hormones
Mon Mar 19, 2007
Yow, am I tired today. It was a long weekend, full of the demands of teenagers. I’m feeling overly emotional and a tiny bit rundown, and I’m hoping it’s only because of a wee bit of stress and that I’m NOT getting the cold that my middle daughter is home from school with today.
So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what we teach our children about sex in this country. Mostly because I have a precocious middle daughter who has a boyfriend she’s highly attracted to, and she often asks me questions about sex. It’s my belief that if she 1. had a private place to do it and 2. had no worries about STDs or pregnancy, she might have already become sexually active. To my knowledge, she’s not, but then parents always think they know what their kids are up to and they aren’t always right.
With all of the questions has come a good deal of thought about exactly WHY it’s so hard to talk to ones children about sex. One of the most helpful things to me actually came from a marriage counselor I saw years ago, and it’s simple: are you acting out of fear or love? So I tried to examine why I was so damn scared every time these conversations came up. Of course like any parent, my fears are threefold: 1. fear of her getting hurt emotionally 2. fear of STDs 3. fear of pregnancy. But then as I thought about it more and more over the weekend, I came up with the huge unsaid one lurking in the back of my mind. 4. if I say the wrong thing, and something bad happens, will I be judged as a bad parent? And not just by others, but by myself.
I know there is no way to tell her everything she needs to know - some things can only be learned by personal experience, and the emotional nuances of sex definitely fall into that category. I tell her that she may think she’s prepared, but it’s impossible to know what you’re going to feel like about things after. You can only guess, and hope that you’re right. I can tell her about condoms and birth control pills, and that despite what most of her peers believe, that oral sex is not completely without STD risk. And I can tell her that just because I want her to be informed, that doesn’t mean I am condoning anything. Oh, and the other biggie that I thought she should know: that women are equally deserving of pleasure, and if she is ever with someone who doesn’t care about hers then they are NOT the right person.
Other parents I know who have teenage daughters think I’m doing it all wrong. Maybe not all of them, but I definitely live in a “teach abstinence” community, or so it feels at times. But I know that isn’t the teenage reality, and that sticking my head in the sand would be for ME, not for them. And why, so I could have deniability that it had been “my fault” if something bad happened?
It’s hard being a parent.
~Jane
March 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Pssssst.
You do know I’m happy to be slightly-more-objective auntie so you don’t have to field all of this on your own and so that you don’t feel the GINORMOUS weight that is feeling like all she’s going on per adult input is what’s coming from you, right?
Big hugs, gal. You do FINE.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
heh. are you kidding? I’m programming your home phone into her speed dial for the next few years. :)
Sorry we missed you yesterday, thought we might see you at downtown protest…
March 19th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I took my Dad to the art museum in Tacoma. If you’d have told me you were actually going to a protest, I’d have made a point to stop by, gal!
But you know I’m not kidding. Really: heck, there’s a lot of families out there wish they had a youth sex educator in their circle of friends, and the least I can do for the girls I care about is give them the same thing I give to kid after kid I don’t even know every day, eh? Please: anytime.
March 24th, 2007 at 5:47 am
I can so relate to this post, Jane. My daughter is 15 and has had 3 boyfriends since last summer. She seemed to be exploring, but not going too far. Her dad says that they break up because she won’t put out. I think because they know it is too early to be that serious. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she doesn’t want to. I get “Mommmmmm, I knowwwwwwwa.” I think I’ll send her over to Scarleteen.com (Thanks Heather!)
Uma
March 25th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Feel free! :)
There has been a decent bit of study done on who teens really want to talk to about sex, and it’s kind of a tricky conclusion.
In short, overall, teens want their parents to talk to them about sex, and very much want to feel able to do so with parents — so I think some of that “Oh, eek! Parent talking about sex! Groan! Squick!” — isn’t actually a negative response as it may sound, but rather just a way of having that talk but still wanting some degree of privacy between each other. Most teens tend to report that even when it feels squicky, they’re glad to have those conversations.
But they also report wanting, additionally, someone or someones to talk to where they have more emotional distance, or a different kind of realtionship, than they do with parents, and where they have to worry less about disappointing that person. I get a LOT of teens who report very real concerns about their parents thinking less of them, or being disappointed, and those ones aren’t concerned about getting in trouble so much as being invested in their parents thinking well of them and being proud of them.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Thanks for your response, Heather. My daughter was shy, but interested, when I sent her a link to Scarleteen.com. I talked to her about it as a place where she could find answers to questions she may have and let her know we could talk about any information she didn’t understand. I think she is putting off that talk, and I am too, but we’re working up to it. If I had given her that link last year, the discussion would have been quite different. Your comments are very insightful.
Thanks!
April 1st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Jane’s post is one of the most thoughtful and accurate statements I’ve read about how hard it is to explain sex to kids, and how hard it is to be a parent. My wife is a nurse - a wonderful woman, perfect save her questionable taste in men - and has years of experience explaining sex, delivering babies, and in two languages. I’m an attorney, and among other things, have litigated AIDS test litigation, written and spoken about commercial sex - I don’t think any of our rich and relevant professional experience has made parenting much easier. One never knows, for one thing, which parts of which message are received or understood.
I’d like to add two points which I think are further evidence of Jane’s excellent parenting: First, adults - sophisticated adults - have great difficulty understanding risk, especially when it involves estimating risk over time (and sexual risk, of course, increases across time; not true of all activities). There’s actually some good scientific work demonstrating this (e.g., Dietrich Dorner, The Logic of Failure). Second, there’s some biological research that suggests that the teenage brain is not, in fact, the adult brain in a young body, as had been thought. This research suggests that the portions of the brain which project facts in time (if I do X today, what will the consequence[s] be tomorrow, next week, next year) don’t fully develop until the mid-20’s. (Alas, parenting’s effect on memory prevents me from providing a citation at the moment).
It occurs to me that I may have intruded on a private conversation between friends (I’ve been an intermittent visitor to the site since, I think, 1998 or 1999). If that’s the case, my apologies for the unsolicited comment.
I don’t normally - or ever - expect thoughtful, sensitive and expert parenting advice on the same domain that I’m searching for racy, warm and sweet porn recommendations. Or any combination of good porn and good parenting advice. There’s a radical combination that’s conservative with respect to bandwidth!
J.
April 2nd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Jon, thank you so much for the comment. When you said that you don’t expect thoughtful parenting advice on a site where you’re looking for porn, well - that is one of the things that makes me feel very vulnerable when I’m posting such things, but yet I know from anecdotal as well as statistical evidence that a good deal of the people who read me are parents as well - and the blog is supposed to be just me, as much as porn reference, and that’s what was on my mind.
at any rate, thank you for the validation that it’s ok to post such things, and please ALWAYS jump in on the comments should you feel the desire. It is definitely not a prerequisite to be a real life friend, and I’m sorry that there was any perception of that.
The two points you did add were well noted. I read a bit last year about the latest teen brain research (impulse control is the last to develop) and as far as the emotional aspects of sex, some of us go a lifetime trying to figure out and mitigate *those* risks, the physical ones notwithstanding.
very much appreciate the thoughtful reply.
~Jane