I’d like to hear views on the fact that we hide sex from children.
Would knowldge of reproduction & the sexual anatomy really be harmful to young children? I mean if we didn’t try so hard to make it a forbidden subject and treateded it as most other subjects, would it really harm kids or turn them into sex-crazed monsters? When in Pompii(sp?) I noticed that sex & sexural anatomy was there for all, including kids, to see. In pre-Christian times, sex does not seem to have been as surpressed as today. BTW, I raised my 4 in the common tradition, but answered their questions as honestly as I could & was never “shocked” by them. I surelly never told them that the subject would dam them to hell’s fire as I was told! Why the hang-up? St. Thomas? Is a natural human function, how did it come to be “dirty”? Do other modern cultures treat sex as we do?
This issue came up in spits and spats at the good ol’ LBMB a few times. Usually when someone who thought prayer should be in school said that prayer time would be better spent than that that darn Sex Education.
The fascinating thing is that these same folks were ardently Pro-Life.
When I pointed out the inconsistancies in this, they did not seem to notice.
The fact is that some people feel it far better for their kids to learn about sex from the guy in the school yard who encourages your kid to smell his finger than from adults who can convey this information with the diplomacy, accuracy and these days urgency it deserves.
Note: I do not mean to indict parents who teach their kids about these things at home, but my findings is that most parents who do this responsibly also have no qualms with reproductive education at school either.
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The problem my conservative relatives have with sex ed is that a) it normalizes pre-marital sex and b) the curriculum usually includes homosexuality. Both of these are considred by some groups to be sins against God.
The problem is not explaining sexual function or organs, but all of the other stuff that goes along with it.
Sex shouldn’t necesarily be held from children, but there is such a thing as age appropriateness. Sex can be pretty powerful. I don’t think that it is a good idea to be teaching a four year old about oral sex.
I went through the two step sex ed program and I think that that was a good program. In fifth grade we had an intro that just went into puberty (we got free deoderant samples, too bad I did not pick it up again until late 6th grade) and then taught the reproductive system like any other system such as the digestive. In eigth grade we got the real sex-ed, although our particular program really sucked (no pun intended); I guess that that was all they still can get away with.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
I’m with Satan on this one. The people who are most opposed to sex education in the schools are all too often the same people who are reluctant to teach it at home. My Catholic mother somehow learned which acts were mortal sins before she learned which ones would make you pregnant. (I don’t know how you can teach that a certain act is a sin without talking about it, but she wasn’t taught by the Catholic heirarchy, she was taught by other Catholic kids on the playground.)
I haven’t figured out exacttly what bad stuff is going to happen to kids if you teach them about sex. There are plenty of horror stories about six-year-olds being taught about oral sex, just as there are plenty of horror stories of twenty-year-olds not knowing how babies are made.
Some (conservative) politicians have made much of dire-sounding positive correlations between teen pregnancy and sex education. I don’t know whether these correlations are even true, but they are definitely not evidence that sex ed causes teen pregnancy; they are probably evidence that teen pregnancy draws funding for sex education, which does a less-than-perfect job stamping out teen pregnancy.
Once the sex ed class gets past the giggling stage (and believe me, some never do), the students usually take an academic approach to the subject. Not surprising, given that they’ve been taught to take an academic approach to everything else. The idea that sex ed is going to teach students that sex exists is a naive fantasy for squeamish adults. Kids already know that sex exists. They just don’t know which birth control methods are most effective; which prevent AIDS and which don’t.
The idea that demystifying and intellectualizing sex would make kids go out and have tons of unsafe sex is just bizarre to me. The best way to make something boring is to give kids a textbook and homework on it.
Heck, little kids (as young as 4 or 5 years old) often “Play Doctor” with one another, and have even been known to experiment with putting Tab A into Slot B.
I personally believe Joycelin Elders had the right idea when she suggested that Sex Education begin in Kindergarten. (At the Kindergarten level, you could start out gently with The Differences Between Boys And Girls [TM], and maybe Where Babies Come From [TM].)
