No, that’s not some plea for dirty comments.

The ’sex talk’ I mean is the ‘birds and bees’ conversation of old. You know, The Moment when you tell your kids where babies really come from, and how they get there. A new study shows that the big talk should really be more of an ongoing discussion.

“It’s important that parents set a foundation early on in talking with their kids about sex so that it becomes part of the norm in their household,” said study lead author Steven Martino, a behavioral scientist at RAND in Pittsburgh. “As children grow and have experiences, you want them to feel it’s natural to talk to their parents. When asked where they’d like to get their information, kids say from their parents more than anyone else.”

I don’t remember feeling that way as a teen. Hmm.

The study followed hundreds of teens and their parents. The families were divided into two groups. One group of parents completed a course in how to keep a discourse on sex and related topics open with your child; the other group did not.

Follow-up surveys were completed at one week, three months and nine months after the intervention began. The surveys were designed to assess 22 sex-related topics, such as the consequences of sex, how to make decisions about when to have sex, how to say no if you didn’t want to have sex, how well condoms prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and more.

[W]hen teens and their parents had more conversations — repetition — teens reported feeling closer to their parents and felt they could talk more openly with their parents about sex and other topics.

Go figure - the more you talk about something, the less taboo it becomes.

While I obviously haven’t been a parent long enough to encounter this situation, I can’t imagine making sex as closed-off a topic as it was during my adolescence. My parents basically told me, “Don’t do it before you’re married - premarital sex is a sin,” and left it at that. I didn’t follow their advice, such as it was, and I hope I can create a more informative, open atmosphere for conversations on sex when my kids are old enough to be curious. I’d love to not have to think about my kids having sex until they’re 40, but since that’s not rational, I’d still rather them come to me than shut me out.

Posted by Sunshine.