<< Sexual Education >>
To create a rational family atmosphere where sex is concerned, education for both parents and children should begin, logically, at the beginning. The child himself, in this first period of his existence, is already beginning an active sex life, and is sexually curious about himself and others. It is the best opportunity to lay the foundations for a natural acceptance of sex and at the same time establish a rapport between parent and child that will make later difficulties much easier to surmount.
Effective sex education is a compound of two elements. One derives from the attitudes parents have toward their own bodies and those of their children — attitudes that the children themselves soon learn to understand, and that are further reflected in the kind of affection the parents display toward each other and their offspring. The other element consists of the parents talking openly to the children about various aspects of sex, not at some specified time or place but in a casual, natural way, with the information mixed in among the thousand other things that parents talk to children about.
In this kind of sex education, parents don’t wait for the children to ask questions. Many who have done so, wait in vain, because the children are afraid to ask. Information about sex should be volunteered, as parents volunteer to explain or talk a natural, relaxed manner about other things in a child’s life whenever the occasion offers.
For example, a patient tells me about his son who has come home from his high-school session in the ubiquitous Family Life class, considerably fascinated and interested by what he has heard that day. The subject was the female genitals, and since the relationship between father and son has been the kind of open one I have been describing, the boy is relating with enthusiasm what he has learned. But the father detects something missing. “You certainly had a good physiology lesson,” he agrees, “but I wonder if you learned the whole thing. Where is the clitoris?”
The boy is nonplussed. His teacher has neglected to mention, for reasons that can only be surmised, that vital organ upon which everything else in the female’s sexual life depends. Presumably, the instructor was talking about reproduction, and since the clitoris is involved in only the sexual activity that leads to reproduction, he thought it was unnecessary to discuss it. Moreover, it is clear that in this sterile presentation of physiology, no mention was made of the pleasurable aspects of sex. Physiology has not been connected to feelings.
Sex education in the school should, of course, be objective and factual, also accurate and comprehensive. In some schools there is no guarantee that information passed on here will be any more reliable than that from the playground. At home sex education is bound to be attitudinal, reflecting the attitudes of the parents, whatever they may be. There is nothing necessarily wrong in this. But at the same time a parent should understand that the child will not necessarily reflect his attitudes, anymore than a child given proper and continued religious instruction will ever after follow in the way the parent thinks he should go.
Whatever their attitudes, one thing parents can do that will help their child immeasurably is to listen. The common complaint of children at all ages is that their parents don’t listen to them. In some cases, no doubt, this can be translated as “They won’t let me do what I want to do,” but most often it is an outraged cry, a plea to have their side heard. Parents don’t have to agree, only listen and try to understand so that some kind of reasonable discussion can take place. This is particularly true of sexual difficulties. The parent who says, “It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and I don’t want to hear any more about it,” is likely to get his wish. He won’t hear any more about it, or about much of anything else, from his child. Not listening is the beginning of alienation.
Accept two basic tenants regarding sexuality:
First, that (although children are born with the capacity for sexual arousal and function) the ways in which they behave sexually are learned.
Second, that sexual behaviors are likely to be repeated because they are very reinforcing, due to the intimacy, arousal, orgasm and/or tension reduction associated with them.
Children are capable of a wide range of sexual behaviors which are placed along a continuum in relation to how normal or expectable they are prior to puberty, and also in
relation to the likelihood that the behavior will be problematic. The fact that
these are normal human behaviors is emphasized and that these behaviors
initially demonstrate what the child has learned.
Assumptions cannot be made about the nature, meaning, motives, or knowledge of the child(ren) based solely on the observed or reported behavior. Behavior must be evaluated in context: Sexual behaviors may be perceived as problematic for children for a variety of reasons. The identification of abusive behaviors is dependent on assessing a lack of consent, a lack of equality or some type of coercion in the interaction, and each of these terms is defined as it relates to children in order to be clear what constitutes abusive behavior.
Before thinking about how to respond to children directly, think about what goals for children are based in personal beliefs and values and what goals might be shared by all adults for all children.
“Universal goals” are developed which include;
— Communication: For children to be able to use words to express feelings, ask questions, and describe their needs.
— Empathy: For children to recognize the unique emotions and needs of themselves and others by recognizing verbal and non-verbal cues.
— Accountability: For children to take responsibility for their own behavior without distortion, and without assuming responsibility for the behavior of others.
These goals describe the child’s need for a sense of psychological safety. Children do begin to demonstrate empathic recognition and responses in the preschool years if they consistently experience and observe empathic caregiving.
The goals are operationalized when adults actively respond by:
1. Labeling behaviors with words (“I see you doing . . .)
2. Expressing emotions (. . .that makes me unconofortable”)
Recognizing that children are likely to be either embarrassed or defensive when adults speak to them about a sexual behavior, the goal of the initial response is simply to open up communication
and foster empathy. Subsequent conversation becomes more likely and can follow the adult’s thoughtful assessment regarding what else the child or children might need to hear (i.e., correct sexual information, a message about the private nature of some behaviors, a rule about secrets, limits regarding behaviors, etc.). Assess the child’s ability to be empathic as evident in altering behaviors when
he or she causes others to feel uncomfortable or distressed.
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Touching feels good. |
In their early exploratory period, as soon as children can talk, the questions about sex begin to come. “Mommy, what is this?” Touching the breast or penis. “We were playing doctor today and Mary doesn’t have a thing like I do. Why?” or “I squat down when I go to the toilet, but Johnny squirts out of his little thing. Why?”
In answering these questions, how simple it is to say, “This is a breast,” or “This is a penis,” or “Yes, you have a penis but Mary has a vagina. Boys have one thing and girls have the other.” And again, “Girls sit down to urinate because they don’t have a penis that squirts urine out. If girls stood up to urinate, the urine would run down their legs.”
