Talking to Teens about Sex
Talking to Teens about Sex
A guide for you and your teens
In this newsletter, we provide you with notes on Demystifying Sex, an episode of Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers.
Hosted by Andy Earle, a researcher, and writer who focuses on adolescent risk behaviors and parent-teen communication. He is joined by Ben Dunks, the author of Intimacy: A guide for young men about sex. He’s spent the past four years interviewing young people about sex and intimacy to find out where their concerns and confusion lie.
Read our notes below.
Topics Covered in this Summary
Talking to Teens about Sex
A Guide to Intimacy for Teens
Takeaway for Teens
Talking to Teens about Sex
Parenting a teen is not always easy. Youth need adults who are there for them—especially parents who will connect and communicate with them. Even if talking about sex is uncomfortable, it’s a conversation that should happen.
So much of the conversation around sex becomes focused on what not to do, and we worry about our kids getting into something that they shouldn't be doing or getting weird ideas from the internet.
If we talk about something positive and we have an open conversation about it, teenagers will have more information, and they can come to a better understanding of themselves with that information.
There are elements of experience that you don't have to go into detail about, but you could describe the moments where you were particularly vulnerable or moments where you made a mistake so that they understand that you went through their experiences.
To have conversations where parents are being vulnerable with teens (particularly older teen boys) creates trust and opens door to a whole multitude of other things.
A Guide to Intimacy for Teens
Intimacy is such an important part of all of our lives but many teens lack a suitable guide to help them through these relationships.
There are so many different ways of engaging with each other but they need to know there are two important rules when it comes to sex; Consent and Safety.
The basic aspect of sexual consent includes being sure your partner wants to have sex and is comfortable doing so before having sex.
One of the challenges we face is that some of our young people are having what is essentially ‘violent’ sex, but both participants don't understand this because porn is teaching them that this is what sex is. For example, there could be an idea that the female partner who may have been assaulted actually consented to that, not knowing that she's being assaulted because she thinks that's normal.
Make your teenagers aware that they are not alone in partnered sex, and their decisions on partnered sex involve another’s desires and preferences and respecting boundaries when someone says no.
When it comes to older children and masturbation, parents will want to continue to emphasize that touching oneself is natural and normal. As children enter puberty and sex is more on the brain, masturbation can be discussed as a safer sex option, and a way to learn more about one’s body.
The unfortunate reality is that they will be exposed to porn. It’s best if you can be their source of information and help them shape their opinion on sex, so that porn doesn’t affect their sexual life later.
Takeaway for Teens
It’s okay to be vulnerable. There’s this idea that masculinity is presented to teenage boys as control, and power is the end game so any sense of vulnerability or kind of intimacy in those ways is seen as a deficit but there should be a sense of partnership, sharing, and sense of intimacy.
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Listen to the original episode