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What
Are
Your
Children
·Learning About Sex?
You may be shocked at how, where and how often your children are
learning wrong ideas about sex!
I
F YOU ARE
a parent, your chil–
dren are getting a sex educa–
tion nearly every day of their
lives.
It
does not matter your
moral convictio.ns, religious per-
suasion or your personal ideas of
morality.
How Sexuality ls Really Taught
The idea that sound and responsi–
ble sex education can be taught in
a few sex lectores or films in a
school, a home or a church is
ridiculous.
The most influential sex infor–
mation and altitudes a child
receives does not result from for–
mal, planned sex education
courses. Rather it starts at birth
and is absorbed constantly
throughout life in everyday social
relationships.
It
is influenced,
first and most critically, by the
actions, attitudes and values of
parents. Then from siblings,
peers, friends and the cultural
environment at large.
Sorne of the most potent and
influential sexual emotions and
attitudes begin to form in impres–
sionable young minds after pick–
ing up the nonverbal cues, actions
and attitudes of those most in–
fluencing them.
F irst Sex Teachers
Parents really have no choice
between providing or not provid–
ing sex education for their chil–
dren. They themselves are the
first educators in basic human
September 1980
by
Oonald O. Schroeder
relationships between the sexes.
Their lives as parents emanate
attitudes toward sex, sexual val–
ues and sexual roles whether they
teach them in formal instruction
or not.
The only alternative parents
have is
how
and
what
their chil–
dren will learn from their exam–
ple and teaching; and whether
they will meet their responsibility
to provide right and wholesome
sex education-and do it
.first,
befare youths pick up damaging
or erroneous sex knowledge and
attitudes elsewhere.
Sex education begins with an
understanding of what one is–
male or female. This is estab–
lished between the ages of one
and two. This sexual identity
occurs, largely, according to the
way a child is looked upon and
treated by parents, about how the
child is encouraged to look and
feel about himself or herself. And
especially with whom the child is
encouraged to identify. A child
learns from his parents and other
influential persons what it means
to be a male or female; in other
words, its gender role.
Fathers and mothers, or parent
substitutes, are the first models of
what it means ' to be masculine
and feminine, of how to respond
to others of the same and opposite
sex under various occasions.
Mates who really love each
other and fulfill their God-given
functions in life, who show
warmth and right affection to
each other and their children, are
living advertisements of the re–
wards and value of marriage, the
family unit and children.
Now look at the opposite. Par–
ents, bornes or close social rela–
tionships that wreak constant dis–
sension and strife, that manifest
lack of proper respect toward
others, that are plagued with infi–
delity, vulgarity, sex abuse and
base moral values, are encourag–
ing perverted and harmful human
relationships and sexual atti–
tudes.
Many bornes are not this ex–
treme. Still, young children of
preschool or early grade-school
age can pick up harmful values,
feelings of fears regarding their
own or the opposite sex in subtle
ways as well as from unfortunate
sexual experiences.
Parents or other influential
persons confused or guilt-ridden
about sex, or with wrong attitudes
or feelings about their own sex or
the opposite sex, communicate
such feelings to their children,
though they may be unaware they
are doing it. A parent may
ev~n
say one thing that is culturally
expected, but their intonation and
the way they act, shows they
really don't feel that way.
Children exposed to such con–
fusing messages or children sub–
jected to silence about sex-that
is, children without positive and
wholesome sex-role examples and
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