Talking to teenagers about birth control. Did your parents? Do you?

In My Humble Opinion
41

My mother didn’t mention a word to me about menstruation or sex–ever. Then again, my mother has never said the words, “I love you” to me, either, so my expectations in this area were not high to begin with.
I won’t go so far as to say that sex is everyday conversation in my house, but my daughter does know the different types of BC and that AB is an option. My sons–looks like I need to stress with them the bit about “don’t rely on the girl for BC–condoms, condoms, condoms”. So, thanks to all those who posted that. It is not a subject I shy away from, but I don’t drag it into conversations either…
Those stats re HS graduating class are skeery as hell. There were 2 pregnant girls at my HS graduation–in 1980. Class of 847 kids. I thought at the time it that 2 was excessive–looks like my generation got off easy.

to my mind, ignorance=pregnancy. Instead of facing a potentially devastating decision re abortion–why not prevent the whole dilemma? That said, I want my kids to be mature enough emotionally to handle a sexual relationship–and that varies per kid.

42

My mom was pretty good, except for the actual birth control part. She started telling me about sex around age 8… (mid to late 1970’s) one of my Dad’s aunts had commented that her daughter got her menses at 8, so mom went to the library and gave me a bunch of books, that I wasnt interested in, and made me squirm. But she told me stuff and said I could always ask more questions. I didnt ask, but she gave me these ancient pamphlets that came in Kotex boxes and I read those too.

When I started my menses she made sure I had supplies. I didnt want to discuss it, but she gave me EVEN MORE pamphlets and books. Seventeen magazine. (This was in the 1980’s. It seemed that every issue had a either sex ed, birth control, your health and your body, or an anti-drug article.) She would point out informational articles to me. Told me she had a bad experience with the pill, but never really told me much about birth control.

I was an awkward, overweight teen, and had more interest in the card catalouge than boys would ever have in me. But I was informed. I even read some things myself, hiding the book deep in my packsack.

Later, when I was in university, and had a boyfriend I was already on the pill for my terrible dysmenorrhea. She paid for my pills when I was in school.

Even later we talked about sex, birth control, etc. I said she was great at the biology part, but lacked in the birth control part. She said that she didnt know much herself, so she read the articles in Seventeen then passed them on to me.

My mom felt that she had to do better for me than her mother did for her. Mom’s sum total of sex-ed from her mother (aproximately 1954)… Grandma took the summer camp application and points to the sentence “Has your daughter started menstruating?” and asked “Do you know what this means?” Mom said “yes” Grandma said “Thats good” and left.

Interestingly it was at that summer camp the nurse told them all the details of procreation, etc.

43

You didn’t believe her for a second, did you? This is why the Bush regime’s abstinence-only programs, and pretty much everything like them, fail. This is also why “Just Say No” has never worked and never will work except for people who already say no. This is also why Prohibition failed so miserably. This is also why the prohibition of prostitution is failing so miserably. Scare tactics only work until someone grows old enough that they start looking around them and comparing what they hear to what they see. Because what you hear is so radical and so obviously perpendicular to what you see, you discard it and throw caution to the wind, ignoring any real dangers, which are by now the baby in the discarded bathwater.

Don’t ask how I know…

That’s an important bit that gets forgotten too much. I had a friend who found out, after having lots of condomless sex with his girlfriend, that she had been lying to him about taking BC the whole time. By some stroke of luck–perhaps combined with careful planning by his girlfriend that he wasn’t privy to–he didn’t end up a father. He was a college freshman and a cocaine addict at the time, though. He’s ditched the llello since, but being a sophomore now I’m sure it still wouldn’t be easy, or a good life for the kid. I was dating a girl at the same time who, I found out from her friend after breaking up, had had a ton more unprotected indiscriminate sex than she had told me about. I can’t remember using a condom once with her–I saw her patch, knew she wasn’t a smoker, and she said she was clean so I dove right in, figuratively speaking. Thankfully she actually was clean–but thinking about it now, I might as well have had sex with all of her previous partners too, so I’m lucky she picked by happenstance a bunch of guys with no diseases.