Inevitably, children act out their sexual ideas in play, just as they do other parts of their lives. The “doctor” who gravely examines Mary may tell her she has a baby inside her and he is going to help her get it out — that is, if they have been told about birth. If they haven’t, this kind of sex play exhibits all kinds of fantasies derived from the child’s imaginings about what he hasn’t been told. He has his own ideas, often wrong.
Put sex education in the context of the child’s whole educational experience, and do not to treat it as something “special,” possibly hidden or treated in whispers. It should be treated openly and honestly, in the same way the parent answers thousands of other questions: “Why is the sky blue?” “Where does the sun go at night?” “Why do cats meow and dogs bark?” and so on, endlessly.
“How are babies born?” is certainly no harder for a parent to answer than “What is lightning and why does it thunder?” The mechanics, at least, of conception are no harder for a child to grasp than the discharge of electricity between positive and negative poles creating the air vacuum that ends in thunder. Yet parents attempt the latter and shrink from the former, too often because their own sex education was either scanty or nonexistent. The questions are really no different; we only make them so. A common parental copout is to say that the inquiring child is too young to understand the great “mystery” of conception and birth; the implication is that he is never too young to understand meteorological phenomena like lightning and thunder.
Of course, very young children will not understand everything. Parents should explain as much as they can and leave the rest for later. What is important is that the child be answered, and answered with the fundamental facts instead of evasions or glossed-over information. The child will absorb what he can on the spot, and he will come back for more when he can absorb more.
Nor is once enough in this teaching process. As every teacher knows, children learn by repetition. Often they are confused at first, in other areas as well as sex, until the information is firmly lodged in their consciousness. I remember that when one of my sons was about eight or nine years old and was giving his sex history to Dr. Kinsey, he told the astonished investigator that babies came out of the anus at birth. If Kinsey had been anything but the very wise man that he was, he might have thought it extremely odd that the child of his associate should be growing up with such misconceptions. But he understood that the boy knew better and was only temporarily confused, as indeed he was; he gave the right answer later.
It is important to give children the freedom to act out these ideas, and if a parent observes them he can easily use the opportunity to give the children correct sex information in the natural context of their play. Do not wait for children to ask questions about sex, seize the chance and give the information, as simply and clearly and casually as you can.
If a very small daughter or a son sees the father nude and asks curiously about his penis, it is easy enough to explain that it is the organ a man uses for urination; the son will know that, but the daughter may not. It is also the organ used to make babies, the father will explain, but he may want to postpone discussion of its other sexual uses until the opportunity presents itself. He would forcefully sexualize the moment in any way, which might possibly confuse or frighten a child.
If a parent has several children, he may find an interesting variation in the kind of sex questions they ask as they grow up, if they are encouraged to do so. Some ten-year-olds, for instance, are capable of a quite startling comprehension of sexual matters and ask questions that could only be called sophisticated, based on material they have absorbed at school or read in books. Others, no older, will ask far different questions, based on general ignorance or perhaps on hidden fears and anxieties about their own activity, for instance, is it possible for a sperm to crawl up a girl’s leg and get into her vagina.
Often in these earliest years parents are called upon to deal not with questions but situations, as children continue to experiment with sex. It would be frivolous to pretend that it is easy to deal with all of these episodes, They require tact, understanding, and restraint on the part of the parent, and even then they sometimes pose exceedingly difficult problems.
For example. Mother comes home from the store and finds her four-year-old daughter with the boy next door, same age, both undressed and playing sexual games with each other or even simulating some kind of intercourse. As she stands in the doorway of the bedroom or playroom, what does she do?
Obviously, if the parent is following the kind of enlightened sex education I have been describing, she is going to accept the situation calmly and see if she can’t gently turn the children toward some other kind of play. Or perhaps she will give them a lesson in privacy, saying, “Excuse me,” and quietly closing the door. Later, if she has not done it before, she can explain privacy to her daughter — how some things are done in private and others not. So long as the child is not threatened or made to feel she has done something wrong, she may quite possibly have questions about the incident, and so there will be an opportunity for further education.
The complication arises, as any parent can attest, because of the attitudes, known or unknown, of the other child’s parents. If the mother knows that those parents feel the way she does about sex education, she can feel free to close the door quietly and go away. But if she knows they feel differently, or if she has no idea of their attitudes in such a situation, a dilemma presents itself. If she makes a point of the children’s behavior on the spot and tries to deal with it, she may be afraid that the neighbor’s child will go home and report what happened, and there may be a resulting conflict of ideas, with unforeseeable complications between the neighbors.
If it is any comfort, I have learned from taking thousands of histories that most children do not go home and tell, although for the wrong reason. They don’t because they are afraid, having been told that sex is dirty and forbidden, and they are not about to incriminate themselves. Their fear is that the mother in whose house they are visiting will tell their parents. In such a case, the wise mother can treat the incident so calmly and matter-of-factly that these fears will be eased, which will also be a therapeutic step in the right direction for the visiting child.
Some experts argue that when early sexual activity gets to the sex-play stage — playing “doctor,” touching, exploring curiously, even simulating intercourse — children are uneasy about it and are relieved if an adult stops it, either arbitrarily and forcefully or by diverting them to something else. It seems to me that if a child feels uneasy and unhappy about sex play and welcomes adult interference, it can only be because the play is accompanied by the guilt and fear some adult has instilled in him. If the end result of the adult’s interference is to stop him from what he is doing, one can only conclude that the child is being told, by implication if nothing more, that what he is doing is wrong. And isn’t that exactly what we are trying to avoid? The child himself will stop this activity when his curiosity is satisfied, and as he gets older, the activity itself will change. In any case, it is self-deluding for parents to believe that they can forbid, distract or otherwise prevent any normal child from sexual exploration and sex play. If he cannot accomplish it any other way, he will do it secretly, with the damaging accompaniment of guilt and fear.
Nevertheless, this kind of situational behavior in very young children is obviously a delicate problem, which must be handled with discretion — and, most of all, with understanding. I have suggested some general approaches, but there are no cut-and-dried easy answers.
