# What Did Your Parents Teach You About Masturbation? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 18, 2014, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999 "2014-03-18T14:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/21 "2014-03-19T03:20:52Z")
That twice a week was “rookie numbers, my friend”. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/22 "2014-03-19T03:24:50Z")
I answered the “bad because…” option more because it kind of distills the various mixed messages I got about it from my father. As with most things relating to my father, he actually had no consistent position. When he decided to have “the talk” it was clearly constructed around suggestions in a book and was fairly clinical and open-minded. (It was also better for someone about three years younger than me). But he also veered to the “it’s a sin” position at certain times, while at other times joking about it like it was any other bodily function. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/23 "2014-03-19T03:33:31Z")
> [@Lanzy](#): > > I love polls that really only need one answer. Everything else is an outlier. Thank god I choose option 4. ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/24 "2014-03-19T03:41:44Z")
The only thing I’ve ever ever heard my mom say that is in any way related was a few months ago when we were talking about names my sister was considering for her baby, and she mentioned that “Jack Peter” wouldn’t work. I was surprised she even thought of that. Funny though, she also mentioned about one name combination, that his initials would be FAPS and that that kind of had a nice ring to it. I did not explain why it actually had a really bad ring to it. ---
**Author:** ![Inna\_Minnit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Inna\_Minnit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inna_Minnit)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/25 "2014-03-19T05:28:08Z")
It was never discussed, but if it had been, it would be to just do it privately. ---
**Author:** ![sara20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@sara20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sara20)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/26 "2014-03-19T05:42:29Z")
nothing ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/27 "2014-03-19T06:31:26Z")
My dad used to have these long, rambling, conversations wiuth me, in which he did about 95% of the talking. At the end of one already-embarrassing talk about girls, where he basically went on for half an hour about how I was a great kid and shouldn’t be afraid to get out there, he said, more or less out of the blue, “Oh, and by the way, anything you do with your own body is OK.” I was 16, I think. That was the only time the subject came up. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/28 "2014-03-19T07:33:39Z")
A little bit of everything except Option 3. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/29 "2014-03-19T09:17:57Z")
My parents taught me absolutely nothing about sex. Not even the standard birds and bees. ---
**Author:** ![Rala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@Rala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rala)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/30 "2014-03-19T10:34:03Z")
They never said anything. Mum gave me one of those puberty books, and it had a section on masturbation, but that section was not informative. It said “Masturbation is normal and will not cause you to go blind or hair to grow on your palms”, but it didn’t explain what masturbation was. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/31 "2014-03-19T10:44:05Z")
To keep the bedroom door locked. Unfortunately none of our doors had locks. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/32 "2014-03-19T11:02:28Z")
My parents also gave me a fairly long and detailed book on sex when I was 13 or 14. I remember that the chapter on masturbation presented several common techniques. It was quite informative. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/33 "2014-03-19T11:10:39Z")
I enjoyed books from the time I could read, and my parents encouraged me. My mom shocked me one day by bringing home a giant stack of books she checked outa the library that discussed sex, graphically. Illustrated books. I spent many hours locked in my room studying, hard. Or studying hard. Punctuation has never been my forte, but you get the idea.😉 ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/34 "2014-03-19T11:12:26Z")
I don’t remember when I first heard the term, but I looked it up, and the dictionary called it “self-abuse” which sounded pretty bad to me (this would have been in the 60s.) So while I didn’t know what it was, I figured it was not a nice thing. Somewhere along the way, I learned what it really meant - probably from a book, put together with the dirty jokes I used to hear. (Funny, that’s how I learned most stuff about sex…) I never addressed the topic with my own daughter - she never asked and honestly, it never occurred to me to mention it. She’s 28 - I’m sure she’s figured it out by now. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/35 "2014-03-19T12:20:42Z")
My parents never talked to me about sex (this was in the 60s). My father once handed me a booklet on the subject, but I remember looking at it and thinking, “I know all this.” ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/36 "2014-03-19T12:38:16Z")
Parents gave me a sex book, but it didn’t mention masturbation-- just the anatomy stuff and the stuff on making babies. ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/37 "2014-03-19T12:46:09Z")
> [@gwendee](#): > > Some day I’ll get around to posting some of the best lines from > > The Life Cycle Library We had that set too! Also in the late 70s. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/38 "2014-03-19T12:51:40Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > Parents gave me a sex book, but it didn’t mention masturbation-- just the anatomy stuff . I think it was in humorist James Thurber’s “Is Sex Necessary?”—that he accompanied the writing with a diagram. The diagram was a map of the airline routes across Europe. The caption said something like: “this diagram is irrelevant and will not help you understand the subject. But that is true of all the diagrams drawn in sex manuals.” 🙂 How did kids survive before the internet? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/39 "2014-03-19T12:58:15Z")
I have to hand it to my mother…she has an astounding number of hang-ups in her personal life around sex (she’s either “frigid” or asexual, but thinks genitals and bedroom sports are disgusting, not just uninteresting), but she was always able to set that aside and teach me the facts. She walked in on me masturbating in the living room when I was two or three and gently explained while “doing that” was okay and most people do it, the funny thing is we don’t talk about it in public, and we do it in private. I was fairly embarrassed, so I must have already absorbed some cultural shame around it, but I did keep it to my bedroom after that. History has repeated and I had exactly the same information for my daughter at about the same age. ---
**Author:** ![Q.N.Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/3da27b/32.png) [@Q.N.Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.N.Jones)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999/40 "2014-03-19T17:24:02Z")
When I was rather young–maybe 3?–as part of teaching us the proper names for our different parts, she told me what the clitoris was and said that it “felt good to touch it.” So she basically encouraged us to do it, in private. That was the only time we ever discussed it. I wasn’t the kind of kid to do that stuff in public. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-your-parents-teach-you-about-masturbation/683999.md?page=3)