summer, we were supposed to go to a waterpark but had to cancel because my step-sister was on her period. Mom came in to talk about it, I showed her the pamphlet that school sent me home with, she read through it, then said to ask her if I had any questions. That was the first and last time any of that came up.
my stepmother tried to explain how the hymen works to me, but described it as a “stopper” instead of the ring of tissue it actually is. so, I wound up mutilating myself in an attempt to “break” it. having one or more sexually repressed religious people as legal guardians can lead to some gnarly results.
surprisingly, middle school sex ed taught me a bit more than you’d think it would, including how a condom is put on.
Yes, even though they were religious they told me all about sex when I asked, including sex for pleasure and gay sex
no never had.
was about 30(M) when learned that the menstrual cycle in women is not the same as “heat” in dogs. was about last month when learned there is a time slice in the month where getting pregnant is almost impossible (right before / after cycle apparently ). shocked my mum when asked if humans are born with eyes open, or closed like puppies
but i never felt interested in that , just gross
I only know of one classmate who got the talk but personally I didn’t get anything like the talk just my parents understanding that I knew.
No.
I was lucky to have an elementary and middle school that still did sex ed talks. My dad wasn’t in a talking mood after roofing all day every day and my mom was a puritanical prude who would much rather I figure it out than actually tell me how to exercise caution in order to avoid pregnancy.
Did you resent the avoidance at any point? Also, did you have questions before getting sex ed talks that went unanswered? I guess that’s what I’m curious to find out, from those who didn’t have any talk or had it too late, what did they do before hitting the first school lesson on the subject.
Oh, absolutely.
They pounded sexual discomfort into me with religion, and I could have had a lot more sex and enjoyed my life more when I was younger if they hadn’t done that. I also would have appreciated knowing more about how sex needs to be for a woman to experience pleasure and more information about body language and consent.
lolno. My parents didn’t give a fuck about me.
Kinda embarassing, for my parents.
I was a precocious kid, read my way through libraries before we got online. By the time my parents got around to giving me the talk I had already started puberty, gave the talk to one of my friends who hit puberty early, and gone through a gender crisis to figure out I was enby.
My parents were Catholic, so they never talked about sex per se. My “talk” was my dad saying, “I want you to remember to always respect women. And that means not doing anything inappropriate.” Very informative.
