Sex is everywhere.
Whether our parents like it or not. It’s a huge component in the media. And what are young people doing all day long? Checking their social media platforms. The average teen uses their phone for up to nine hours a day... that's nine hours of potentially stumbling upon sexually-tainted material.
It's in the popular music on the radio, in the music videos, models have gone from magazines to show off their bodies on Instagram and other social media platforms, popular teen t.v. shows are filled with sex scenes and sexual innuendos.
So WHY are American parents so shy about sex? This stigma and taboo that is placed around "The Talk" is outdated and we need to get-OVER-it! How hard is it to talk about something that we encounter every-single-day?
My mom had told me from the time I was 13 that if I ever got pregnant, she would kick me out. This scared me away from sex for a while, but one comment without any real knowledge to back it up... the threat didn't have lasting effects. Looking back, I wish I had been more informed. What my mother and a lot of other parents fail to do, was not talking to me about the actual experience of having sex for the first time.
She had mentioned condom use, and when I had what she thought was my first serious relationship, she told me it was the time that I go on the pill. (This was after I'd had sex for the first time.) We never talked about sexually transmitted diseases, not until I was maybe a senior in high school. I never had a sit down "talk", it was more like any time we came close to having a conversation about sex, it was passed over with a joke or comment about her not being a grandmother at such a young age.
But my mom is not alone! While writing this article I was curious to know how others families had handled “the talk.” I got the stories from 7 of my peers and only ONE of them said their parents had been upfront, informative, and emotionally supportive about sex. Teens are going to have sex, shouldn’t we be giving them all the information before they have to make the choice?
Let's talk about it! Let's inform our adolescents about the dangers AND the pleasures that come along with having sex. Don't assume that your child is getting all the information from school or their peers, be active in talking to pre-teens about sex. Let’s inform them about boundaries and when to say no, and what needs to happen before they say yes to sex.
Note: My mother exceeded the standards of parenting in pretty much every other aspect, and I am beyond grateful for everything she's done for me.
