Search Results for "Sex"

Hell yes.

Over in Scotland, women are calling for schools to add information about miscarriages into the sex education curriculum:

Now, charities and women have called for the issue to be discussed in schools as part of normal sex education classes, and say this would help future generations understand how to cope and remove any taboo surrounding it.

Raise your hand if you felt totally alone after a miscarriage?  I remember once being with a group of women. One woman was talking about her miscarriage, and pretty much everyone in the room stepped forward with her own story, and the first woman cried something like, “Why didn’t you tell me before now?  I felt so alone.”  No person should go into family building without knowing this possibility.

If we’re telling kids about sex, STDs, and pregnancy, why aren’t we telling them about miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death?  Isn’t the whole point of education to prepare people?  To impart knowledge?  Why would we withhold important facts from a conversation?  And while we’re at it; if we speaking about fertility, we should tell people about infertility.  Let’s take the surprise and stigma away by making it an integral part of every person’s education.

Sending support over to Scotland and hoping we implement something here.

When someone tells me that there is a meeting, I show up for the meeting, which is how I found myself in a school library with two other parents learning about the sex education program at the school.

There are probably many good, individual reasons why people didn’t attend, but collectively, it was a pretty pathetic showing.  3 out of 300?  1% of the parents?

Anyway.

All week I joked about how I had to attend a meeting and learn about sex, and I cannot tell you how many people responded seriously, pointing out that of course I knew about sex because we had two children.  In their mind, sex may not always produce a baby, but babies are always produced through sex.  It meant that I spent a better portion of the week educating people on fertility treatments.

I can’t say they were awkward conversations because the other person usually responded, “Oh!  I didn’t think about that.”  But it was just eye opening that regardless of how much the media covers the topic, regardless of how often it appears in People magazine or the New York Times, people still make the assumption that children come from sex.

As a vegetarian who makes her food from scratch to avoid processed meals, you would think that I’d be pretty excited about Alicia Silverstone’s new book.  After all, she tackles infertility as one of her topics.  Fertility is even part of her title: The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning.

I want supercharged fertility. Apparently, all I have to do is “Eat well, get healthy, then ditch all the planning and trying and just let it flow. There’s no better way to make a baby than with yummy, soulful sex!”

Her book description on Amazon begins:

When did making babies get to be so hard? Infertility is on the rise globally, affecting as many as one in six couples. But instead of considering diet and lifestyle factors, doctors pump their patients full of expensive and invasive fertility treatments.

Oh.

So I didn’t have to do fertility treatments?  All I had to do is change my lifestyle choices?  For example (according to the book): stop using tampons?

Well, there is thousands upon thousands of dollars we’re not getting back.

Surely she’ll have something helpful to tell me about radiant pregnancy. I’ve had a lot of chemical ones, and the only one that went past 6 weeks ended early with pre-term labour. How can I prevent that?

All I have to do is eat plant-based foods and then I will “supercharge fertility; reduce your likelihood of miscarriage; infuse breast milk with all kinds of nutrient goodness that make your kids smart and healthy; and help stave off diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes.”

It took me a moment to remember that I DO eat a vegetarian diet heavy in plant-based foods. How did it go so wrong in my body? I not only never got supercharged fertility, but I miscarried, went into preterm labour, the twins were IUGR, and I produced no breast milk.

I could be the exception to the rule.  I own that possibility.  But it’s also possible that Silverstone’s new book places ideas out there that are hurtful at best and dangerous at worst.  No vaccines?  Claims that following her advice can prevent or cure “PMS, insomnia, allergies, breakouts, weight struggles, thyroid condition, lupus, multiple sclerosis—while significantly lowering your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer”?

Plant-based diets are wonderful.  Being mindful of the decisions you make on behalf of your child is wonderful.  Anecdotal evidence has been used for thousands of years in raising children, with knowledge passed from one mother to another.

And perhaps that is it.  Maybe if Silverstone spoke about her own experience with infertility and wanted to discuss the way she treated it (and if she provided the caveat that what worked for her may not work with other people with other diagnoses), I wouldn’t have such a problem with this book.  But Alicia Silverstone wasn’t infertile.  She didn’t have a “doctor pump [her] full of expensive and invasive fertility treatments.”  She isn’t passing along anecdotal evidence on infertility.  She’s parroting what others have told her.

