A couple of masturbation threads in IMHO got me to thinking about this topic?
As for me, my sex education consisted of Mammahomie handing me a book about boys & puberty and tried her damndest to avoid the subject entirely. Although my stepdad wasn’t above joking that it would make me and my brothers go blind/have hair palms/etc. But we knew he was just joking and wasn’t serious.
What about your parents? Only answer what they sincerely taught/expected you to believe, not what they joked about.
My mom left those little booklets on “What’s happening with my body?” (the strictly factual ones, with no particular agenda) lying around where she knew I would find them, and of course she knew that I always read everything I could get my hands on. That was about it.
Most of my life, the subject was avoided save for giving me books on sexuality. But, as I got older, I did find out what they thought. They aren’t convinced it’s sinful, but aren’t convinced it’s not. They definitely think it’s gross and would prefer I not do it. This remains the case to this day.
Well, at least, my mom feels that way. Dad I’m pretty sure engages in it. Mom’s back injury and chronic pain means she can’t help out as much as she used to.
My dad clearly had a hard enough time just explaining the basics of how a man and a woman made a baby. (This was back in the mid-1960s; I think most parents were like that back then.) He wasn’t going to go the extra mile and talk about masturbation, oral sex, or any of that. Hell, you couldn’t have connected the dots between his description and anything having to do with sexual desire.
This approach worked for me and it would have been my default strategy with my kids as well; except that for some bizarre reason my wife’s family is very open about discussing sex related things so the reality is my wife will probably talk to the kids about it some day. (I did have the ‘birds and the bees’ discussion with my son, but we did not go into masturbation).
Zip point shit on any form of sex. I learned what I knew from other kids. Parents in the 60s were hopeless; god forbid you should be prepared for adulthood and all the angst that was involved in first sexual encounters.
My advice came from my favorite aunt (the person responsible for raising me to be a decent person). Her advice was remarkable enlightened and amounted to the following: a vibrator cannot get you pregnant.
The topic of sex of any kind was never raised in my hearing or awareness. No publications lying around, no conversations, no admonitions, no nothing.
My sister later told me that, when she became of an age when menstruation might be an issue, my mother went into her room with some kind of booklet about that, and whispered that she might need to know what was in it, and left.
My father gave me pretty good advice about, oh, money, friendship, home improvement and use of tools, but not a whisper of a single word about sex. (Oh, and later when I was all growed up he made fun of me for being “such a prude.”)
So my sister started having sex at 14, and got pregnant and quickie married at 20 to a man she didn’t love. Ended up abandoning that family a few years later because she found a man who really rocked her boat.
As for me, I never figured out where sex fit into my life, complicated by being gay, and so it has never fit very well.
So thanks, Mom and especially Dad, I’m so glad your embarrassment was more important to you than my personal development.
Some day I’ll get around to posting some of the best lines from
The Life Cycle Library
My mom gave us this set of books and said, “Read these. If you have any questions you can ask me. Do try not to have any questions.”
I got 'em in 1977 or so and nothing else was said ever.
Honestly, I don’t remember if there’s anything in the books about masturbation. It might be in the section for boys. I’ll be sure and check it out and report back.
My parents were divorced when I was quite young, and though I did see my dad fairly often growing up, there were sometimes gaps between visits.
My mom’s side of the family was very small (just her parents and one sister). Since Mom was a working single mother, I spent a lot of time at my aunt’s place. My uncle (my aunt’s husband) at one point must have tumbled to the fact that my dad might not have had the opportunity to talk about sex in any way with me.
So one day, he made his big move to educate me…which consisted in its entirety of the following:
“You know your penis is used for more than just peeing, right?”
I replied in the affirmative, and that was the end of it.
The reason I love to tell this story is because of the setting…at the time my uncle had this conversation with me, he was spraying off the driveway with a garden hose!
So like others, I was self-educated. One night while babysitting my cousin, I found a medical book in the bottom drawer of my aunt’s dresser (I know, shame on me for snooping) and read the relevant chapters on sex.
I would say the rest came from friends and from stealing a porn paperback from the corner drugstore.
No other adult in my life ever made any attempt whatsoever to talk me about sex. As others have said, it was the early 60s!
They never said a word about it, but there were a couple of “all about the human body” books on the shelves for the taking, and they most definitely covered sex, including masturbation. I was a big reader, so I guess they knew I’d figure all that stuff out.
Nothing, I learned about it from kids talking and I guess jokes made in various types of media. Which is probably why I was aware that boys could do it years before I realized girls could too without a vibrator.
When i was in puberty (60’s) the family never mentioned the “s” word. I learned from the drawings in the boys bathroom. Thanks guys.
When I was 17, I had a girlfriend for two years. Well, after two years, and with the help of the bathroom art work, we figured it out.
I remember my mother asked if my girlfriend and I were having “premarital sex”. Even though the church was down on it, she said, “premarital sex can be good”. I think she just wanted to hear about the juicy parts. I didn’t answer. I figured it was too late for us to be having this discussion.