I have mixed feelings about where I stand in this debate, but allow me to illustrate the fundie’s view…
Would you as a parent be comfortable with a teacher at school showing your kids how to safely load, fire, and unload a firearm regardless of how you as a parent felt about the issue of guns? And if you had the nerve to complain you were told that
1)Guns are a part of reality-ignoring reality is doing your kids wrong
2)It’s not your job to tell your kids what’s right for them…it’s simply your job to inform them of the risks of guns and let them decide what they want to do with the imformation
3)Kids are going to play with guns whether you like it or not, so you might as well give them “safe” guns and properly instruct them on how to use them…after all, better a responsible adult teach you children about guns than a kid right?
On the other hand, we all do believe that there ought to be some line. For instance, I would not have sex in front of any child over about 12 months, asleep or awake. I suspect that most people agree with me. Why?
Certainly many people, especially poor people, in the pre-modern world must have been having sex in front of the children–if all you have is a one-room sod house, and snow on the ground six months out of the year, I suspect that most people waited until the children went asleep and went at it. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been more children. Tenement slums in New York and London in the nineteenth century offered zero privacy, yet foundlings abounded, so sex was happening somewhere. Early medieval castles had a seperate sleeping chamber only for the lord’s immediate family. Everyone else slept in the great hall together, from babies to knoghts to old people of both sexes. The serfs all huddled together in small huts along with the farm animals. I think there must have been a strong social convention among the lower classes about pretending to be asleep, something that the middle class socialogists either never understood or were to shy to write down.
My query to you, Carl (and it is an earnest query) is: When you say “hide” what do you mean? Should we have sex in front of kids? Should we feel free to announce: “I am going to go have sex with your father now. You kids leave us alone.” I am really uncomfortable with this idea, but I am having trouble articulating why. Can anyone help me, or convince me it is just my puritanical American roots?
I have certainly not left my child’s sex ed up to the schools. However, I did make sure she promised to talk to me about anything she learned at school that upset her or that differed with anything I had told her. FWIW, she told me that she got lots more specific information about sex in her parochial school “family living” class in 6th grade than in her public school “family living” class in 7th grade. I’ll bet lots of parents think the schools teach more than they do, and that said parents would force themselves to talk to their kids more if they realized that. I’d hate to think people could sit on the couch next to their kid watching some of the eye-popping crap that prime-time TV has these days, and feel unable to discuss normal sex with that kid.
I’m with Mandy on the “not in front of the kids” tho. Some things should probably stay hid.
I don’t think anyone would say that reasonable personal privacy boundaries should be torn down.
Of course people should teach their children that having boundaries is healthy and that everyone needs privacy. The trick is not going so far that you fill them with shame.
As far as sexuality goes, humans are sexual beings from birth. Healthy sexuality lasts a lifetime, it doesn’t just suddenly kick into gear at puberty.
When children are ready to know, they will ask, and they should get simple and direct answers. For example; “Mommy, where did I come from?” Can be answered with, “You grew inside my uterus.” I was raised this way and I am grateful that I don’t have the hangups that my more conservative friends have.
“I mean, if you can’t wear pantyhose in your hair, what’s the point?”
jenkinsfan, that is a great idea! In fact, the NRA has a program similar to the one you described. It’s called the “Eddie Eagle” program, and it’s primarily focused on gun safety and responsibility. If more kids knew the facts about guns instead of the hype, they’d pass fewer stupid gun laws when they grew into adults!
An elementary-school-level course in driving cars would be a good idea, too – I noticed myself being a much safer pedestrian around traffic after I knew how cars “normally” drove.
Oh, really? Well our kid asked that when he was about five & we said ‘los angeles’ That was all he wanted to know. When a kid asks
“Mommy, where did I come from?” that’s in kids’ words, not adults.
