Sex Talk At A Mom's Book Club

I was invited to a mom’s book club who were (bless them) reviewing my book, Till Sex Do Us Part: Make Your Married Sex Irresistible. It was a range of moms who had babies up to 20 year-old kids.Inevitably the conversation went to girl’s sexuality—this after I got on my soap box and proclaimed a big reason why women have sexual hang-ups is because of us putting girls/ young ladies/ women’s sexuality under scrutiny as to whether their conduct was either “whore or Madonna’.After the hallelujah chorus died down of anger that we never see men’s sexuality being scrutinized, we went right back to scrutinizing women’s sexuality.Case in point one mom said she saw a news report showing a teenage girl who claimed to have more than 30 sexual partners. The mom, who by all accounts was sincerely trying to be open-minded, looked at me earnestly and asked, “Isn’t that a bit excessive for a teenager? I mean 30 sexual partners!”And then somehow the conversation went to getting a Brazilian (A Brazilian is when you have all of your pubic hair removed.)The mom of a 20 year-old explained that her daughter announced oh so casually one day that she had been getting Brazilians for the last two years.A mom with two young daughters confessed she might like to try a Brazilian but how would she explain her lack of pubic hair to her daughters, and what kind of message would that send to them.And then the best quote of the night (for me anyways) came out of the mom with the 20 year-old, “After your kids turn 13, they don’t listen to you anymore. They listen to what their friends are saying. I never got a Brazilian and I never talked about that sort of thing with her. And she’s doing things that I would never dream of doing. I’ve had no influence on her whatsoever.”She went on, “I want to know what she’s up to but I really don’t want to know. Sometimes I just want to cover my ears and say, ‘lalalalalalala’ so I don’t know what’s going on when she goes out.”Of course that put the fear of god into every woman there. And with a regretful, silent sigh I thought, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”Parents want to believe that it’s the outside forces that over stimulate and over sexualize our children—media, Lady Gaga, internet, friends—it’s what the media perpetuate and it’s easiest to believe.So for the record, research shows that in fact parents have a significant impact on their kid’s sexuality. This is NOT meant as a guilt trip, rather a cry out from me for you to talk to your kids about sexuality.Sex ed starts at age 0 and goes until the kids are out the door. When we are able to talk about sex openly, honestly with respect to the child’s burgeoning sexuality, they will go out into this world armed with the all important “sexual self confidence”.Brazilian or no, we really have to stop scrutinizing and start accepting that women should and need to be openly sexual. It’s the one of the few ways we can start to enjoy sex to the max.