Good time to point to Richard Thompson’s take on the subject.
As for me, never got it. My father was not the chatty type. Plus. I knew where the Playboys were hidden, my friend’s father also had a bunch, and my father probably figured (correctly) that I was in no danger of having to fight off the women. So, I learned in the gutter the way Og intended. This was pre-AIDs, so it wasn’t quite as much a big deal.
I was a kid pre-drugs, so that talk was never given. It wasn’t really pre-drugs, of course, but most parents knew nothing about them.
I never got the “talk”, I never gave the “talk”. What I did, was ask my 18 yo son and his girlfriend about what contraceptive measures they were using.
Afterwards I thought about what my Dad would have done. He must have thought a knowing look had superpowers.
I don’t remember getting “the talk,” but I do remember not being surprised when I started my period, so I must have known about that. My mom was never shy about bathroom stuff so I already knew about pads and tampons and what to do with them and how to get blood stains out of panties.
In 7th grade Catholic school we had sex ed, including birth videos. I remember being grossed out by the birth, but not surprised by any of the information about the mechanics or anatomy, so I’m pretty sure there were conversations at home prior to that! Maybe in my home it was just a more fluid “part of life” thing that was never a furtive secret. My favorite tv shows were NOVA and Wild Kingdom, so maybe that tells you something about me as a kid.
I made a reference to a blow job when I was 15 and my mom made me explain it to her so she knew that I understood the reference. I did.
My parents sat me down together when I was 16 and we had a DRUGS talk. Basically they said I could try weed, but if I wanted to I had to let them know so they could get it for me and that way it was more likely to be “safe” and not be laced with PCP or something. So, yeah, a green light from the parents to try weed pretty much put me off it for life. Besides they both smoked cigarettes and I hated it, so smoking anything was pretty much off the table anyway.
When I went to college, all Mom said was, “make sure you use condoms.” OK Mom.
I took sex ed as an easy college elective to cover the phys ed requirement. The guy who sat next to me actually failed the class. Amazing. It was all the same stuff I had learned in Catholic high school of all places!
No, but I spent a lot of time in the library and inevitably found books explaining puberty, menstruation, sex, etc. so it wasn’t really necessary. Later on there was sex ed in school that explained more. For drugs/alcohol I guess my parents just decided to lead by example, or maybe since my mom doesn’t drink at all, my dad rarely even has a beer and neither so much as smoke, it didn’t occur to them until I was old enough to have already figured it out.
Menstruation: My mom ordered a big sampler box of “feminine products.” I remember that it was baby-puke green and had a lot of huge ugly-ass flowers on it. It contained mostly pantyliners and pads (including the medieval belt). I also remember my dad asking about the box and my mom sort of shushing him into another room.
When the time came, I tried a pad once (yuck), then stole my mom’s tampons from under the sink :mad: until I got a chance to buy my own.
Sex: I don’t think it ever came up, but if it had, I KNOW it would have been short: “Don’t.” Not like it was an issue anyway; I had no social life (with either guys or knowledgeable girlfriends) in high school. By the time I came even close to getting any, roughly around age 20, I’d already absorbed the basics from here and there.
When my ex-husband and I decided to let my son watch Team America, I had the task (since he saw it with me, not with his dad) of explaining all the sex slang/jokes to him, so that he’d understand why it was not OK to go repeating that stuff at school or whatever.
I guess so. I was still a virgin at the time and so were my friends. I suppose she figured foreplay techniques possibly hadn’t been discussed yet. I think she wanted to make sure I knew it didn’t entail actual blowing.
At this point I thing whe need to make a differance between The Book and those books. Those books being the ones that tought you certain things you wouldn’t learn in sex ed class and when your mom found you reading them your dad would swear he really didn’t know how they got into the store-room, a burgler mujst have put them there, and meanwhile as the parental units fought you laughed your but off.
Oh yeah, that reminds me of another bit of info Grandma passed on. I was approximately nine years old, playing in the back yard with my brother, and he did something that caused me to call him a “jerkoff” at the top of my voice. Grandma popped out the back door and told me to come inside (totally unfair, no?) Then she wanted me to sit in the corner. I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what her problem was. She told me, “You called him…that word.”
“What…jerkoff? Well, he is a jerkoff!”
“Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah…it’s like he’s a jerk!”
“No, it means masturbation.”
“Well, what’s that?”
“Sit in the corner!”
:dubious:
Yeah, my mom coralled me in the car and brought it up during some long drive.
I WAS FIFTEEN!!
Mom: So o o o … <deep breath> I wanted to talk with you about sex.
Me: Um, ma, you’re a little late.
Mom: WHAT?!?!?
Me: We’ve had sex ed classes since, like, eight grade.
Mom: Oh. <long pause> So, do you have any questions about what you learned?
Me: None that I’m gonna ask you!
That was the beginning and end of any sex talk with my parents!
(Unless you count the time my mom was bitching at me about my boyfriend having a tongue piercing and wanted me to use, and I quote, my “womanly influence” to get him to take it out.)
I’ve known since I was about 6 and started asking my mom a lot of detailed questions. She gave me a pretty full explanation - sperms and eggs, fetuses growing in uterii, penis and vagina and how they go together, ejaculation, sex feels great and is a special bond between adults who love each other, etc. I then spent the better part of the next decade educating my friends, none of whom had any real information, what sex was and how it worked. Does that count?
I didn’t know about oral sex until the Bill Clinton scandal (I was 12). But my parents have never had oral sex and think it’s weird.
I can’t believe grown-ups feel uncomfortable discussing sex with their children (not adolescents, who are usually somewhat sexually active by 14, children - especially in this day and age, many kids know about anal and foot fetishes and have seen some hardcore porn by the time they are 10). To me the last acceptable age to be embarrassed by the mechanics of sex is 12. Man up, parents. I can’t count the number of sexually active kids I knew growing up who were pretty much totally ignorant about the mechanics of sex, the risks of sex, and protecting themselves - despite several years of fairly comprehensive sex education, full internet access, and plenty of porn exposure. There were pregnancy scares, pregnancies, babies, STDs, and sexual abuse that they were unprepared to deal with or seek help for as a result. Talk to your kids, parents. Ignorance is dangerous, and sex ed isn’t any more of a solution than the D.A.R.E. program.
My dad gave me The Talk about sex. He said, “Son, we need to have a talk. Now, sex…” I don’t remember anything else about the conversation. I zoned out of the whole thing.
It was in the mid-60s - I was about 10 or 11. My mom gave me some pamphlets and explained how to use a Kotex pad and belt (back before pads were self-adhesive.) I remember her saying something about blood and babies, which later led me to telling a neighbor girl that since her mother was having blood clots, she was having a baby. :eek:
My mom also told me how God gave babies to married couples, and I was too scared and confused to ask about unmarried teenagers who got pregnant. I didn’t understand how they tricked God… :rolleyes: She finished the talk by telling me not to worry about boys till I was in high school. Being the goody-goody I was, I was terrified of even talking to boys for years.
I don’t think she ever figured out why I didn’t date in high school.
Sex Ed wasn’t much better. Honestly, I learned more from dirty jokes… and from my husband.
My parents were both nurses and my mom worked in OB to boot, so my sisters and I learned about it at a very young age. I remember being about 4 and my parents trying to have “the talk” and just not caring. I don’t remember not knowing about it all.
I do remember when we were 8 and at daycare. The providers 7 year-old daughter was playing house with us and my sister said that she wanted to be the mommy. The daughter said that SHE wanted to be the mommy! A disagreement ensued and finally, the daughter said, “We can BOTH be the mommy and just have two mommies.” My sister then went on to explain to the girl why that just wasn’t (physically) possible, in great detail. The girl went running to ask her mom if that was true. We got a stern talking to about that one, but my mom did say she thought that 7 was probably old enough to be aware that you needed a mommy and a daddy.
I also baby-sat for a family that didn’t tell their children until they were 7. I always thought that that was a bit old, but from this thread, I can see that it is younger then many.
I went to a Catholic grade school, and there was a book series which we went through during religion class entitled, “Becoming a Person”. One day, in fifth grade, the teacher took all the girls to a separate room for class that day (I think the principal watched over us boys in the meantime); when the girls came back to the classroom, they looked at us boys with wide eyes. The next day, the teacher took the boys off for The Talk. While I’d seen a few copies of Playboy before then, this was the first time that I’d actually heard about sex. Blew my mind, too.