I think parents will find this kind of thing less trying if they have taken a matter-of-fact attitude toward the sexual lives of their children from the beginning, and particularly if they have realized, that they have been giving their children sex education, knowingly or unknowingly, from their infancy. Even in so mundane an exercise as changing diapers, the calm acceptance of this necessity tells the child that his bodily functions are not “dirty” or “bad” but part of everyday living.
All parents know, and appreciate in varying degrees, the unfolding of the child’s personality is in his first five years, but not all of them are as aware of his sexual development. Their worries about early masturbation and sex play overshadow the fact that these evidences of development are simply part of his growth as a whole human being. We accept with delight, for instance, the first obvious evidences of affection for the parents, and consider it entirely natural that it is usually Mother who gets the spontaneous kisses and hugs at age two or three.
This significant first step means that the child is beginning to relate to the people in the world around him, starting with those closest, and it soon extends toothers in the exploratory ways I have described. At three, he is usually playing a good part of the time with other children, and that part of the learning process includes sexual exploration. As children stretch out toward the world, the play with their sex organs and those of others, even play with their own excretions, are all part of this immense curiosity that they are tireless in satisfying. His natural inclination at this early stage is to take his bath and dress and undress freely when others are around, because “modesty” is not yet a part of his development. That will come later, and parents do not inforce their adult standard of modesty on the child, who is not ready for it and doesn’t understand it, so inforcing would leave him uncertain.
Loving children is sex education, too, because that is how the child first learns about love and the giving and receiving of it. Parents encourage their children to experiment in other ways, because they want them to absorb the world as much as they can — to taste, and touch, and smell, and feel. These are the pathways to understanding, and so many parents do not draw the line of exploration at the child's own body. Nothing could be more natural than his curiosity about himself and the bodies of his brothers, sisters, and playmates.
The curious child peeks. He can hardly be blamed, he is not furtive and secretive about sex. Peeking is not only natural, it is fundamental. It can begin very early, probably reaches its first peak at age four or five, and recurs for years. It survives to adulthood. There is something of the voyeur in everyone, not at all necessarily in any clinical sense. In childhood, any possible harmful element can be removed quite easily simply by regarding peeking as natural and trying to encourage it in a healthy way.
Children who dress together, go to the toilet together, bathe together, and in general have the experience of being together are learning a number of things in addition to satisfying their natural curiosity about sex. Playing, eating, working, exploring together — these are the things they are going to be doing all their lives, and there is no reason for not learning to do it at once. Sex is an important part of this learned social behavior. To divorce it arbitrarily from living, to set it aside as something secretive and “naughty,” is to create a wholly artificial division in the business of being alive in the world.
One of the immediate benefits is to relieve some of the common anxieties of small children, who little girl sees that she has no penis like her brother, but are other girls the same way? Is she just like other girls? It is infinitely reassuring to know, and the best way is to see the others nude. When questions arise from the differences and similarities, the parent’s cue is to be very matter-of-fact, to help the child accept as commonplace facts about which there is no need to have any worry or fear.
Parents with imagination can understand the importance of all this if they simply put themselves in the place of the child who points to his penis, for instance, and says, “What’s this?” First of all, he wants to know, and at about two or three, when this kind of question first appears, he doesn’t understand why he can’t know right away. He is confused and bewildered by evasions.
One therapist lists five things a child should know before he starts school:
1. He should know the names of the body’s sexual parts.
2. He should know (and I would add, be able to use) the correct words for elimination.
3. He should understand the basic fact of a baby’s growth within the mother’s body.
4. He should know enough anatomy by direct observation to understand the differences between boys and girls.
5. If he wants to know and asks about it, he should also know that babies are made by mothers and fathers together.
If a parent has any doubts about what to teach his child at any given point, the best way to resolve them is by asking a few adroit questions himself, getting a sense of what the child knows and doesn’t know, as in the case of the boy who couldn’t pinpoint the location of the clitoris. If a child makes some remark about the arrival of a baby at a friend’s house, let’s say, a parent can ask casually, “Do you know where babies come from?” That can lead, easily, to another question, “Do you know how they get started?” Again, if a little boy appears in the bathroom with an erect penis, a parent can inquire, “How do you feel when your penis gets hard?”
The answer to questions like these reveal not only the state of the child’s knowledge, and consequently any misinformation he may be harboring, but sets the stage for parental answers, geared to whatever level of comprehension his age indicates.
Children in the pre-teens are beset by fears and anxieties about their sexual development that parents don’t dream they have. Pre-teen children are interested in birth more than in any other part of the reproductive process. They ask questions that reflect their anxiety about the mother — whether she gets sick, whether she is in danger of dying from birth. They are curious, too, about the oddities of birth (multiple births, for example), and they are interested in how boys and girls grow. They find it hard to understand mating — that is, why people want to do it, and what actually happens. On the latter point, children are likely to be annoyed if they are out off with circumlocutions and glossed-over facts. They want the details, told as clearly as possible. If any embarrassment is present, it is almost always on the part of the adult. The children accept what is told them gravely and seriously, and afterward they go about their business. Parents who worry that talking about all this is going to make children preoccupied with sex should understand that simple, factual answers are the best way to avoid such preoccupation. The foggy, ambivalent, equivocal answer is the one that produces fear and anxiety.
In talking about reproduction with children of prepubertal age, the information ought to be given as objectively as possible, taking into account the fact that relations in general with the opposite sex are sometimes scorned in this period, notwithstanding the development of friendships between many boys and girls, as I have described earlier. The emotional problems of dating still lie ahead for most of these children; right now they want the facts, if they want anything. Parents must understand, too, that they are competing with the children’s peers in giving them the facts. Children learn from each other on the playground, groups at school, and in the parent-child relationship. Where sex is concerned, they need all three to satisfy their curiosity. Their relationships with peers now seem to come first in many respects, and much of their information is acquired from them. But the parent is nevertheless an authority figure still, and children turn to one or the other for answers they can trust — provided, of course, their relationship with parents in talking about sex has been established earlier. If it hasn’t, they sometimes turn to another adult they can talk to: a teacher, a Scout leader, an uncle, or some other grown-up friend. And whether they talk to any of these people or not, the attitudes of these other people toward sex are bound to influence them.
