Teaching Our Daughters About Sex: Sexual Mothers, Sexual Daughters

We as mothers are putting our own fears ahead of our daughters' well being, and we have to confront this crisis of confidence in order to offer our girls more grounding in sexual vitality than we were given by our own mothers.

In not giving them the sexual information they need, and offering them that life long emotional connection to us, we do them a broader disservice than we imagine.

Yesterday on Oprah sex therapist Dr. Laura Berman did an excellent and long overdue episode on helping mothers talk to their daughters about sexuality. Therapists, sex educators and researchers including myself find that, shockingly, our level of anxiety as mothers still keeps us from really educating our daughters about their bodies, desire and relationships. Although we tend to disguise it with rationalizations like "she's too young" or "it will overwhelm her" the main deterrent to our being there for our girls in this way is often that we're simply too uncomfortable to do it.

My research has shown me how far we haven't come. It's the beginning of the 21st Century and many mothers aren't even teaching their daughters about menstruation, let alone sexuality. Just like our mothers did, we're passing off their education to Judy Blume or the school nurse. And now, the internet.

But we, as modern mothers, have the opportunity to truly break through to the dimension of mothering we thought we'd broken through to decades ago -- one not permeated with unnecessary shame-driven ignorance.

The easiest way to do this is to appreciate that our daughters' sexuality exists on the very same continuum as our own. Remember when you were curious about how babies were made, and when you didn't know where a tampon went? Remember when you felt like an idiot with your friends because everyone else seemed to know what oral sex was and you were afraid to ask? Remember the first time you felt yearning, and the first time you felt so swept away sexually you thought if you were to die right then and there, your life would be complete? Now remember the negative stuff. Did you feel naughty or dirty when you first began your own sexual exploration? Did you feel alone and separate from your mother? Did you worry she'd judge you? Do you even today feel guilty around masturbation? In your life now, do you feel disconnected or unfulfilled when you're having sex?

Whether we actually have them or whether we do not, women crave full and happy sex lives because we know we feel more alive when we do. So how can we want this vibrancy for ourselves and not for our daughters? If we want our daughters to feel sexually comfortable as women, we need to help them feel comfortable along the entire journey, and our awkward avoidance and judgment won't get them there.

Women in my study and practice routinely feel let down and abandoned by their mother's silence or lack of support. It undermines how they feel in their bodies, and not just with regard to sex - it influences what they feel entitled to do, think, say and wear. If we implicitly encourage our daughters to forsake their sexuality that sense of shame infects every other area of their self esteem. And the opposite is also true. If we raise our daughters to feel a healthy entitlement to their sexuality it will enhance their self esteem in every way because they'll have the freedom to be whole.

The little 10 year old girl on Oprah, who must surely be the most delightful child to ever appear on television, had the most poignant and concise message in the show. She'd been asking her mother twice a week for the past eight months to please teach her about sex, and her wonderful yet anxious mother was scared to death she'd say the wrong thing. In their session with Dr. Berman the girl said (italics her emphasis):

Little girl: "What is sex?"

Dr. Berman: "Do you have any idea what sex is?"

Little girl: "It's not like I have the confidence to think about that, but I want my mom to have the confidence to talk to me about it."

Comments

[Pearlswan]

Pertinent post on a most important topic. Oprah was courageous for doing the show too. Thank-you.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Keep our kids safe by giving them the information they need to know the difference between wholesome sexuality and abuse. If all sex is considered "secret" then how do the kids know when healthy boundaries are crossed? And, how do we expect them to bring it to our attention when they have no experience discussing such matters with their parents because its such a secret and mysterious topic? These secrets about sex create the conditions where child molesters feed. Parents need to be most fearful about the effects of not being honest with their children about sexual development and more fearless about the effects of being completely honest about it. Its too critical to our lifelong health to leave to chance. Its time to muster the courage we need as parents to talk to our kids honestly and appropriately about sexuality and its healthy expressions.

[issuelab]

Thanks for the great article Joyce. This is a topic that in my opinion can't get too much coverage!

Besides the research being done by clinicians like yourself there is also a lot of great research being done by nonprofits about what works and what doesn't in sex education -- answering some of the tough questions re: the long term impact on kids of not being fully informed about their sexual lives and sexual selves.

One of the the research topics that your article, and Oprah's show, so directly points to is the critical role of parental engagement. For instance, a 2008 report by the Healthy Teen Network titled "Parental Engagement ". You can check it out at http://birdsandbees.issuelab.org/sd_clicks/listing/parental_engagement

You - and other interested readers - can also see the full collection on the topic at http://birdsandbees.issuelab.org

Best,

Gabriela
Co-Director, IssueLab
http://www.issuelab.org

[nov47]

Great post. I saw that Oprah show and thought it was fantastic, but how depressing that grown women can't so much as say the word masturbation. You'd think it was a term of violence or something disturbing instead of a natural part of life.

[mbaty]

It was an interesting episode. I'm not sure if mothers in general are more uncomfortable than fathers, because my dad never really gave me "the talk," but I think it's so important to teach kids what is true about being human as early as they can understand. When is shame about the body that you're in ever a good thing? It's self-hatred to a degree. Our society seems so wrapped up in sex and shame that we think it's ok to watch people killing each other brutally but not ok to watch people love each other, even if that's only in the physical sense. I think the violence in our accepted entertainments and the non-acceptance of depicted sexuality goes right back to shame. And when we feel ashamed to simply be what we are, human, then we feel justified in hurting or damaging the human body or seeing the depiction of that as being acceptable, PG-13 rated, while enjoyment of the human body and/or combined with images of naked humans recieves an NC17.

[Raymond Dempsey.]

Experts from all sides of the debates seem to agree that the demonstration of passionate love between the dad and the mom seems to make a positive difference.

I enjoyed the comment of the writer before my comment (mbaty), too.

I wonder if the watching of the love making of parents is a help or a harm to children. What do you think?