I was raised on something approaching abstinence-only education. I'm still not sure how this was supposed to work. The focus was on sex as something that was a waste of time, something to be endured or even something that would make your boyfriend break up with you. Occasionally there would be a "but if": but if you were married and wanted to have a baby, it would be OK in those limited circumstances, but that was really beside the point since it was irrelevant to my situation.
Come to think of it, it's still irrelevant to my situation, and there would never have been a point in my life when that would have described me.
It didn't help that I was a teenager in the town with the highest HIV infection rate in the country. My mother seized the opportunity to send a message. I learned that condoms have holes in them like the gaps between your fingers when you splay them wide and cross your hands. And they break. And they slip off. It was hard to believe that any public-health agency would ever recommend their use considering how unreliable they were. I went to conferences where we were shown colour slides of infected genitalia and lectured sternly about how having sex would wreck our relationships and our lives. Besides, as you might recall, sex was really a waste of time and definitely not worth the effort.
But even with the colour slides, I wasn't really so worried about AIDS or STIs (or, as we called them then, STDs). I was relatively sure that those wouldn't be big issues. On the other hand, I was pretty concerned about getting pregnant and being dumped. That was always the worst-case scenario in my mother's dire warnings: Your boyfriend would dump you and then you'd be pregnant and alone, and EVERYONE WOULD KNOW. It would be humiliating. And all for something that wasn't even any good! Considering all of the awful things that were certain to happen, it was really a terrible idea, start to finish.
I was also assured that "there is this thing about boys that makes them want to go further". This was clearly horrible. I didn't actually know what it meant, but I could tell it was really bad and was the reason nobody should ever make out. (Starting from the time I was ten, my mother would issue this stern warning any time we watched a movie that included any heavy kissing. I was smart enough to make that connection, even if the details were still unclear.)
So now it's 20 years later and, although I know it was all bunk, it's too late for me. Kids are really vulnerable to this stuff. And, to twist a metaphor I heard used in an abstinence-only context, there's no "off" switch for the damage it does. I'm married and in my thirties, and this crap that I know is crap still affects me. You don't grow up being told that sex is bad and a waste of time and then do a 180 once you get married.
So thanks a lot, Mom. I know you thought you were helping.
I have a real problem with how early many women are having sex, as well as the pressure they get from our culture, as well as from the men they're in a relationship with. But the type of "teaching" you received is no antidote to that.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between teaching that having sex, even when using birth control, has potential significant consequences, especially if you're female, and teaching that sex is dirty or only has one purpose. Sadly, too many of those who teach the former also teach the latter.
In my opinion, sex needs to be something that is discussed openly and honestly with our chilkdren, uncomfortable as that may be. We need to stress that sex can be wonderful and fun, that having sex responsibly is critical, and that pressure on anyone to have sex, or any kind of sex they're uncomfortable with, is not acceptable.
I think my ex and I did a pretty good job with our daughter (although it was primarily my ex, for obvious reasons.) But she did hear the truth from us about some of the stupid things we did when we were younger (especially me - I was a bit of a wild child once I got away from home) and what the consequences could have been.
She's now married with four children, and we can still talk about sex in a general manner, which we do sometimes as she deals with two of her girls entering puberty.
It's sad how many damaged people (especially women) their are because of the "sex is dirty" teachings. Sometimes the damage can be reversed. Some people are able to recover through counseling or therapy. But sometimes it can't.
Yes, I was horribly embarrassed when I discussed sex with the Smart Twins, as were they. But discuss it we did, with the primary focus of the talk being, "Sex can be wonderful, but it can also be awful if you're not choosy. And it's ALWAYS an adult activity with adult consequences, for good or for ill."
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder how your brothers were, ahem, "educated."
Take all that, add the catholic-guilt to it, and you just described my mother. Needless to say, it takes a long time to recover, if ever completely.
ReplyDeleteEven to this day, with granddaughters old enough to have kids of their own, she still shies away from frank talks about sexuality... it's not her fault, she was just passing down what she was taught was the right way to raise girls, and she was essentially its first victim.
I'm with Janiece on the double-standard, how was it different with your brothers?
Firstly, about this topic in schools. I feel the same about sex education as I feel about everything else taught in schools: it should be factual, unbiased, and tell all sides of the story. Sex Ed programs in school should not be for preaching or advertising the “right” way to do things. That's not their job. They just need to teach the anatomy, and the various choices and consequences, and all the other straightforward stuff. I do like the idea of having classes where kids can talk openly about sex and ask questions - sometimes it's easier to talk about it with someone other than a parent - as long as the whole conversation isn't being used to sway anyone one way or another.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, I think parents should ultimately be responsible for the less straightforward stuff, should anything there need to be explained. I say "should anything there need to be explained" because I don't think I ever talked with my mom even once about sex. I never asked any questions, and she never gave any opinions. I was on birth control from a pretty young age for medical reasons, and that easily transitioned into its actual use. I lived in a family that was very nonchalant about my relationships, even in high school. I frequently spent the night at my boyfriend’s house, or he spent the night at my house. I’m pretty sure my mom probably assumed we were having sex, she just didn’t feel the need to mention it. I’d like to think this was because she figured I knew what I was doing, rather than her just not caring.
I generally put people who teach straight-up, abstinence only sex education into one of two categories (which can or cannot overlap): religious or naïve. This may be an unfair set of buckets, but that’s mostly what I encounter. Either you have a strong religious teaching that makes you promote abstinence in accordance with the rules of your holy book, or you are just not facing the reality of the world. Kids are going to find out about sex, they are going to be exposed to it, they are going to want to do it, and it’s really silly (in my opinion) to use scare tactics or humiliation or whatever else to ensure your kid is not going to have sex before marriage/baby-making. If you are too busy scaring them, you do not have the time to teach them about peer pressure and saying no and condoms and the day-after pill. If you stop at the “don’t do it” part, you are stopping ahead of the “this is how to avoid something bad happening” or “this is what you do if something bad happens” parts, which puts the hormone-crazed teens in a very bad spot.
I don’t think you should necessarily be promoting teens going out and having sex, but there needs to be a fair balance of information and answers coming from a trusted adult source.
I wish someone had given me a sex talk. All I know I learned from late-night movies on Cinemax
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