She’s parroting anti-vaccination speeches without having done the research on vaccines herself.  She’s parroting what scientists have said about how chemicals interact with the body or what psychologists have said about child development.  And there’s a danger when a layperson parrots what she has been told vs. what she has studied in-depth or lived.

This book worries me.

Updated at the bottom

We talk a lot around sex as we talk about infertility, but many people get pretty damn squeamish talking about sex.  But you’re going to have to talk about sex if you end up parenting because it’s part of the package: you need to prepare that kid for the world.

I’m coming at this topic as a former health teacher for middle schoolers who has had her share of jaw-dropping questions left in her classroom’s anonymous question box.  And while my average readership may not have a child yet or your child may be still in diapers, this is a topic that anyone who is planning to parent or is currently parenting can’t wait years to think about.  You have to have a strategy, and the best strategy begins at birth.  Well… okay… a little after birth.  But still.  It starts much earlier than you think.

Tomorrow is National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day.  But Melissa, you say, kids don’t have to worry about HIV.  But did you know that “40 percent of new HIV infections are young people ages 13 to 29.”  If you don’t want your child to be part of that 40% statistic, you need to educate them, and you need to do so early.

According to the Kinsey Institute, the average kid loses his or her virginity before he or she graduates high school. For boys, it’s an average of 16.9 years, and girls lose their virginity on average at 17.4 years.  Some parents are worried that starting the sex conversation conveys a message that they condone their child’s sexual exploration.  But isn’t the opposite possibility ten times scarier than teaching your child how to put on a condom?  That they could be left without vital information that could protect their overall health?  In addition, some parents unrealistically believe that they know with certainty that their child is a virgin.  The reality is that statistics tell a very different story about the frequency of teenage sex.  The best approach is to believe only what you know to be fact and accept that your child may be part of that statistic above.  You’ll never know unless you catch them in the act… or ask.

There isn’t a magic age to start talking to your child about safe sex.  Like most charged topics, the conversation best unfolds in small steps over the course of many years.  Start soon after birth getting your child comfortable talking about his or her body as well as opening up the path of communication between yourself and your child.  While you may feel inclined to use a cute term when referring to your child’s genitalia, it’s actually more helpful to label their penis or vagina just as you would all their other body parts. (Yes, I’m aware that the visible genitalia on a girl is the vulva, but since no one calls it as such, we went with the more common vagina in order to minimize confusion.)  The point is to make them comfortable with every inch of their body.

In elementary school, the focus may be on HIV itself; not talking about how it is transmitted but more the concept that there are diseases that can be passed through contact with blood.  This is a good age to discuss HIV in terms of safety.

In middle school and high school, the conversation needs to include that the disease can be passed through sexual contact and how people can minimize their risk by utilizing condoms or asking sexual partners to get tested for the virus.

And as a former health teacher, I have a bit of advice on how to open up this conversation with your child, regardless of age:

• Choose a time when you’re both not distracted.  Put down the mobile phones, turn off the television, and look each other in the face.  A second choice would be to open the talk while you are driving and your child is in the car for a long drive.  This way, if you’re nervous, you can keep your eyes on the road.

• Take away sex’s power.  You may be coming into this conversation with baggage about sex.  You may have beliefs about sex or have had a negative experience with sex or feel empowered by sex.  And all of that is about you.  This conversation is about your child.  Do not make sex larger than it really is: don’t let it loom huge in your mind like a bogeyman who is going to turn your precious, innocent child into a crazy sex addict nor make it the end-all-and-be-all of the teenage years.  Your children are looking to you to figure out how they should feel about sex.  If you are too emotional, too anxious, or too dismissive about sex in this conversation, your child will pick up on that energy.  You simply want to present the facts and not inflate sex or give it more power than it should have.

• Find out how much your child already knows.  Most schools start education about sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV even before they begin their lessons on sexual health.  In addition, your child will pick up information from other kids.  Gently correct any information your child misunderstood from class or the playground.  I’ve always told the twins that my job is to educate them, but their job is not to educate others.  They should allow other kids to have their parents educate them.

