Talking to kids about sex often mom's job
February 19, 2010
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Francine Kopun
FEATURE WRITER
Grasshoppers forced Jen Peleschak into a discussion about sex with her 8-year-old son.
It was summer and the area around their Guelph home was inundated with them. They were mating all over the place.
"What are they doing?" her son asked.
"They're going to be making more grasshoppers," Peleschak replied, hoping the discussion would end there. Of course, 8-year-old boys being 8-year-old boys, it did not.
"Is that how people do it?"
Peleschak, 38, a public servant, explained in straight clinical terms what people do. Her son said "Oh," and darted off to play.
When her 7-year-old daughter recently asked where babies came from, it was Peleschak who once again stepped up to explain one of childhood's most puzzling mysteries.
"Who am I kidding, I prefer it was her," says Dave Peleschak, 40, a graphic designer. "I think she's just more open about it." His position is not uncommon. Despite decades of feminism and co-parenting and men grappling with diaper changes and night feedings, moms are often by default or tradition the ones who end up having the sex talk. Often it's because they are the parent who spends the most time with the children.
"It's just not a comfort zone for me, I guess," says Jeff Laferriere, a financial adviser in New Liskeard. When his wife put a bucket of condoms on a table near the door for their teenage sons and their friends to help themselves, Laferriere was initially shocked, but he went along with it, realizing that it's better to be safe than be a grandparent at 46.
"Often if there is a woman in the household, she takes over that part of the parenting," says Andrea O'Reilly, an associate professor at the School of Women's Studies at York University and founder and director of the Association for Research on Mothering.
Women are typically the family CEO, in charge of remembering who got which shots and setting up play dates. Having ``the talk'' falls into that realm.
"The talk is part of a larger paradigm of gender. Until we dislodge that, women will probably be the ones to have `the talk.' I try to de-gender caregiving, but it's a hard sell," O'Reilly says.
She believes `the talk' is declining in importance in any case.
"We live in such a sex-saturated culture. Kids know about sex long before children 10, 20, 30 years ago did," she says.
She sees the information she's given to her three teenagers as part as an ongoing discussion about sex that takes place whenever the moments arise.
Sometimes those moments occur when her partner is in charge, and then he does the explaining.
"You have to create a household where kids feel comfortable coming to you to ask questions," she says, adding that she and her partner have created a household where "we talk about sex and sexuality the way we talk about politics or the news."
Children want information about sex, according to a study of 1,200 Toronto teens released last summer.
The Toronto Teen Survey found 28 per cent of teens weren't getting information about sex from their parents and 53 per cent were getting it from their friends.
They need the information sooner than most parents like to think. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control revealed last summer that nearly a third of males and females between 15 and 17 reported having had sex. Among teenagers 15 to 19 years old, 13 per cent of females and 15 per cent of males reported having had sex before they were 15 years old.
The Toronto Teen Survey found that 63 per cent of respondents 18 and older had engaged in sex. Fewer than 5 per cent of 13-year-olds had had sex, and about 33 per cent of 16-year- olds had had sex. Among teens aged 13 to 18, one-third were sexually active.
Parents might feel they lack the skills or even the stomach for a discussion about sex with their children, says Sarah Flicker, a York University professor and principal researcher on the Toronto Teen Survey.
"Not all parents feel comfortable telling children where a clitoris is, but you could talk about what makes a healthy relationship."
Ann Douglas, mother and the author of The Mother of All Parenting Books, says the best person to talk to children about sex is the parent they happen to be closest with at the time.
Parents fall in and out of favour with their children as they go through different stages of maturity.
Mom can be the centre of their world and Dad is the meanest parent ever, and then the sands shift and Mom is suddenly incredibly annoying, and Dad is cool.
"Why not take advantage of the fact that you're hip and cool because your musical tastes are in sync with your child's," says Douglas, who has had talks with her four children since they were in Grade 3. Three are now teenagers and one is a preteen.
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