BTW, as long as we’re talking about high school stats, I had a class of 150 that was roughly even between boys and girls. One girl came to graduation with a baby. I didn’t know of other girls who had gotten pregnant, but within a summer or a semester a lot of girls from that class ended up pregnant, including the girl I took to prom (with some 25-year-old guy). None married, none in any vaguely comfortable financial situation.

Is anybody else thinking of But I’m A Cheerleader?

44

Oh, I know (and knew at the time). :slight_smile: And I completely agree with you. My mom, however, fully supports abstinence-only education. Her reasoning is, “if you tell people “don’t do it, but if you do, use this”, they’ll just know it’s okay go to and do it.” For some reason, she doesn’t understand the idea of, “if they’re gonna do something you don’t want them to, don’t you want them to be safe?”

The ‘funny’ part is that she took the exact opposite stance for smoking. She started smoking in high school so told my brother and I: “I don’t want you guys smoking because it’s horrible for you and it doesn’t make you look cool; that’s why I started and it didn’t work. But even though I don’t want you to smoke, if you do, I’m not going to get mad because I’d be a hypocrite.”

Guess what? Neither of us smoke. But for some reason, she can’t see that that approach can work in other areas as well. :rolleyes:

She is so lucky I didn’t totally act out because I had no information from her (she refused to even tell me what a condom is when I was 12! I didn’t want graphic details, but I wanted to know. Ironically, it was because I was reading one of her Rush Limbaugh books. :wink: But man, she got pissed at me for asking). Of course, the downside is that I didn’t act out and rebel and fuck like a rabbit because I had so many issues regarding any kind of intimate contact that I even cried for a half hour after my first hug from a guy because I was convinced that I didn’t deserve it and was a horrible person for it. Now, you tell me: is that healthier? :rolleyes:

45

My mother was classically trained in parenthood by her. For the purposes of a timeline, she lived through the Great Depression. She practiced something I call “preemptive strikes”. By that I mean she would introduce concepts or ideas to me before they were needed. It was a form of pre-programming that is surprisingly successful if practiced correctly. Her advice on birth control was abstract but very compelling. She told me 2 things: “Don’t come home and tell me you’re a daddy” and “babysitting (by grandparents) is a privilege that I should not expect to abuse”. This started almost the day after I was told about sex and continued randomly until I was out of the house. She would simply blurt out these random chunks of wisdom without warning. They were all intended to make me think about the consequences of my actions.

46

My mother handed me a booklet when I was 11. It explained the mechanics but contraception wasn’t mentioned. It was very difficult for young, single women to get a script for the Pill when I was a teenager. And why on earth would I need one anyway? Abstinence was the only way, according to my mother. Fortunately, this was about the time that Women’s Health Centres were starting to spring up and proper advice was available to hussies like me.

I’ve discussed contraception with my sons. It’s more complicated these days, of course, because of HIV but we’ve talked about it a lot.

47

At age 16, having been seen kissing a girl at a village Guy Fawkes party, I got a short embarrassed speech from my mother that amounted to “Don’t get anyone pregnant”. Why, since I was plainly assumed to have figured out the how-not-to all by myself, I needed that particular pearl of wisdom, remains a mystery to this day.

Incidentally, “fat chance” would have been the best and most appropriate response for several years to come. :dubious:

48

My dad said something along the lines of “You get a girl pregant, you are out of the house”. He stared me right in the eyes and I knew he damn well meant it. That was the extent of our conversation.

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**1. Did you parents talk to you about birth controll/pregnancy specifically? **

Oh yeah. I got the “two forms of birth control” talk from my mom. (Highlights include: “you come from very fertile stock”, and “remember: your little sister was a sponge baby!”) This followed hard on the heels of the “teenage boys don’t know what they’re doing, so you probably shouldn’t have sex yet” talk. We also discussed abortion.

This was all with my mom. I never discussed sex with my father. And I never will.

2. Did/do/will you talk to your children about this in detail? Tell them specifically that they can come to you if pregnant? Or do you just hope?

Of course!