Things my kids don’t know about sex

We covered the basics early on. My oldest has been paging through “It’s So Amazing” since she was 2 and had a baby cousin on the way.

The kids all know that making a baby requires an egg cell and a sperm cell, and those can be combined either by a doctor or by some kind of body positioning. The older ones know about IVF and miscarriages. They know there is medicine you can take so you won’t get pregnant. They know body parts and pronouns don’t always match up the same way.

They know a lot of adult couples, and some Disney portrayal of being in love. One of the kids wrote a letter suggesting marriage to her first-grade classmate, but her sister and I convinced her this was coming on too strong.

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Some misunderstandings:

• One of them believed conception included the egg and sperm talking to each other. Turns out they took the comic-book style of “It’s So Amazing” and “It’s Not the Stork” more literally than I expected.
• Two of them asked if it hurts when the doctor puts the cells together, because they assumed any activity combining bits of people’s bodies would be taken care of by medical professionals.
• Our au pair came to me flustered by some well-intentioned advice from our six-year-old, who knew our au pair didn’t want to have children. Our kid helpfully told our au pair that she should avoid snuggling too close with the kind of woman who has a penis, because someone could still have sperm even if she identifies as a woman. After that, we asked our kid not to offer reproductive advice to anyone outside the immediate family.
• The kids knew our previous au pair was gay, but they were surprised to learn that her girlfriend was also gay. What are the odds??

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Some things I think they don’t fully know:

• Almost all sex is for fun, not to conceive babies.
• Lots of human behavior has an undercurrent of trying to impress each other, and some of that is sexual in nature.
• A huge amount of women’s restricted role in traditional societies came from limiting access to their sexuality and preventing pregnancies. We still haven’t fully figured out how societies should handle spaces that are in theory non-sexual, when people keep developing attractions to each other.
• Being in love can be a painful and risky experience, not only a warm and safe one.
• Romantic and sexual interactions can range from delightful and mutual to one-sided and exploitative.

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I had one part of the conversation earlier than my 10-year-old wanted, because she was traveling to a lot of dance events with Jeff. I said something like:

• At some point, someone will think you’re cute and want to treat you in a romantic way or get cuddly with you.
• Sometimes teenagers or adults who are older than you will be interested in you in that way. It happened to me, it happened to Grandma, it happens to a lot of girls in dance spaces.
• If someone is making you uncomfortable, leave. You can make an excuse if you want, like you need to go to the bathroom or you feel sick or you told someone you’d meet them at a particular time. You can pretend someone is calling you. Or you can just leave with no excuse. But get physically away from them.
• Then tell Papa or another grownup you know well.

She hated this conversation, but when I repeated it six months later she took it more calmly.

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I’ve been reading aloud Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books to the kids. I like the way it includes different threads of how attraction can work.

In Wintersmith, the spirit of winter latches onto a teenaged witch. She keeps having awkward conversations about it with the bawdy older witch Nanny Ogg:

“Is this going to be the talk about sex?” asked Tiffany.
“Did anyone say there was going to be one?” asked Nanny innocently.
“I kind of got the feeling,” said Tiffany. “And I know where babies come from, Mrs. Ogg.”
“I should hope so.”
“I know how they get there, too. I live on a farm and I’ve got a lot of older sisters.”
“Ah right,” said Nanny. . . . . “You shouldn’t be frightened of him. He should be frightened of you. . . . it’s a poor lookout if a bright girl can’t wind a boy around her little finger. He’s smitten with you. You could make his life a misery with a word. Why, when I was a girl, a young man nearly threw himself off the Lancre Bridge because I spurned his advances!”
“He did? What happened?”
“I unspurned ‘em. Well, he looked so pretty standing there, and I thought, that’s a good-looking bum on him if I ever saw one.”