Sex Ed: Who is having the conversation?

Imagine for a moment that your life could be different. Instead of struggling with questions about your identity and self-worth, someone spent time with you, helping to form your foundational identity. Now imagine for a moment that you have children, maybe you do have kids and you can ponder this reality. What would you do if your kids lived with a secret struggle for years and never felt they could breach the conversation with you. 

Picture yourself heading to bed, only to wish your 10-year-old a goodnight before you hit the pillow. You notice that he is still working on homework on his laptop on his bed. He promises that he’ll head to bed no later than 11. Feeling a healthy amount of trust, you wish him a goodnight and go to sleep. The hours tick by and your son is still on that laptop, except he isn’t doing homework anymore. He has been sucked into porn. Internally, he is telling himself, “this will be the last video I watch” and “once it gets to midnight I’ll go to sleep.” Unfortunately, the cycle continues until 3 AM when he finally passes out from exhaustion. Three hours later he has to get up for school. You notice he seems tired and unlike himself but you dismiss the signs as a rough night of sleep. Your son is trapped in a cycle of sexual addiction and he likely doesn’t know where to turn. 

What is presented above could be seen as a purely fictional story. Perhaps as a parent, you think that if a problem like this occurred, your child would talk to you about it. If you are an adult, maybe you wish someone would’ve talked to you about your sexual addiction. Instead, you were forced to struggle through this experience on your own, adding to the shame cycle you feel every time you watch porn and masturbate. 

You may be shocked to realize that this fictional story is more real than it is make-believe. According to Hartford Healthcare, they suggest that “studies indicate 90 percent of teens have viewed porn online, and 10 percent admit to daily use. This is partly due to increased smartphone usage among children and adolescents, with elementary-age smartphone ownership rising to over 50 percent in recent years.” A statistic like this seemed borderline impossible 10-20 years ago. A recent article by Fight the New Drug indicated that the average age for first porn exposure is 13 years old. The scary part is that some kids are getting exposed as early as seven years old. 

Beyond the rise in earlier smartphone access, why are kids gravitating to this content? Some of it has to do with society and peer influence. The other, perhaps more influential, starting point is the lack of conversation about healthy sexuality with kids. “The Talk” or the “Birds and the Bees” mentality has contributed to an intense pressure that makes an uncomfortable conversation even more stressful and difficult to navigate. This mentality becomes a burden to get over with, often failing to see the bigger picture. Conversations about sexuality need to be ongoing. Much like other areas of development, we need to keep a pulse on the situation. Having lower pressure, consistent conversations also keeps the doors of trust and communication open.

Think about other aspects of your life. Would you be more likely to discuss something difficult with someone that seemed pained and uncomfortable by the topic of a one-time conversation or someone who lowered the pressure and normalized the topic? Kids want a parent who can meet them where they are instead of feeling like the pressure is on them to bring up this awkward topic. What do we teach our kids when we avoid conversations like this? We teach them that we don’t want to discuss this or that no one struggles with scenarios such as this. 

With this other side of this coin, the conversation gets so uncomfortable for the parents that they avoid it altogether, the curiosity about sex still lingers for young people, especially as they enter puberty. If kids aren’t getting the conversation at home, they’re going to explore their curiosity somehow. For some, this will result in taking advice from their peers. For others, they might do some research online. Porn teaches people. Unfortunately, it teaches an unhealthy and often abusive, and exploitative form of sexuality.  As a parent, we care about our kids learning their ABCs and 123s. What if sexuality was included in that developmental learning trajectory. Conversations about sex should be happening long before they start searching for sex answers online. Meeting a child where they are means giving them an age-appropriate lesson on sexuality beginning around the age of five. 

In closing, here is my plea to parents, have the difficult conversations you’ve been putting off. If you’re an adult reading this and have suffered this journey alone because of a lack of conversation, know that there is still hope for you. It is never too late.