The important thing for parents to remember about physiological changes is that children ought to be informed about what is happening to them so that they won’t be taken by surprise. The opportunities to educate here are numerous, as girls inquire about menstruation and their budding breasts and boys take note of the changes in their bodies and ability to eject semen during orgasm. This is particularly true for the children who mature earlier, who need to be told that there is nothing wrong with them, that they are normal, only slightly ahead of their friends, and that what is occurring is entirely natural.
When a boy or a girl is pre-teen, a new element has entered now, however — or, if not new, one that has more importance than it had before. As their social world broadens, children are much more influenced by their peer group m this pre-teen phase, and so they become more reticent with their parents, more embarrassed to talk about things that were easy to discuss before, when they were eagerly asking questions and learning about the world. Because of this withdrawal, parents who are still embarrassed about sex themselves may again welcome the false “latency” and be willing to believe their children are no longer curious and need nothing more from them, at least for the moment.
It is a time, too, when children begin to understand the difference between “right” and “wrong.” The difference is communicated to them at every level — in school, with their peer group, and at home — and often the interpretations are in conflict. They learn one kind of morality from their peer group and another from their teachers, both of which may be at odds with what the parents believe. No wonder they are often confused as they try to find their way in the adult world. Where sexual matters are concerned, they are likely to discover the widest differences in ideas about “right” and “wrong,” and to perceive at a relatively early age the difference between public and private morality. Parents naturally try to impose their own moral ideas on their children, with widely varying success. Religion has its influence here too, and so does the school, to a lesser extent.
In this conflict of ideas, parents should not feel dismayed if their moral conceptions are not wholly accepted by the children. If they examine their own growing-up period, they will see that they found their own way, slowly and painfully, often making mistakes that had damaging consequences. The final, adult result is the end product of a good many experiences and impressions, and parents do not have as much power to influence the ultimate outcome as they often imagine. All this is true of the pre-teen boy, and is equally true of the pre-teen girl.
Teen-agers are entering a period that often terrifies them, and this may well be the time when children need to talk the most. However, talking with the eleven- to fifteen-year-olds about sex is beyond the reach of most parents, but that would not necessarily be so if they had established this particular kind of communication early in their children’s lives. If they have waited to this late age to discuss sex with them, they will, have little chance of success.
One alternative is to find an outsider who will be acceptable to the child. A unprejudiced source of help can be suggested casually. The word “sex” need never be mentioned. If observation tells you that a child is worried about something, and you have reason to believe the source is sex, do not make too much of an issue, but point in a specific direction — to someone with whom the child feels comfortable, someone he has known and trusted before. But don’t be fooled by the seeming disdain or even hostility your child presents, he may have a place to go — and probably won’t tell you.
The other alternative is to give him a book containing the kind of information you think will be helpful. Again, the approach should be casual — not making a point of it. Something like “Here’s a book someone sent me, Johnny. It doesn’t seem to be meant for people my age, but there may be something in it that will interest you. Take a look at it anyway, if you like.” Again, the reaction may be complete disinterest and a grudging acceptance of the book, but once it is in his hands he has somewhere to turn for information if he wants it. Once he learns from the jacket that it concerns sex, curiosity alone will lead him into its pages.
In the initial phase of early adolescence opportunities for sex education are frequent. For instance, if the father happens to see his son nude at the beach, in the bathroom, or elsewhere, he can say, “Well, I see you’re getting your pubic hair. That means you’re growing up. Pretty soon your voice is going to get deeper and you’ll start to be a man. Right now, or at least pretty soon, you can ejaculate.” Nine times out of ten that will be a new word, and the boy will want to know what it means. And there is the opening for sex education as the boy acquires knowledge about his physical development.
In the case of girls, a mother may have the same opportunity when she notices the appearance of hair around the vulva. Girls are usually first conscious of the appearance of their breasts, and their questions about them may be the approach to a sex-education conversation. Menstruation will almost certainly provoke immediate communication of some kind when it first occurs. A good many mothers ruin this particular opportunity, seeing it as a chance for a stern lecture about avoiding sex with boys, or an occasion to vent their hostilities and hang ups by representing menstruation as another “curse” with which women are saddled.
Girls are likely to have vague, undefined feelings at about this time, which they would be unable to identify as “sexy,” but which are nevertheless the result of their developing sexuality. “I feel so funny” they say. An astute and knowledgeable mother can explain to them why they feel this way. “That feeling is a part of growing up,” she can begin, and go on from there.
Parents who don’t see their children nude, or who have not talked to them much about sex before, can still use the obvious fact of the children’s growth as a starting point for a sex-education conversation. Naturally, if communication has been established at an earlier age, things will be easier.
From their very beginning, children ought to be taught the proper words for things, even though they may use slang. It is a kind of sentimental pandering, I think, to say “wee-wee” when penis is meant, or “grunt” for defecate. These useless euphemisms are in the same class with “bow-wow” for dog and “moo-moo” for cow. People seem to believe that a child is deprived of his childhood if he isn’t permitted to use these “baby” words, and in any case, they think it’s cute. Cute it may be to the self-indulgent parents, but unnecessarily crippling to the child’s vocabulary. The idea of “baby talk” was not a child’s idea of speech; it was conceived by parents.
There are, of course, some correct words that are too difficult for very young children to pronounce as they learn to talk, but this is for a brief period, and just as soon as they can, they should learn the proper words. As they get older, they learn the slang words, but if they have been taught correct usage from the beginning, they will understand that there are two vocabularies, to be used in different circumstances. As things stand, there are an astonishing number of adults who know and use only the slang terms, and many who incongruously continue to use infantile words like “wee-wee.”