Whatever. You know what I am talking about. Perhaps that was not a good example. So let the crucifixtion of Sweet_Lotus by the tightly-wound nitpickers begin!
That is just one facet about this which is pretty much wrong. Everyone has a penis or a vagina. Everyone about the age of 15 and onward, decide for various reasons that using them feels good.
Not everyone has a weapon in their hands.
Now, I’m all for the freedom of people to have guns (well-regulated, of course), but to compare a natural act that we are all inborne with the desire to do and having training in the use of a weapon that not everyone needs are two different concepts.
Besides, there are tons of places where one can get gun education. The “Eddie Eagle” program that was mentioned already from the NRA. I learned to shoot rifle in the Boy Scouts. There are private clubs which offer uch classes as well.
Where, outside of the home (which has already been mentioned) and the school, where are kids getting this information? I don’t see a slew of options there… Unless we go back to the kid in the school yard who says that a girl getting on top will not get pregnant or some other non-factual and dangerously mistaken ideas.
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The sex-ed classes I had in school were dull, but one thing that does stand out in my mind is the fact that the teachers I had were very matter-of-fact. They presented the classes in a calm, collected manner, which kept us rowdy buttheads in line.
What they didn’t teach us about, though, was birth control. Now, my parents were open-minded enough to discuss this issue with me, thank Goddess, and they also referred me to our family doctor for any questions they couldn’t answer, like “Chemically, how does the pill work? What does it actually do?” I wish my sex-ed instructors had been able to talk about these things, though. It’s my understanding that at the time (late 70’s-early 80’s) they weren’t allowed to.
What kind of sex-ed gets taught in schools today? This is an honest question–it’s been so long for me, and society has changed so much, that I really don’t know what they’re doing now. Do they give instruction of various forms of birth control? What about STD’s? And are there any good books out there that will help *me, * as a parent, teach my kids about sex? As a child, I read Where Did I Come From and Our Bodies, Ourselves, but these books didn’t really teach a parent how to teach. That’s what I’m looking for, since I know that the responsibility ultimately lies with me.
Cristi, Slayer of Peeps
I made my husband join a bridge club. He jumps next Tuesday.
Just for the sake of argument, what if 6-year-olds know all about blowjobs, anal sex, and every other variation known to man? In what way are they damaged by this information? (Which I think was the focus of the original post).
Everyone seems to want to say sex is natural, information is good, but then gets a little queezy if it starts to sound to “nasty”.
I contend that this stems from having been raised to think of certain acts as “nasty”, certain body parts as “dirty”. Maybe if we weren’t given these hang-ups by our parents, we wouldn’t feel so funny talking about natural (or unnatural, depending on your point of view) acts with our kids.
My proposed remedy: Be as open and honest as you can with your own kids, even if it makes you squirm.
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Firstly, let me preface my comments by acknowleding that I recognize the fact that you don’t state that these are your arguments. But I think this is a gross reduction of an incredibly complex issue, so let me build upon your analogy a little and restate the question more appropriately (though still not adequately). There are a few things left out of your gun/sex analogy:
Everyone but a statistically insignificant minority would have their gun at all times.
An enormous amount of our customs, laws, and rules are built on mysterious “gun etiquette.” Much of our drama, comedy, art, music, literature, and religion is infused with “gun” themes.
The mass media imbues the “gun” with a mystique that those who use their weapons well are cool, sophisticated, popular, and happy.
A child’s friends, to include their current love, will often place pressure, both directly and indirectly, on the child to engage in gunplay.
Very powerful biological promptings will urge your child to experiment with the gun.
A certain portion of the parents and community leaders out there will obstinately ignore guns, and insist that nobody speak of them around children. They tell children that guns are sinful, and are not to be used.
The above additions still do not adequately bring the gun analogy up to snuff, but they bring us a little closer. (It still doesn’t confront the reality of teen parenthood.) Given the above, would you still advocate that children be kept ignorant? Wouldn’t you want them to know the cold, hard facts rather than have them experiment?
