Parenting is hard!
I have discovered that in real life you don’t have the ONE conversation about sex with your kids but lots of conversation about age appropriated topics. I miss “mommy how babies are born?” The last one was “dude, if you must see porn learn how to protect your frakking computer against viruses or I’ll format it and put Linux, so you can see your porn but your games won’t work!” after I had to clean his desktop for the 5th time. Followed by “you know porn is different from real life sex and some of this stuff would hurt a lot if you tried it with a girl, right?” Mostly I avoid being judgmental and try to remember how shitty being a teenager usually feels and how I felt at his age and what I wish someone told me.
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Whatever happened to “nobody’s perfect”?
On a different note, I’m amazed at how much he looks like Brian Epstein in the article photo.
We have a 4 year-old daughter, so we’re not dealing with incoming porn yet 
But we do have a rule that we answer all questions, no matter how awkward or ‘touchy’ (in an age-appropriate way of course, but as clearly as possible). Kids naturally ask questions about sexuality very early on. I consider this is supposed to be helpful to parents so that they don’t have to bend backwards to schedule weird lectures. Just. Answer. The. Questions. It works well because then the kid has a steady- and increasingly more complex- stream of information that they can process and build upon along the way instead of a barrage of shit they’re supposed to figure out on the spot at 14 or 18 or what have you.
Parenting is hard, but so far I never felt that answering questions about penises/vaginas and ‘what are those bugs doing all squished together’ was that agonizing… Seems to me that once you’ve gone through a toddler megalomaniac tantrum or two, being the everything-including-sex professor feels actually civil and uplifting as a parenting activity; like “Hey, we’re discussing together; that’s nice!”.
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Oh, I hear you. I have a 3 year old daughter too. I could do without the tantrums… But another thing I learned with the older kid is that no matter how open minded you think you are, kids are a match to their parents and they WILL find that question that will take you by surprise, make you gasp, go breathless and think “how the hell will I honestly answer THAT in a positive age-appopriated way?!” For me it happened around the 8/9 year old mark. I’m SO not looking forward to what the little one will come with to pull the rug under my feet… Well, at least it teachs you a lesson and makes you think!
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Have no kids of my own. When my cousin turned 15 I was cleared to give him a casual, “Not gonna say don’t do it, but be safe,” talk. While I’m 20 years his senior, I’m still actually closer in age to him than anyone else in the family. (When he was a teen, he and his mom were at odds.)
So I sat him down, provided him with some condoms, and made sure he knew to just use them. Don’t be embarrassed, don’t get rushed, don’t worry about it being your “last one” (here’s a list of places that hand them out free) – just use them. I calmly explained to him that sex is great, but that having a kid too young would mean being younger than I was with a teenager of his own to have the same talk with.
He’s fine. No kids, and living with a really cool chick. 
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We have a son who’s almost five, so we’ve been going through a lot of basic questions since his sister was born almost two years ago. We’ve never hidden the fact that he’s adopted and he was observant enough to ask a lot of questions when my wife was pregnant, so I guess a lot of issues came up earlier than with other kids. It was very important for us that he was aware of being adopted as soon as the issue came up, as then he can build up a basic framework to incorporate later knowledge rather than avoiding the issue now and having to doubt the rest of his reality later (or feel that the truth is shameful or something). Even at two you could tell that he was getting external pressure to conform to what society felt he should be based on his gender or other aspects (like whether he should act ‘Chinese’ or ‘white’ in a white family in China), so we did try to give him some tools to deal with it.
Personally, I never had “the talk” from my parents, or anything really approaching it. I think they were pretty uncomfortable about talking about sex in general, but I don’t think it harmed me too much. Obviously more openness would have been good, but I think the basic principles of building relationships, valuing girls as friends and treating people with respect that they did teach me were more important than the physical descriptions of what goes on. They weren’t trying to hide the fact that they or other people had sex, they just felt that learning to treat other people like equal human beings would go a long way toward sorting out the other issues. For example, even as a teenager you can tell that large sections of porn would be a really bad idea if it came to actual relationships, and that Feynman had gone badly wrong somewhere if he honestly held these opinions. I think the worst you can do is make up fairy stories or give kids the impression that their bodies are shameful (or that sex is only about physical acts), but I don’t think kids need to know everything to be able to extrapolate from what they do know (as long what you do tell them is accurate).
