When it comes to talking to teens about sex, this is the approach to avoid
This story is part of the June 22 edition of Sunday Life. See all 15 stories.
I remember my sex education vividly. We did a bit in biology lessons about the basic anatomy of male and female genitalia, which, since I attended a Catholic girls day school, was just about as basic as it was possible to be.
I can still see our poor biology teacher to this day, some 45 years later. She was, at that point, about eight-and-a-half months' pregnant, and she stood with her hands behind her back, leaning against a wall, eyes fixed firmly on the floor, going more and more pink as she spoke.
'Sexual intercourse,' she said firmly, 'only happens inside the bounds of matrimony. And only to a loving couple, with the intention of having a baby.'
That was absolutely it. Nothing about contraception, protection or consent. Nothing about how sex actually worked.
When I met my first boyfriend, at the age of 18, I literally didn't have a clue about anything. I knew nothing about the logistics of sex and intimacy. I was completely unprepared. As for the idea that sex might be pleasurable, that was never spoken about.
Things have changed since then, thank goodness. But, even in the 2020s, the way we talk about sex to our teenagers is still sadly lacking, and often leaves them in a state of confusion. In many cases, when we talk about intercourse, we're essentially talking about sex prevention. It is about anticipating what might go wrong – the unwanted pregnancies and the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). If you are lucky enough to have any discussion about sex in your school, then all too often it is only about how to put a condom on correctly.
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While my own children's conversations about sex at school were a lot better than my convent experience, they still did not equip them with a positive understanding of their sexual awakening. They were taught how not to have sex because of the lurking dangers, and how to use contraception. Quite often, the information came tinged with the same semi-Christian morality that coloured my own upbringing.
The difficulty with this approach is that teenagers do have sex, and if your only strategy is to try and stop them, then it is doomed to fail. What's more, today's teenagers are surrounded by online images of sex and sexualised behaviour. Not a day goes by without some news story on the unregulated spread of pornography, or how sexualised images on social media are leading children into darker and darker territory. I've heard stories about nine-year-olds who have watched pornography without having the first understanding of how their bodies work or what they are watching.
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