Sex Education: When Should it Start?

Recently, presidential candidate Barak Obama has defenders aligning alongside him after he spoke in favor of teaching sex education to kindergarteners. Later, he came forward to say he meant only the teaching of proper names for body parts so the child can describe precisely what he or she underwent in cases of inappropriate touching.

Others have come forward with arguments supporting this point of view:

* Children must be told what inappropriate touching is because they may not know the difference between just an elbow or something serious.
* Children need to understand different ways of loving at an early age to accomodate class members who may have two mommies, etc.
* The ad hominem argument: conservatives who criticize Obama's point of view are uptight, blind to dangers of pedophilia, or just pushing their own agendas despite how it may endanger our children.

I Knew What Inappropriate Touching Was

Here's something I've never talked about in public: when I was four, I was molested by an older cousin, aged about thirteen or so. Guess what? I knew exactly how wrong it was, despite my tender age. He managed to get me alone twice, showed me things I should not have known about at that age, and insisted that he get to touch me.

I never told anyone. But I also knew what a bad thing he was doing. My family never talked about sex, and I didn't know what that Thing was, outside of the anatomical drawings I read in our family encyclopedia. But I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted, and I knew I wanted nothing to do with it. I made sure I was never alone with him again, to the point of running away to stay at my grandmother's house next door when he visited.

Knowing proper terms for body parts would not have helped my situation; I had access to looking them up, if I cared to do so (I was already reading well at that age). No one had to tell me what was wrong and what was not, or that what he was doing was markedly wrong. The one thing that would have helped me at that age: if I had known I needed to tell about this, no matter what my cousin said. You don't need sex education for that.

The "Two Mommies" Syndrome

Another set of my cousins, a boy and a girl, had to deal with the fact that their mother was bisexual, and that she was in a relationship with another woman (two consecutive relationships, really, with different women) during most of their childhoods. I didn't care about the relationship; J.D. was a lovely woman, told the best stories in the world, and I loved being around her. I knew intuitively what was going on well before my mother told me, and well before I knew what the word "gay" meant.

It couldn't have been easy on my cousins. I know once my male cousin got into a serious fistfight with someone who called his mother a nasty name. But I saw children of multiracial couples targeted in worse ways. I was a smart girl in a backward farming community; I got picked on something fierce. My little brother had a four-year fashion romance with black leather and chains; he got it from those people who weren't scared of him.

For the most part, the kids who found out that my cousins' mother lived with another woman didn't really care, or even think about it. The ones who did care are the type who look for something nasty to do anyway. For the most part, it seemed that kids' reactions are dictated by parental reactions; most were more impressed by their nice house and magnetic personalities than what they did in the bedroom. This despite the small-town, Bible-belt mentality in the community.

The worries about "two mommies" is overblown. I don't want my kids to focus on the relationship between their friends' parents, no matter what sex they are. I'm more concerned about whether they feel comfortable at those other houses, or whether the parents fight in front of kids. And my kids take their cues from me, not their school, thankfully.

The Ad Hominem Attack

In the last three years, I've grown proud to call myself a conservative libertarian. I agree with most conservative values, and since the hate speech seems to have shifted primarily to the left, I'm very uncomfortable with the liberalism that used to feel like home.

I am more aware than most people of the dangers of pedophilia -- as you might have gathered -- and I constantly watch my kids. I've drilled into them from early childhood that there are bad people out there, and that though they should be friendly and loving, they should also be wary and watchful. And I've done it without talking about sex before they're ready for it.

In order, I taught them:

1. Strangers are not to be trusted, even police officers. Any stranger who tells them they need to keep something secret from Mommy is probably planning to hurt them.

2. The parts of the body that every swimsuit covers are their private areas, and no one is to touch them, nor are they to touch anyone else's. This was only a problem with one child, my closet nudist; the others have been very modest about their bodies. All my children were embarassed at this instruction, but they understood it.

3. I am here to protect them. No matter what, I'll lay down my life to do so. Later, when I married, their stepfather made the same thing clear to them, and they believe us.

4. No matter what the secret, no matter whether they think it might hurt me somehow, they need to tell me if anything makes them uncomfortable.

5. When they were about nine, I started asking questions: how did they feel about girls, what did they want to know about love? I put the focus on feelings, not bodily functions -- and that's where the focus needs to be at that age.

6. Later, my sons all diverged, and I had to really personalize things. My oldest was reticent about sex, so I told him that if he had any questions, he could come to me anytime, and if he needed to talk to a man, one of my brothers was the man to talk to. He wound up talking to my brother, which worked out well. My middle son is, at the age of 12, already developing remarkably hairy legs, but is still horribly embarassed about sex and girls, so my husband and I made it clear he could come and ask about things at any time, and also that there were books around that he could look things up in if that even made him uncomfortable. I've found the books lying around.

The youngest one is the biggest challenge. He's precocious with girls, discovered them at the age of about three, but he's more interested in romance than kissing. This is changing rapidly; I've found him with anime pinups in his room and some rather interesting artwork. We've actually talked to him, at the age of ten, more extensively than we have talked to his older brother.

There is no sex education class in the world that could address sexuality for my children in the personal, intimate way I do. At best, public sex education would embarass my boys; at worst, it would bring up questions in my youngest that are very premature, and -- knowing him -- put him at risk of some sexual behaviors that are very inappropriate for his age. These issues will arise naturally. I don't appreciate it that my public education system, and by extension my government, don't trust me to take care of this issue myself. I have specific values I want to instill in my sons, and generic sex ed could do nothing but get in the way of this.

I don't tell my sons, by the way, not to have sex. Instead, I let them know that I'm here to answer any questions they have, that I love them, that my husband and I are in the sort of loving relationship they should seek out. Now that I'm pregnant again, we talk about the baby, how she's growing, and how she's a part of both me and my husband. And I'm sensitive to how far they want to go in discussing sex. In the impersonal classroom, no child could get this kind of personal attention to address their unique needs.