What are boys told about dating/girls/sex?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by the thread about fathers’s attitudes towards their daughters’ dates.

Okay, so teenage guys want sex. And they don’t have such good impulse control. But forget about the girl’s father’s role for a moment. What about the boy’s father? What are his expectations for his son’s behavior around/with girls? What were any of you told, when you were a teenage guy, about dating, and girls, and sex? What have you told or plan to tell your sons?

  1. Any talk about these subjects at all?

  2. Was it just about contraception, like “No matter what she says, you use a condom”?

  3. Any discussion about what would happen if he did get a girl pregnant?

  4. Was there further discussion about dating (separately from sex), like “Don’t get all wrapped up in a girl; I don’t want you flunking out of school”?

  5. Was a curfew set? Was it affected in any way by inclusion of girls in the boy’s social life? Any other restrictions? Was he allowed to be alone in the basement with a girl, for instance?

  6. Any discussion about…well, acting gentlemanly? “No means no” is a relatively new development, but did anyone ever talk in general about not pushing a girl further than she wanted to go? Any warnings not to give an overprotective father of a girl good reason to be overprotective?

That’s all I’ve got for now. (If moms also want to chime in on parenting a son, go for it.)

2

Gay guy here so possibly a slightly different kettle of fish. I had “the talk” about what sex was when I was about ten because I asked, but that was mainly on a biological level. I came out to my mother at 14 and had (not surprisingly) had no interest in girls previously so it just didn’t really come up. After I came out it was similarly obvious that nothing was going to be happening romantically for me at my school given how incredibly homophobic an environment it was (I happen to know that some people in my school turned out to be gay, but given that I was a walking example of just how crucified you would be if you came out no-one followed suit).

I’ve always had a good relationship with my mother and she raised me to be an adult, so no conversation has been off limits. She did say when I was a little older and the idea of going out and meeting people was more likely that if I ever did get involved with someone (or was just going to have sex) then to please do it at home where I was safe rather than in some bush or public toilet.

That’s kind of it for me, I think because the rules are different for us homos the conversations about girls and dating don’t really translate that well, and if you’re gay you’re far more likely to start getting romantically involved in your late teens/early twenties when you’re a bit more equipped to do it (although this brings its own suite of problems too, so I wouldn’t say it’s better necessarily).

3

I grew up in a strict religious house, and sex before marriage was “right out”.

  1. Any talk about these subjects at all?
    No. No. And No. Sex before marriage is considered a huge sin, which the church covered, but it was never discussed in our house. I think my mother would have died before talking about body part or sex. That said, my father was molesting my sisters and my older brother raped me, so it was a pretty screwed up environment.

  2. Was it just about contraception, like “No matter what she says, you use a condom”?
    Obviously this was never discussed. Contraception would not be encouraged. Sex before marriage is a sin. Etc.

  3. Any discussion about what would happen if he did get a girl pregnant? Obviously this was never discussed. Sex before marriage is a sin. Etc.

  4. Was there further discussion about dating (separately from sex), like “Don’t get all wrapped up in a girl; I don’t want you flunking out of school”?
    Never, ever. Dating was not discussed either.

  5. Was a curfew set? etc.
    When I was about 17 my parents were separated for a while and I had some more freedom, but it was all unspoken. While my father was around, I got back at a “reasonable time. I could never bring friends, let alone girls to our house. It was all pretty fucked up.

  6. Any discussion about…well, acting gentlemanly?
    See above. Anything further than light kissing was taught to be morally wrong, and any petting is a sin, let alone sex. That must stressed much more by the church but never, ever discussed in our house.

4

Father of two sons, now grown.

My advice was PRIC = Personal Responsibility, Informed Consent. I started with informed consent first but my youngest son quickly changed the order for the acronym.

My wife’s advice was “Education, Job, Wife, Children”. Doesn’t have to be in that order but is significantly easier if it is.

At some ealrly point both of those were elaborated on but the were frequent short hand reminders throughout their teen years.

5

But now the acronym is prick.

6

Mom chiming in:
**

  1. Any talk about these subjects at all?** Yes, lots. More than he wants to hear, possibly.

2. Was it just about contraception, like “No matter what she says, you use a condom”? Nope. Very little contraceptive talk, actually, because that’s the one area that his school handles okay. (Although the other day I was cutting nopales, and the mucilage reminded me of fertile cervical mucus. I turned to him in the kitchen and said, “Look! If a girl’s discharge does this stretch stretch stretch - don’t sleep with her! That’s good fertile quality stuff!”)

I’ve focused my talks more about the emotional impact of having sex, the emotional complications and how having sex can change the entire dynamic of a group of friends, not just the two friends that “hook up”. I think this last is important because he has such a close circle of friends, and the newspaper these days tell me kids are more likely to “hook up” within that circle than to date outside of it. And indeed, that has been the case for at least some of them.