Children using playground’s words at home are usually doing it to get attention, or to deliberately shock their parents, or to strike back at them for some injury, real or imagined. They will surely get the attention. Often when the child uses the sexual vocabulary he has learned in the street, he may be quite ignorant of the technical equivalents. This can be an extremely valuable lesson in sex education. Instead of saying “That’s a dirty, filthy word, and I don’t ever want to hear you say it again. If you do, I’ll spank you”, a parent may ask the child if he knows the “real” words for the ones he has just used, and if he doesn’t, which is often the case, the parent can supply them. A child may be astonished to learn that a “cock” is a penis, and that there are such words as “intercourse” for “fuck” and “defecate” for “shit”.
Here a parent has the opportunity to teach a whole new vocabulary. He can point out that people use the street words in the street, and (and he may as well face it) in plays or movies or books that depict those who use these words. At the same time, he can help the child to see the difference between such usages and employing the words at home, where he might offend other members of the family or guests who may be present. As in every other kind of behavior, the child learns, there is a time and place for using four-letter words, and he is invited to learn to make the distinctions. Thus, he has learned something valuable about adapting to the environment.
There appears to be a great deal of ambivalence about using four-letter words in front of the children. Such usage varies considerably among social and economic levels. Whatever the level, a parent can be certain that if he uses four-letter words freely before his children (or even only occasionally, for that matter), they will use them too. If the usage doesn’t disturb him, it won’t disturb them, I think it is useful, too, to remember that there is a very real distinction between using these words in a pejorative sense and in a simple descriptive way, or as common profanity. Thus, to say, “You’re full of shit!” is almost a challenge and, unless used between friends, is likely to lead to real hostility. But the ordinary “I’m going to take a shit” is merely commonplace vernacular, and “Oh, shit!” has replaced “Oh, damn!” as a term of exasperation among many people. “Fuck” is probably an even better illustration. Among males it has long been so common that it was jokingly referred to as the word without which World War II could not have been won, because so many people would have been rendered speechless if it had been totally forbidden. Today one hears women and men use it in a variety of ways, sometimes pejorative, sometimes as profanity or ordinary vernacular. Children have always used these words in the same fashion.
These usages are, essentially, a distinction between aggression and non-aggression. Children may understand this even better than adults, in their direct way, and they may also find it difficult to use the technical words parents teach them except in the most straitlaced circumstances. Today, it is probably unreasonable to expect a child to say “feces” or “bowel movement” when he means “shit.” The important thing is for the child to understand when four-letter words can be used and when it is an invasion of someone else’s privacy to do so. Parents who don’t like this kind of language can explain that fact to the child, teach him the technical equivalents, and tell him that they prefer to hear these words at home instead of the slang terms.
Closely rivaling, perhaps even exceeding, the use of the four-letter vocabulary as a concern of parents where sex and their children is concerned is the effect of pornography. Like the four-letter expletives, sex in pictures and text, once sold surreptitiously under the counter, is easily available in magazines, films, and books. A large body of conservative people wants to turn the clock back and restore the older morality in this field, but while they may have some temporary legal successes, it is highly unlikely that such freedom, having been achieved, will be abandoned, particularly by the substantial part of the young population that has grown up with it and feels quite differently about it from their parents.
The subject has generated so much passion, so much heat and so little light, that it seems worthwhile to begin talking about it by making some important distinctions. For a start, there is a substantial difference between pornography and erotica, but there is also no hard and definite line between them. It must be remembered that what is one man’s erotica is another’s pornography, and there are a considerable number of people who would like to suppress both.
Children who bring home sex in print and pictures, whether surreptitiously or openly, may be quite indiscriminate about it, depending on many factors, including their degree of sophistication. The product may be hard-core pornography, or it may be the socially acceptable Playboy, one of America’s most popular magazines, or its rival, Penthouse. In between are several shades of gray.
Does this kind of material hurt young minds? Is it harmful to growing children? Does it distort sex or “put ideas in their heads?”
To hear the passionate advocates on both sides argue, there is no doubt, one way or the other. In actual fact, there is absolutely no data to support the idea that sex materials harm children — and on the other hand, there is none to support the contention that they don’t. There is simply no clinical evidence either way, and it may well be that it is the kind of proposition impossible to prove one way or the other. In any event, no one has done any studies that could be regarded as conclusive, or even particularly significant.
We all have opinions, however. Mine is that while it is conceivable that in isolated cases a child can be caused some guilt or concern by exposure to pornographic or erotic materials, these feelings usually come from adults who discover him with them and make him feel that he is doing something dirty and evil.
Parents can make use of such a discovery to talk about sex. Instead of displaying shock, alarm, and anger, they can discuss whatever it is the child is reading and make some important points about sex. For example, they can point out that in the pictures and stories there is an absolute minimum of love or concern displayed between the people involved. That, the parents can explain, is not the way it is in real life when people do these things, or at least it shouldn’t be the case. It is not what people do with each other but how they feel about what they are doing, and how they feel about the person they are doing it with.
Nevertheless, the child may well remark, here they are, doing it, and while they may not be exhibiting love and concern, they seem to be enjoying it. Another valuable lesson. The parent can explain the one thing that is so often overlooked in sex education, namely, that sex is fun and that this is primarily why so many people have done it for so many centuries. But sex is not fun, the parent may add, when it is done to exploit other people, or to make them do something they don’t want to do for the purely selfish pleasure of one of the parties to the act.
The idea of fun is so often left out. Children are told, for instance, that the father plants the seed of the baby in the mother, but they are almost never told that the act is, or should be, one of the most pleasurable of human experiences.
One often hears it said that sex education is wrong because it compels children to think about sex before they are ready. (For some parents, being ready means when the child is grown up and married.) But there is no reason to worry on this score. If a child is not ready for sex education, he will blandly ignore what he hears pretending to listen but actually turning off. The same is true of whatever erotica he may see. If he is not ready to be curious and interested, it will seem only strange and bizarre to him, and after a momentary curiosity he will be disinterested.