• Let the conversation be child-led.  Tell your child that you plan on presenting them with information in a moment, but you’d rather first hear what questions are rolling around in their mind.  The information may end up coming at them out of order, but allowing the conversation to unfold with the child in control of the flow of information is not only empowering to the child but it provides you with a fill-in-the-blank approach so you know what to say next if you start to get nervous.

• If you’re feeling nervous, use a book.  Think of it as your script, and you’re just an actor, presenting the story.  Peter Mayle has a great set of two books that have been used by parents for decades for younger children.  You may want to gift teenagers with a book such as Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, which is a book similar to Our Bodies, Ourselves but aimed at teens.

• Be frank.  Your job is not to scare them or coddle them.  It’s to present the information without telling your child how to think or feel about their sexuality or various sexual acts.  Information provided concisely and clearly, without emotion, leaves the power in your child’s hands to decide the path they wish to take.  Don’t leave them in a position where they feel they need to use sexuality as a place to rebel against you.

• Be honest.  If you don’t feel that your child is old enough to know certain information, the best thing you can do is explain that you will happily answer the question fully at a later date, but right now, you’re telling them what they need to know.  The worst thing you can do is lie or blow off your child’s question.  If their question makes you uncomfortable, explain that to your child.  But don’t shut down conversation by making them feel wrong for coming to you with a question.

• Don’t let your sole discussion of sexuality be doom and gloom.  Most parents keep their discussion of sexuality to topics such as HIV or teen pregnancy: not the cheeriest elements of sex.  If you’re opening up this conversation with HIV, make sure you counterbalance it with pointing out the good things about sex so that sex does not become something scary that must be avoided.

• Don’t be afraid to share your values.  Even though you don’t want to make decisions for them, it’s fine to let your child know your expectations and why.  It’s not enough to simply ask your kids to wait until adulthood to have sex in the same way that it wouldn’t deter you if someone simply pointed at a door and asked you not to open it.  On the other hand, if someone asked you not to open the door because there was something behind that door that could harm you and they were trying to protect you, there would be a much stronger impetus to follow their directions.

• You don’t have to share your personal sexual history.  Your child may ask out of curiosity or to gauge whether you’re having similar life experiences.  You can explain that you ask them about their sexual history in order to help them make good choices since you are there to guide them as their parent, but that in general, a person’s sexual history is something they should volunteer to discuss and not have questioned.  On the other hand, you may have regrets about when you lost your virginity, and it’s okay to use your personal story to explain why you’re asking something different from your child.

• Leave the door open.  Remind your child at the end of the conversation that while this particular talk may be over, that you know questions and new information pop up over time.  Make sure they know explicitly that you are a resource for information.

And that’s how you get through the dreaded sex talk and give your children the tools to protect themselves in the process. Don’t count on your child’s school to educate them about their bodies or sexuality. That conversation is best played in your court, providing a sound foundation for schools to build from.  And the talk begins much earlier than you probably think.

Update:

Please don’t wait to start having this talk with your child.  The LA Times reported this week that sex education in schools often comes too late to be helpful.  The article states: “Among teen girls who were sexually experienced, 83% told interviewers that they didn’t get formal sex education until after they’d lost their virginity.”  Don’t wait for schools to step in and educate your child on life.  Sex education has to begin at home.

Image: Rupert Ganzer via Flickr

I’ve found that most of the time, when women speak about sex amongst casual friends, they speak about it in vague terms that neither confirms nor denies whether anything is taking place in their bedroom.*  For instance, “He thinks he’s getting some tonight.”  Well… is he?  Or “Sex is the last thing on my mind.”  So… er… it is, at least, on your mind even if it is in last place.  I mean, for instance, the farm bill is not on my mind at all, so “last” trumps “not at all,” right?

Which is why I was surprised when I was out a few years ago with 12 thirty-something women.  Most of the women in the group were married.  A majority of the women in the group had children.  And after we had exhausted topics such as potty training bribery and our jobs, the conversation took a very unusual turn.  We started talking about… sex.  As in, who was having it and who wasn’t.

