baserinstincts

On Sex Ed

So just whose responsibility is it to educate the youg’uns about sex anyway?

There’s been a lot of talk about this recently.

People seem to think it’s the responsibility of the schools and have called them out on their gross inefficiency in this area.

OK. I can sort of dig that. I believe schools should address the issue. It’s certainly a topic far more practical than a lot of things taught in schools today. These kids may go through life never having to apply the rules of trigonometry but you can bet each and every one of them will have sex.

Sooner rather than later, most likely.

But, and forgive me if I start to sound like Bill Cosby here, where are the parents in all this?

Don’t the parents hold the ultimate responsibility in not only teaching their children about sex (as in the mechanics of how it and their bodies work), but also to instill sound sexual values in their children?

I know it’s a difficult subject to bring up (I myself am still waiting for the talk…glad I was proactive and picked up a book). I had to ask my mom and even then I got a one sentence answer.

But in today’s society, where sex and sexual images and conflicting sexual messages have become this sort of ubiquitous entity, where you can’t even go a block from your home without getting hit in the head with it, wait too long or wait for someone else to do it for you and your kids may end up schooling you instead of the other way around. And by then, they’ll be such bouts of misinformation that it will be even more work to set them on the right path (I was in high school, getting ready to enter the adult world and some of my peers still believed you couldn’t pee if you had in a tampon or that you could use lemon juice to diagnose various vaginal infections… in junior high a peer gave birth to a still born because she wanted to keep her pregnancy a secret and didn’t understand the concept of prenatal care).

When should you start? How young is too young? It’s hard to say for sure, and there’s no one size fits all answer here. You should certainly have the talk (series of talks actually) before celebrities are able to replace you as your child’s parents. Once they’re exposed to that kind of constant bombardment, it’s becomes difficult if not impossible to exert your own influence.

I wouldn’t trust MTV to raise my child. Would you?