A splendid illustration was a street in sexually liberated Copenhagen. One block was almost entirely occupied by sex stores on one side of the street, with window displays of pornographic books and magazines. On the other side of the street was a large church, with a big playground outside it. Children going to and from the playground, as they did constantly, walked by these store fronts all day long and seldom even bothered to look in. They were in a hurry to go and play soccer, or to get home or to school, or to some more pressing concern. Sexual materials are meaningless to a child if he is not ready for them.
Examples are numerous. I recall a father with a fifteen-year-old daughter who picked up a copy of Peyton Place he had been reading. Instead of snatching it away, he made no comment whatever and only watched to see what her reaction would be. She flopped into a chair, read quietly for a little while, about fifty pages or so, and then tossed the book aside in boredom. There was nothing in those pages that related to her life. “Did you like it?” the father asked casually. “It’s boring,” the daughter said succinctly. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Another parent observes that his son is reading some erotic material and has an unmistakable erection. But what of it? Boys get erections for far less reason and are not in any danger of harm from the experience, no matter what the cause. Foolishly, however, parents continue to fear “arousal” in their children — as though insulating them from erotic materials would prevent them from being aroused. They are sexually excited from time to time, beginning in infancy, all their lives. As for “putting ideas in their heads,” unless a child is totally separated from other children, there are few ideas in erotic materials that are not already in young heads before they ever see “dirty” books or magazines.
Even that word “dirty” is pejorative. It says that sex is dirty, which most children find difficult to believe, from an early age; the fear, guilt, and anxiety their parents generate on this account can be far more damaging to them than any book or picture. What the parents are really saying when they oppose pornography because it produces “ideas” is that they are afraid of anything outside of their own orthodox behavior. The most ardent fighters against pornography are likely to be the most inhibited.
“The sexual potency, drive, and power of a human being are to some extent determined by his inheritance and his chemistry, but they seem to be even more strongly influenced by the script decisions he makes in early childhood, and by the parental programming which brings about those decisions. Thus, not only the authority and frequency of his sexual activities throughout his whole lifetime, but also his ability and readiness to love, are to a large extent already decided at the age of six. This seems to apply even more strongly to women. Some of them decide very early that they want to be mothers when they grow up, while others resolve at the same period to remain virgins or virgin brides forever. In any case, sexual activity in both sexes is continually interfered with by parental opinions, adult precautions, childhood decisions, and social pressures and fears, so that natural urges and cycles are suppressed, exaggerated, distorted, disregarded, or contaminated. The result is that whatever is called “sex” becomes the instrument of gamy behavior.”
Eric Berne, from his posthumously published book, What Do You Say after You Say Hello?
If you think the children don’t respect you, try to find out someone they do respect, and if you think they need help, see if a meeting can be arranged without seeming to push them into it. That works with some children — admittedly a limited number.
More successful, perhaps, is the idea of the family council, which I have seen working effectively in any number of cases. It is an idea that appeals to adolescents, particularly if the cases that come before the council are not limited to the adolescents themselves but involve the parents as well. Discussion in the family council of individual conduct problems may not succeed in solving all of them, but at least it will bring them out into the open to be talked about, which is far more healthy than no discussion at all.
I know, a family with such a council, composed of the parents, a nine-year-old son, a fourteen-year-old daughter, and a sixteen-year-old son. When the time came to elect a new chairman, the nine-year-old was unanimously voted into the post. No one thought that strange. Every member of the group, it was understood, would have his turn as chairman. It is easy to see the incidental dividend in self-respect reaped by the youngest member. Another dividend was the resulting amenability to the sharing and performance of family chores that resulted from this election.
The family council, both before and after the nine-year-old’s chairmanship, did not back away from discussing sex problems, but most of its time was occupied with what seemed more pressing issues. The children complained unanimously that their father did not pay much attention to them, a revelation he found surprising, and one that shook him considerably. For the children, the fact that their father could be forced by the mechanism of the council to sit down and listen to them made a great deal of difference in their relationship. So this particular session was a revelation to both sides, as the father heard how his children really felt about his neglect of them and they heard for the first time his attempt to explain his conduct. That kind of problem is especially helped toward solution by the council idea.
Even more serious and intractable problems can be worked on, if not completely solved. One council I know of took up in a singularly clear-eyed way the fact that the mother had a drinking problem. She was not even conscious that the children knew about it, much less that they were concerned. To talk about it so openly with her own children, and to see how much it meant to them, did not impel her to abstain from that moment, but it did make her confront her problem and begin to do something about it. In short, miracles are not likely, but progress is virtually assured by the council idea.
Parents should be glad if the children express resentment directly, and should feel deeply the responsibility to answer them, to justify their behavior if they can, or, if they can’t, to confront themselves with their own image and do something about it. Otherwise, they are not entitled to expect anything from their children’s behavior.
I’m sure it is obvious that the family council is a device, and a particularly good one, to establish communication. I keep coming back to that word. I believe, it makes all the difference in a family and is the best way to solve its problems, sexual or not. It is a word that is never more important than in the early adolescent years. Channels that have been opened long before now bring a new and rich reward; those opened for the first time by understanding parents make easier what is certainly the most difficult time of their lives together for both parents and children.
We often hear from younger children the familiar complaint “You’re not listening to me” or “You don’t pay attention to anything I say,” and in adolescence this cry often becomes one of sheer frustration. Adolescents do have something to say about sex, and if they are given an opportunity to express their ideas and views, most of them don’t hesitate to do so. But, as I hear over and over again in my practice, they don’t often have the chance.
Parents should pay attention, or they will find it very hard to adjust to the constantly changing process of growing up that their children are going through. It’s a tricky business, this continuing process of adjustment to growth. Adolescents are never static, always moving, and by the time they are eighteen they expect not to be treated like children any more, but like the young adults they are. The legislatures and the courts have now emancipated them by recognizing their right to vote, make contracts, get married without the parents’ consent, and enjoy other adult liberties when they reach eighteen, but a good many parents still resist the idea of adulthood where their children are concerned.