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t be open about sex, just that a lot of sex is social rather than physical).
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That’s what I think is missing in many interactions though, and exemplified in Feynman’s little dating experiment: Many people DO treat sexual partners differently than other close relationships. You clearly were able to internalize that respect/empathy/trust/etc applied to the same level to everyone you interact with but many people compartmentalize others in many categories and adjust their behaviours accordingly. That’s why the virgin/whore dichotomy and ‘slut-shaming’ are still rampant. Many people are also way more casually rude, inconsiderate and aggressive with their intimate partners than with their friends and acquaintances. There is a huge sense of entitlement in sexual/mating relationships that is not nearly as often seen in other relations. I think it would be helpful to pay more attention to exactly how we generally expect people to learn about and understand relationships dynamics and how people actually get to the conclusions that lead to how they view/treat a potential partner.
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That’s true, why don’t porn videos open with the familiar disclaimer: “The actors in this video are professionals, do not attempt unless properly trained, and saftey equipment is present…”?
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I think there are a number of things that parents hide from their kids that are actually hugely important as part of the learning process. Parents think that they are protecting their kids, but it’s just giving them unrealistic ideas of adult life and not allowing them to develop tools to deal with relationships and other parts of reality. As an extreme example, I know of a woman in her 20s in China. Her family felt that telling her that she was adopted would make her think that she wasn’t valued as much as her siblings, so they never did. Other people know, but she still doesn’t. You have to assume that she’ll find out at some point, and I don’t know how she’ll take it when she does. Some other examples:
People in relationships have disagreements and learn to deal with them. It is possible to disagree about stuff while being polite and remaining in love, so kids shouldn’t just know about disagreements if they become too serious to hide. It’s also good to know that people can have big differences in religious beliefs, personality, interests etc. and still care about and respect each other. Seeing the differences and compromises that take place doesn’t actually decrease a kid’s respect of their parents, and will help kids to respect others in their own relationships in the future (including non-sexual ones).
A large proportion of adults will have problems with money. Kids shouldn’t feel responsible for or overly involved in their parent’s money issues, but this is an opportunity for them to learn budgeting by example.
Making a family work takes a lot of effort, so kids need to learn to make a positive difference in the house. Stuff doesn’t just get done, and you’re less likely to take your partner for granted if you don’t take your parents for granted.
Parents have their own lives apart from their partners or their kids. You can love someone while needing your own space sometimes. Parents should make it clear that they need this and respect others needs in this area.
People have sex. It’s not gross that your parents have sex, and it’s not horrifying that your children will. It’s not the most important thing, but it’s still pretty darn important and ignorance in this area during your kid’s teens could really screw up the rest of their life. Just deal with it.
As you pointed out, people often take their partner for granted and have a huge sense of entitlement. Showing your kids that this isn’t true in your relationship and that it doesn’t have to be that way is very important. If you’re sharing a house with a couple for almost two decades, you pick up on what they think of each other, or romantic relationships in general.
I think with all of these issues, you don’t have to be graphic and unload all of your issues onto your kids, but being open to talk and not embarrassed about these issues yourself will help a lot.
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Here’s a what my niece came up with at five:
Her: “You need a boy and a girl to make a baby.”
Me: “Yes.”
Her: “But boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls.”
Me: “Yes”
Her: “But if two girls get married they can still have a baby.”
Me: “Sure”
Her: “They just need to find a boy and make the baby and then never see him again.”
Me: “That’s one way it can work.”
Her: “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Me: “If that’s how you decide to live your life, I’ll support that.”
Yeah, that’s as shitty as it is expected. For me, I was creepy when I was young because I was socially awkward.
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Aaaah, his mum teaching how to flirt. HOW embarrassing? Poor lad
(good on you, BTW)
I was diagnosed with a lazy eye. Unfortunately, it became malignant, and spread.
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LOL! Not in front of the ladies (or his friends). That is my cue to silently disappear and go do something else.
The most embarrassing thing I did until today was making goofy jokes about the PS3 game we would play that night in the supermarket line while cluelessly ignoring he wasn’t answering because he was flirting with a girl behind us in line.
Usually we chat during mother-son quality time. Like when we’re killing zombies in console games.
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