I’d say it was ommitted, maybe from our discussions and maybe from their marriage later down the road The general discussion I got was the mechanics on how babies are made, and not to make any unwanted babies and confirmation that I understood that, had received the same such information at school. I think the assumption was that the “fun” part was implicit or an unavoidable fact and they were embarrased to discuss that aspect or didn’t feel it was necessary.
I grew up in a non-church attending well educated upper middle class household in coastal southern California, both my parents were born and raised in the US.
True. Orgasms feel good, but sex doesn’t always. Maybe that’s not the case for the one doing the penetrating, but painful sex happens sometimes.
I’m extremely glad that my mother told me (probably as a teenager) that if it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it. I think she was trying to shield me from being talked into something I didn’t actually want, or else she was trying to save me from the outdated idea that men enjoy sex while women “lay back and think of England”.
I don’t think I ever thought it wasn’t for pleasure, because it was sometimes possible to hear my mother having a real nice time, early in the morning when we kids were supposed to be asleep.
You need to be able to tell your kid(s) about how sex is supposed to be fun, because you need to be able to let them know that bodies sometimes react by themselves, and some things may feel good even if someone is doing something they shouldn’t with them, and it’s not their fault.
No, sometimes it works like that for guys too. The ratio (or should it be distribution?) seems to be different, but it certainly happens. Guys can experience just about all the same combinations of pleasure, pain and satisfaction that I’ve witnessed women having.
I’m not even sure that the title is accurate. Yes, pleasure is (usually) there, but as the primary reason for ‘most’ sex? Why people have sex is even more complex than how, and every person brings different motivations to the party. It can be for pleasure, sure, but bonding, comforting and even the simple delight of being with someone you’re are comfortable with should all be in the running.
The bottom line is, as usual with question involving people, that it’s complicated. Which can be another reason it’s fun.
According to my oldest, my husband and I only had sex four times. We never told him sex was just for reproduction, he just could not stomach it for anything other then that. Too gross for him. Sometimes kids make their own assumptions and there was no attempt to obscure the truth at all.
I can see not explaining the pleasure aspect to a 3-year-old asking where babies come from. It’s not really germane, and could lead to embarrassment. But to an older child, talking about sex and not just childbirth, it would be a shocking and indeed horrifying omission. What age is appropriate? I suppose it depends on maturity and context, and as I say I’m not a parent anyway… But I should think letting the subject go to the double-digit ages would be far too long, especially considering as children will have already learned a more or less warped version of the truth from television, the Internet, and the schoolyard long before then.
I’m so grateful that we only have a favourite son and a favourite daughter —and that is the only and truthful answer they’ll get to the ‘who is your favourite’ question. And I don’t understand why it’s difficult to tell children that sex is fun and helps mum and dad stay together?
I’d go farther than this. I believe that for humans, sexuality is primarily about forming social bonds through shared, cooperative experiences of physical pleasure. Reproduction is a secondary function of human sexuality.
I grew up on a horse ranch, and for a time, my parents made money on horse breeding, especially on selling stud services. Other horse breeders would pay hundreds of dollars to put a mare in heat in a pen with one of our studs for a few days, or even just a few hours – the breeding itself didn’t usually take long. I’ve been told that, as a rule, you would expect about 25% of breedings to result in a live birth. I know selling stud services is an established business with other kinds of domesticated animals, so I would expect they have similar results.
What is the rate of live births in humans, per instance of intercourse during periods of peak fertility? I would guess that it is far less than 25%. I usually hear of it taking months or even years for couples who are deliberately trying to conceive, to succeed. And then there’s the curious way in which our sexual activity is, at most, only weakly correlated with peak fertility.
It also seems to me that, since reproduction is obviously critical to our survival as a species, there must be a very strong adaptive benefit to human sexuality, to “justify” its changes from typical patterns in mammals.
Your world might still be there. I, and a lot of other people saying so in this thread, were spoken to frankly and honestly about human sexuality from an appropriate age. I thank the 1970s for this. Of course plenty of people were not and are not so educated, but it’s hardly an upstart minority just getting this revolution underway, ya know?
The general discussion I got was the mechanics on how babies are made, and not to make any unwanted babies and confirmation that I understood that, had received the same such information at school. I think the assumption was that the “fun” part was implicit or an unavoidable fact and they were embarrased to discuss that aspect or didn’t feel it was necessary.