**3. Any discussion about what would happen if he did get a girl pregnant? **No. We need to discuss this in more detail. There’s been a lot of, “please don’t!” and “Safe sex so that you won’t…” but no actual what if discussion. Thanks, I’ll add that to the list.

4. Was there further discussion about dating (separately from sex), like “Don’t get all wrapped up in a girl; I don’t want you flunking out of school”? No, not really. It hasn’t come up yet.

**5. Was a curfew set? Was it affected in any way by inclusion of girls in the boy’s social life? Any other restrictions? Was he allowed to be alone in the basement with a girl, for instance?**He doesn’t “date”, per se. He hangs out with his friends at someone’s house, and there’s not so much a set curfew as a cell phone I can call to tell him it’s about time to come home. It’s worked for us so far.

6. Any discussion about…well, acting gentlemanly? “No means no” is a relatively new development, but did anyone ever talk in general about not pushing a girl further than she wanted to go? Any warnings not to give an overprotective father of a girl good reason to be overprotective? Yes, lots! “Safe, Sane and Consensual” is my buzzphrase. He’s got a long distance girlfriend at the moment, with the understanding that they’re not exclusive. They’ll be seeing each other again in July, and I’ve started to encourage him to discuss boundaries and logistics with her for the summer - if they’re at the same campground (which they will be) are they exclusive for the duration? Open to discussion? Approval only or veto only? No strings attached? Emotional safe word or phrase so that if one of them is bothered by the other’s behavior in public, they can graciously disengage and go talk in private?

Not only has he been talked to about not pushing a girl farther than she wants to go, he’s been emphatically told that he should not tolerate a girl pushing him farther than he wants to go. It’s a two way street these days. Also that consent only applies for each act at the time it’s received - just because she slept with you last week doesn’t mean you have a claim this week (and vice-versa).

7

It was all on the job training for me.

8

My father didn’t discuss it with me at all.

9

Very little. My parents knew I didn’t need any “don’t get a girl knocked up” or “don’t ever hit a woman” death threats. I was more than a little reserved and not likely to have that kind of problem.
I also didn’t want to hear that stuff. I didn’t want my parents to talk to me about sex, and honestly I didn’t think much of their relationship. In a lot of ways I still don’t: they do have a bond but I’ve never been sure they actually like each other. Maybe it’s the nature of having a relationship when you have kids, but I saw them argue, bitterly at times, much more often than I saw them be kind to each other. They were nice to us, but with my dad in particular, there was a visible level of frustration. I never wanted to emulate that so I didn’t ask for advice. Of course the result is that I’ve made some of the same mistakes they did, but I also made new ones. Woo hoo.

I do think I’ll have kids but there’s no set timeline, so I have to admit I haven’t worked on this much. I don’t think it’s hard for young men to pick up on the basics if they have a good home environment, so I hope they’ll have a good starting point.

I remember some talks about the basics when I was a little kid, from my own curiosity. There’s so much sex ed in schools these days (for me, I think it was fifth, sixth, seventh and tenth grade) that there wasn’t much cause to ask after I was about 10.

When I was dating a girl in 11th grade my mom gave me some condoms. I was humiliated, mostly because I tended toward being prudish and it just wasn’t something I wanted to deal with with my mom. Of course, it was also true that this girl was so reserved she hardly ever kissed me (that was one mistake I learned from after one try), so I knew that was never going to be necessary. If we were ever going to get that far, it was going to be long after the expiration date on those condoms anyway. :stuck_out_tongue:

No, they knew I didn’t need it.

I got a little of that in college, when my mom started joking that I was majoring in (my girlfriend). I didn’t listen, which was not smart, but the problem wasn’t the girl, it was that I hadn’t been on my own very much and wasn’t sure how to handle that. So I found something more fun than reading and I did that instead. Not a good idea, because many people successfully do both, but I’ve made worse decisions in my life.
My dad did, just once around that time, pull me aside and say relationships have more stages than I realized and there was no need to hurry things.

Wasn’t necessary, fortunately or unfortunately.

They knew I didn’t need it. I’ve never asked my parents for advice on how to deal with a girl at all. I felt my experience with the individual girl trumped experience-based advice on women in general.

10

Nada.

11

As a slight aside, what would you have liked to hear from your father that might have helped at that time? Was he in your life or just your mom? Also, since the environment for gay people seems to be constantly evolving, how old are you now?

12

I wasn’t told much of anything about dating, and had no clue how to go about it, which may help to explain why I was in my late twenties before I had a girlfriend.

I did hear about sex from various sources (though not directly from my parents). I got the facts, and they were very often accompanied by admonishments about the physical (pregnancy, VD) and moral (save it for marriage) dangers—which I wavered between believing and being skeptical about, but which I was afraid would be—and, for way too long, were—sheerly academic questions for me.