If a seventeen-year-old daughter gets pregnant, for example, it will help no one to treat her like a ten-year-old who has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Tears or rage or scorn won’t help, either. She needs to be treated with the sympathy and consideration that would ordinarily be given to another human being in trouble. Parents ought to be as supportive of her as possible, helping every way they can instead of condemning her. However, because parents are so emotionally involved in these situations, it is imperative that they go outside the family circle for help — to their doctor, their clergyman, a trusted friend — so that more objective counsel and assistance can be brought to bear on the situation.
Naturally, the decision is not that simple. Parents have to think in terms of what is best for their daughter, and it is not easy. All kinds of factors are involved: guilt, on one or both sides; the child’s feelings; the parents’ feelings. It is hard for many parents to get over their anger that the daughter has had intercourse at all. I think it is always helpful if they can bring themselves to stand back a little and ask themselves, “What would I do if I were in my daughter’s shoes?”
Sometimes marriage is the best solution; at other times it is the worst. Occasionally it is even best to have the baby and put it out for adoption. I know of a case in which this choice was made, and, painful though it was, it proved to be the best one possible. Both the girl and the boy were able to finish high school and start college that fall, which they would not have been able to do otherwise. The boy’s parents, who would have been the sternest objectors, and would not have hesitated to cast out their son, never learned that he was in difficulties. Later, as they finished college together, the boy and girl married, and in time had three other children. Their “lost” child unquestionably got a much better start in the world with his adoptive parents.
For every case like this one, however, it would probably be easy to cite at least a dozen others in which another solution was better.
If religion and its heavy guilt loads are not involved, abortion is quite often the best solution.
As for the operation itself, parents as well as their teen-age children ought to understand that if it is done by a competent physician, it is safer than a tonsillectomy. Parents should be sure that their daughters (and sons) are aware of the dangerous alternative: the homemade abortion induced by jumping from a height, or taking drugs like castor oil or ergot to cause a miscarriage, or inserting something into the uterus. All these practices may lead to injury, infection, and even death.
I feel sure that a good many parents who have just finished reading this chapter will conclude that I have gone too far, that I am an unreconstructed libertarian who believes in giving children the freedom to do anything they like. I can assure them it isn’t so. The freedom I advocate for them is the freedom to express themselves, to communicate with each other and their parents, to consider alternatives in human behavior. To those who think I have been advocating a morality opposed to the teachings of organized religion, I would inquire whether the kind of freedom I have just described is not, at least in some respects, what the Christian faith teaches us. I have been told by some religious groups that this is so.
I was convinced of it myself several years ago while I was attending a conference of marriage counselors in a Midwestern city. A therapist told of a case he had dealt with: a mother who was a religious fanatic, rigid and unyielding in her attitudes; a father who was as weak as she was strong; and three children of various ages. The trouble of this family centered on a seventeen-year-old son who was in rebellion and giving his family a great deal of trouble.
“When you’re having one of these battles with your mother about nagging,” the therapist asked the son, “why don’t you just turn your back, go out the door, and go upstairs and lock yourself in your room?”
The son appeared genuinely surprised, even indignant.
“Why, that’s a terrible way to treat your mother,” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t treat her that way. Would you do something like that to your mother?”
“I don’t have a mother,” the therapist answered calmly, and the boy was momentarily taken aback. “The woman who bore me, who called herself my mother, and whom I called mother when I was very young — she doesn’t exist any more. I’m grown up now, and that woman isn’t my mother any more: she’s my friend. I call her that, and I treat her that way.”
It was an extremely apt way of saying something that both adults and children need to know — that the process of becoming an adult is essentially the process of losing parents and making them friends. The first part of the process happens to most of us in one way or another; the second part is more difficult, but remains the real test of whether the individual has truly become an adult.
When children are past eighteen, presumably they have grown up, and if they do have any sex problems, the parents will be the last to hear about it (unless they get into trouble and need money). In these days, so the conventional wisdom goes, the generation gap is so wide that it is no longer possible for parents to talk with their college-age children about much of anything, let alone their sexual problems.
As one who sees a good many college students in the course of my practice, I can affirm the opinion of my friends on university faculties that, on the contrary, there is a sometimes desperate need on the part of college students to talk about their sex problems with their parents, and few of them are able to do it.
Unfortunately, too many parents learn about these problems only after the student leaves college because of them, or when he breaks down and the parents are called in to pick up the pieces. By that time it is a little late to open up channels of communication.
This is the time, when the kind of crisis is likely to occur in which a daughter or son comes home from college with a lover to spend a weekend or a short vacation. That is the moment when parents find out whether they are able to relinquish their children’s childhood and treat them as the adults they are. We have heard it said so often that it has become a national cliché: “Let your children grow up. Don’t interfere with their lives, and don’t try to live their lives for them.” We hear it, and then a good many of us turn around and try to make the children live as we would have them live, by standards that we ourselves, likely as not, don’t follow.
But consider the converse situation a moment. Should the children try to live our lives? In treating them like adults, should we talk to them like the close friends we want to be, and in doing so provide them with knowledge of our private lives?
There are exceptions, of course, and I’m sure any parent knows of at least one, but generally speaking, I don’t think it is a good idea for college-age young people, whether they are in college or not, to hear from father or mother what is going on between them, particularly in a sexual sense. I realize that not too many parents are tempted to be so intimate in their conversation. Nevertheless, a surprising number of them, for various reasons, feel almost compelled sometimes to discuss their private lives with these older children, if one can still call them that.
