Children & SEX: the parents speak. - book reviews

The topic of sex has always been a sensitive one for most parents, but the emphasis in the past has been more on how to communicate the biological information to one's child than on anything else. The rules about when and where and how to have sex were pretty clear--at least on the surface. Children were kept in the dark (or sheltered, take your pick) about many areas that were related to sex. In fact, probably most adults were, too. Suddenly, though, sex, or the social accoutrements of sex, has leaped out of the bedroom and seems to be everywhere.

As soon as children can look around they are receiving information about sex from the world at large. Almost every television or magazine advertisement uses sex to sell products. Sexual activity of every possible kind fills the pages of magazines, the chatter of talkshows, the plots of movies and TV series. Children are being presented with many more options--including married heterosexuality, homosexuality, swinging singles and "open" marriages. What was once considered adult language and visual stimulation is available to anyone walking down any city street--on billboards and newsstands, through graffiti and n T-shirts.

What this all means is that parents have to make active decisions about how to interpret all this; how to combine their own personal values with the biological information; how and when to restrict or alter children's experiences; basically, how to develop an approach to these loaded issues. This certainly is not a role we have many models for-equipping our children to face a world in which the demands and mores are drastically different than they were 25 years ago. The tried and true rules don't work so well when one's 6-year-old watches "Three's Company" and then acts it out in his play.

Parents have always found that talking with others who are facing the same questions provides ideas, support and the opportunity to solve problems creatively. Children & SEX provides just this kind of help. Not a how-to book, this valuable volume brings us the thinking and experiences of more than 200 parents of children aged 3 to 11. The book is the product of in-depth interviewing of mainly middle-class parents from varied backgrounds and locales and with varied beliefs. It is the authors' intention not to analyze their subjects' attitudes, but to clearly organize them. As the subtitle indicates, they let the parents speak for themselves. What this book beautifully reminds the reader is how delicate and how intricate is the process of developing human relationships. The authors themselves write: "Communicating honestly with children about sex turned out to be a very complex process, one which could not easily be explained, planned, or codified; one which developed subtly, often surprisingly, providing new insights at every step along the way."

The parents were asked to speak on how they handled a wide range of topics, from "Where do Babies Come From?" to "Privacy" to "Dirty Words." They shared their approach to the media, and to non-mainstream lifestyles. The 10 chapters are further broken down into even more detailed facets of each topic. For example, under a chapter entitle "Body Talk" interviewees discussed 11 subtopics including "Nudity," "Breastfeeding" and "Bathroom Behavior: The Need for Peace and Quiet."

What makes this book compelling are several things. First, the authors were able to cogently summarize many of the interviews and provide the reader with a cross-section of responses and approaches that were found to be useful. The book is quite well-written and the information is easily accessible. The interviewers were skillful in getting parents to articulate the thinking behind their actions and to share with us their reasoning. The vast majority of the parents appeared to be trying very hard to be aware of what they do and say and feel, and to recognize the impact of their actions on their children. Only in the section on "Media" did one sense the parents giving up control. For example, the mother of a 4-year-old spoke of leaving a pornographic magazine on the coffee table, saying that her daughter was "going to see it eventually, anyway." This reaction may speak to how overwhelming a task it is to deal with the media. Turn off the TV and it comes in through the mail; censor the mail and it's on a billboard. It may be that parents, recognizing a certain amount of impotence, deal with their feelings by rationalizing their lack of control.

Second, the reader never feels that these are "subjects" or specimens. The authors are able to communicate sympathy and respect for adults who are grappling bravely with difficult questions. The words of the interviewees reverberate in the reader, describing our own experiences and our matching quandaries.

Third, this really is not simply a book about sex educationa. It becomes very clear that the way parents deal with these topics are part of the fabric of their family life. The choices that we make reflect who we are, our own childhoods, who we hope to be. Those ever-changing choices are shaped by the world we live in, our children's temperaments, their ages, their other experiences--and most particularly by our general relationship with our children. They must be tailored, too, by our own needs and our personal styles. One interesting example was the difference in the way mothers and fathers responded to questions about sex. Mothers tended, as they do in other areas, to want to explain the feelings related to the questions. They were uncomfortable discussing male sexuality with their children for lack of personal experience. Fathers, on the other hand, took a traditionally male approach: They "usually bypassed the emotional 'hidden agendas,' and questions behind their children's questions, by sticking to the facts and conveying information in a blunt, pragmantic tone." In addition, mothers were most often the communicators of sexual information to their children of both sexes--since they spent more time with their children and generally saw childrearing as their responsibility.

This book is a gold mine of information, support, provocative ideas and approachesw. The ways that these parents have responded to difficult situations may help readers to develop new modes of dealing with similar instances. Although we may disagree with the responses, we always find ourselves challenged to come up with our own reasoning. This consciousness of the important questions and issues can only enhance how the reader personally negotiates this process. The authors of Children & SEX have given us a work that will enable adults to reflect on their own lives, to face their shortcomings with sympathy, and to feel connected to the many other parents working to raise their children in a diffcult time.

COPYRIGHT 1984 U.S. Government Printing Office
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group