13

Yeah, because parental advice is what helps people get dates :smiley:

14

My parents separated when I was six but he was around for most of my life. By the time I came out he was living 350 miles away from me and I only saw him a few times a year when I went to stay, so it was hard to have that much active participation with him. My relationship with my father is a little tricky to explain, I don’t think it’s very typical of most father/sons so not sure how useful it is to explore in this context. Talking to my mother (with her own experiences or having relationships with men) was more useful to me I think than what my father could have told me about his experiences of dating women.

I’m 29 so I didn’t exactly suffer through a more prudish time or anything, but the school I went to was quite deprived and the pupils going there very conformist and not particularly progressive so that was part of why it was difficult (and there was an element of herd conformity - people verbally abused me and threw things sometimes because that’s what everyone else did, and when you’re a teenager you tend not to think for yourself that much).

I have anecdotes from people both older and younger than me that depicted better school days, but also ones that were worse too (although I think people going through school now definitely live in a society that is more accepting of gays than I did).

15

The subject did not exist in my house.
Well, apart from the constant disparagement of men from my mom. So the only thing I really learned from my parents about sex is that any man who even thinks momentarily about having sex with a woman is the lowest form of scum in the universe.

16

1. Any talk about these subjects at all?

My father had “the talk” with me at about 11 or 12 or so. Dad was pretty thorough - he even talked about getting anal. :eek:

**2. Was it just about contraception, like “No matter what she says, you use a condom”? **

No, it was about the whole shebang. How to do it, how not to do it, STD’s, pregnancy, the whole bit. Gah.

**3. Any discussion about what would happen if he did get a girl pregnant? **

We talked about adoption vs. abortion. Dad was (and still is) against abortion, but not in an overturn-Roe-v.-Wade-NOW sense; more like a I-think-it-should-be-legal-but-rare sense, so he mostly talked up adoption. But the talk was mainly about keeping my rocket in my pocket, and using a condom otherwise.

**4. Was there further discussion about dating (separately from sex), like “Don’t get all wrapped up in a girl; I don’t want you flunking out of school”? **

Yep yep yep. Dad made it clear that relationships with girls were fine and all, but that my studies should be my first priority.

5. Was a curfew set? Was it affected in any way by inclusion of girls in the boy’s social life? Any other restrictions? Was he allowed to be alone in the basement with a girl, for instance?

I had a curfew, but since I was a geeky and unpopular kid it didn’t really come up. I was caught in my room once with a girl with both of our shirts off, but other than a telling off I didn’t get punished.

6. Any discussion about…well, acting gentlemanly? “No means no” is a relatively new development, but did anyone ever talk in general about not pushing a girl further than she wanted to go? Any warnings not to give an overprotective father of a girl good reason to be overprotective?

Yes, the whole conversation started with acting gentlemanly - respecting her boundaries, holding doors, all that.

All in all, though I was embarassed and squirmy at the time, I think dad did a good job. One of the few things he did really well, actually, but that’s for another thread.

17

Advice and/or a manual on “how to” in my house were non-existent. Not only not about sex girls and dating, even things like shaving and riding a bike. My parents weren’t absent, they just figured (I guess) “the kid is quite smart, he will figure it all out in due time”. Which I did.

I do think however, that I will have these conversations with my son, and that my wife will have these conversations with our daughter. Just because I never needed it, doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from it.

I did give my friends the long and hard talk about manners, being a gentleman, condoms, STDs and all that good stuff. To date all of them still open doors for their couples. And my half-sisters & brothers have gotten some long talks about the same, including drugs, relationships, etc.

HeyHomie’s dad hit all the marks IMO

18

This. I’m pretty sure my parents are virgins. I suppose it was no better for my sister, who honestly thought she was going to die after talking to Mom re. why she was bleeding.

I don’t have boys, but my daughters will know that sex is natural and nothing to be ashamed of. I like tim-n-va’s PRIC acronym. Luckily I’ve got a few years before I have to worry about it, because the oldest is not yet 3, and as I always say, they’re not dating until they’re 30! :wink:

19

I’m a mom of a 12 year old girl and a 4 year old son. I had to cover the hard stuff with my daughter, and did so much like HeyHomie did with his son.

A few months ago, my son started asking about babies and things. I talked about love and marriage in 4 year old terms, and he kept asking new questions. I got to “Daddy and Mommy love each other so much, the Daddy puts a seed in the Mommy’s belly that grows into a baby.” My son asked “How does he put the seed in?”

I happily encouraged him to ask his Daddy about that one! I got the daughter duty - he gets the son duty :slight_smile:

20

Likewise. I never had any talk with either of my parents about sex, dating, or girls in any way. Come to think of it though, our family was communication-impaired in most areas.