This is particularly true when there is trouble between the parents. How often I hear from a young patient the story of a mother or father embroiled in a matrimonial squabble headed for the divorce courts, perhaps already there, who gives a son or daughter a complete account, with all the sordid details. Often this is a bid for sympathy, to get the child on one parent’s side, and in that case it can be exceedingly destructive. I have seen young people become severely disturbed and even institutionalized after parents have fought over them, each trying to enlist their sympathy and loyalty, pitting them against the other parent.
Sometimes the motivation is less dramatic, is simply an attempt by a parent to hang on to children who are growing up and drifting out of their lives. By making them confidantes, treating them as equals, and telling them things they would never have dreamed of before, they hope to continue the closeness of an old relationship on another plane. Sometimes it works, but the quality of the friendship we want to establish with grown-up children should not depend on such intimacies. Nor should parents use these older offspring as a convenient clothesline on which to hang their troubles, simply because they may be more available than anyone else. This is particularly true of the lonely widowed or divorced parent. With some exceptions, as I’ve said, I am extremely dubious about telling these grown-up children any more about parents’ private lives than they would have known when they were younger.
If children are really grown up, if they have come to regard their parents as close friends and no longer as Mom and Dad, the shoe can be fitted on the other foot, however. It is certainly therapeutic if children find they can talk about their sex problems to someone who will, in most cases, be more sympathetic than anyone else they can confide in. When such rapport exists, possibly in some cases it can be extended so that parents can talk at least about some of their own problems. If that happens it is usually a source of amazement to the young man or woman. Most of them have probably never stopped to think that their parents had any sex life. It is a truism that often children can’t imagine their parents having intercourse, and this childish reluctance to embrace reality may extend into later years. To see the image change before their eyes is not always something that can be taken in stride. But when it can be, the virtually inevitable result is to bring parents and children much closer together.
To establish such a relationship is a real accomplishment. The important thing, as I have said, is not to confuse authentic closeness with a selfish desire to transfer one’s troubles to a listener who feels a sense of obligation not to run away.
I suppose these good relationships occur most often in the typical situation, celebrated in any number of movies and soap operas, not to mention novels and comic strips, of the bride or older married woman who leaves her husband and goes home to Mother. Most mothers are extremely receptive in this situation. They are flattered and pleased to have their daughter home again, confiding her troubles, asking for shelter and advice. But Mother should not delude herself into thinking that this is anything more than temporary. Once having left home and known her own home and a marriage, even a bad marriage, most girls have no intention of giving it all up and returning to the parental roof. Nor should parents want that to happen; they must have the courage to compel the returning children to go back to leading their own lives as soon as possible.
At least there is one beneficial byproduct of these emotional returns. Daughter learns what she may have dimly suspected before — that Mother is a human being too. Mother may tell her a similar story out of her own life; if the daughter is having an experience the mother did not have, the older woman can learn something from it. The potential problem in that situation, however, is that the mother may try to judge her daughter’s life by her own, different experience, and insist that she live by the mother’s standards.
In learning to live with children who have grown up, and trying to share some part of their lives, parents may be put to severe tests. One of the more severe I have encountered, admittedly an exceptional case, is that of the son who asked if he could bring someone home with him when his parents had invited him for a weekend on the family boat. Thoughtfully, the son explained that his friend was homosexual, and so was he, and they would expect to sleep together on the boat. Fortunately, this boy had enlightened parents. They thought it over, then asked if his friend was someone like him and his friends, whom they had always known. If so, it was all right. Partly this was a self-protective attempt to prevent the boy from bringing home some “rough trade,” as the homosexual saying goes, that he had picked up in a bar, which might have caused a difficult situation in the close quarters of a boat. Beyond that, the parents were trying to tell their son that whether it was sleeping partner or anyone else, they didn’t want to share their boat with someone who wasn’t congenial to them.
The same thing would apply to a “guess who’s coming to dinner” situation, in which the white daughter wants to bring home a black. The question to be considered is not that he’s black, but what kind of man is he? Parents have the right to set such standards for themselves, even when the children are grown up. On the other hand, they must understand that these young people are now leading their own sex lives, whether with someone of another race, the same sex, or whatever, and what is demanded here is acceptance. If acceptance cannot be given, the parents and their offspring are better off not being together. It will not be difficult, however, if the parents are able to make their judgments on the basis of personalities, instead of by some purely artificial standard.
No doubt the major reason parents have trouble adjusting to their older children is that they must undergo a shift in roles that they sometimes don’t understand, or find difficult. As parents of young children, they have been cast for many years in the role of teacher, but now the child has become a young adult who may well be capable of teaching them something. That is not always an easy thing to accept — for some, it is impossible. To be the student after being a teacher for so long is simply too much for those who have cast themselves irrevocably in the original role. Quite often these personality types are “teachers” in other respects, too, and are unable to learn from anyone else.
There is one sure guide for the new relationship between parent and young adult, if they are to be close friends: Neither one should presume more prerogatives than they would with any other close friend who is not a blood relative.
It means to watch children change through the years as they grow up. This ancient phenomenon always seems new to parents, and it is a shame that so many of them appear to fight it and do their best to prevent it, at considerable cost to their relationships. Children are fascinating people, and we watch them grow with the greatest of pleasure. With all their problems, they are more often a joy than not. Inevitably, they change as they grow, and the parent who adjusts with each change finds new delight in every stage — even in adolescence, when they may try his patience and understanding beyond anything he has known before.
We can give children information and guidance as they discover themselves sexually and develop into fully aware and capable sexual beings. Sex is an important part of everyone’s life. But the most valuable thing we can give our children where sex is concerned is the attitude that sex is far from being the only thing in life. We should try to get them to understand that sex is a part of life — an important part, but not something special, something set aside, or so pervasive that it overshadows everything else. It is simply another aspect of living.
Parents who can provide that perspective, who can transcend their inhibitions and their reluctance to talk about sex with their children, will find themselves richly rewarded. As the children grow and develop through all the stages, these parents will discover that they can do a much better job of raising their offspring to be the responsible, loving human beings they want them to be. No parent could ask for a greater reward.
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