Heck, when I was in fourth grade, I barely knew what women were. I hear fifth graders talking about sexual stuff that I did not know about even in college.
Has anyone stopped to consider that maybe that's the problem? My mother was, among other professions throughout her life, a very good nurse and a decent psychologist. By the time I was nine I knew as much as I could possibly know about sex from a clinical standpoint. From that age I knew exactly what every sexual organ does, exactly what happens during intercourse, exactly how eggs become fertilized, and exactly what occurs in both male and female bodies during puberty. This stuff wasn't taught in health class until my freshman year of high school five years later. When they showed us those wierd videos (the birth and the dude coming out of the shower canoodling his boys to check for cancer) I wasn't bothered or distrurbed, I wasn't embarrassed or giggling like some of the other students. Most importantly when I was older and the opportunities for sex came about I was far better informed and was able to make wiser choices than my friends who's parents either ignored the issue completely hoping the school would take care of it, or even worse, taught them that sex was a sin.
My parents didn't shield me from the sheer and simple reality that
everyone has sex. Every human being on the planet has the exact same sexual urges and it's completely natural to begin feeling those urges at and around the teenage years. It's been suggested the puberty is starting earlier as each generation passes because of all the chemicals in our food (any straight red blooded male in the public school system notices how girls seem to fill into their clothing earlier), which bothers me far more than the thought of getting kids to understand what's going on with their bodies.
Each parent has the right to determine how their child is brought up, whether or not that child is blood related, but I cannot fathom how simply telling a child that they're not allowed to know about a certain subject until a certain age will in any way help them to cope with it. You may not like it, you may not even want to admit it, but your 12 year old wants to have sex. He himself may not understand the concept, he may not even know why he feels those strange things when he sees images of scantily clad attractive women but the chemicals in his body are telling him "you're preparing for reproduction".
Maybe some parents think their little girl will just shy away from sex if mommy pretends it doesn't exist and if daddy threatens to smack her silly for kissing boys.
Those are the parents that will then blame the media for "introducing" sex to their kids when it was their own biology that did it.Even without all the sex in the media kids would still feel the exact same urges. The problem is that parents are too afraid or too embarrassed with their own nature to tell their children the truth about who we are and where we come from.
Tell a child not to have sex "because I said so" is only going to entice the child more. When you deny a human being the satisfaction of a curiosity it emboldens that person to pursue it with greater tenacity and, if necessary, deception. Instead if you tell a child what sex is, why people have sex, what happens during sex, and the consequences of sex then maybe you'll raise a child better able to understand and control his or her own feelings when the time comes to make a tough decision.