Maybe I remember this conversation so vividly since it has happened so few times in my life: not the joking about sex or teasing about sex, but women openly sighing while blinking back tears about how they weren’t having sex and it made them feel like crap.  Especially since they assumed, based on newspaper articles citing the average number of times per year that constitute a healthy marriage, that everyone else was doing something right while they were effective destroying their marriages by not getting around to sex.  And then there were the women who were exhaling big sighs of relief that at least they didn’t have the no-sex problem on their plate.

The women in the group talked about being jealous of other people’s orgasms.  Being too tired to add sex into an over-packed schedule.  Feeling as if their sex life had been decimated by earlier struggles in their marriage that were hanging around, stinking up their libido like garlic breath.

The whole talk sounded quite a bit like a blog post I would find in the ALI community, except substitute “sex” for “baby.”  The same feelings of inadequacy over something that is largely outside one’s control.  The same feelings of frustration that others are getting something easily that you are working at so hard and perhaps not getting at all.  That feeling that everyone knows something that you don’t know; and that you’d be embarrassed if they knew the truth about what goes on (or doesn’t go on) in your bed.

*******

I was speaking with a gynecologist who was outlining a new problem that has bubbled up with the advent of Viagra.  The drug is wonderful at treating erectile dysfunction, and many men are using it to extend their sexual life**.  The problem, of course, is that it does nothing to treat their female partners who are also experiencing a sexual denouement.  So now you have women who are experiencing post-menopausal side effects such as a decreased libido or vaginal dryness or tissue thinning but their partners are no longer sexually aging with them.  They’re able to chemically rewind to much younger sexual capabilities whereas women can’t.  At least, not yet.  As of right now, there are “no FDA-approved medications for treating sexual arousal problems in women.”

Not every woman experiences that post-menopausal dip in sexual appetite.  According to a New York Times article on the topic, about 45% report a decrease in interest (or ability to comfortably have) sex.  37% report no change, which doesn’t really tell us whether they are or aren’t having sex.  8% didn’t answer at all, and 10% reported an increased libido after menopause (attributed to the removal of pregnancy anxiety that happens, apparently, for fertile people).  Additionally, sexual satisfaction is all in the eye of the beholder.

Yet as Dr. Potter put it, “What might be a satisfying sexual life for one woman may seem woefully inadequate to another,” adding that what a woman expects from her sex life can make a difference. She cited the findings of various large surveys: “Only one-third to one-half of women who report decreased desire or response believe they have a problem or feel distress for which they would like help.”

We are, after all, supposed to age.  Our bodies are supposed to change.  The problem is a society that is constantly berating us to make a furious grab at youth via hair dye, make-up, sex.

*******

The emotional side of sex seems as if it has the potential to divide women much in the same way the emotional side of infertility divides women.

We even talk about it in the same way.  Some women brag about their sex lives in the same way that other women boast about their ability to have children. (“All we did the whole vacation is eat, sleep, and have sex” or “We got pregnant on the first try!”)  In both cases, it’s not really information we need to share in that it has no potential to benefit the listener.  People say it because they want to say it.  And consequently, people whisper about their lack of sex in the same way they whisper about their infertility.  It’s something women rarely advertise: hey, look at me, I’m infertile/not having sex!

Perhaps the two topics are tied together in my mind because sex plays a role — or, as the case may be, doesn’t play a role — in both infertility and… sex itself.  Neither of which are life-threatening situations but both are lifestyle-threatening.  They threaten our quality of life; perhaps not in the physical sense, but certainly in the emotional sense.

I guess I bring it up because I can see the potential down the road for this to become a divider like infertility amongst women of a certain age. No one knows whether or not you have sex unless you tell them whereas infertility is a bit more visible due to the lack of child.  But the internal processing?  The feelings it brings out in us that subsequently affect our relationships with the people around us?  I have to imagine that people who aren’t having sex don’t want to sit through even a teasing conversation about other people’s sex lives any more than I wanted to attend baby showers when I was in the throes of treatments.

And in the infertile world, because sex is tied into that unsuccessful babymaking process, it becomes about as appetizing as grey meat.  Infertility can decimate a sex life.  Some people bounce back (or don’t take a hard hit through it) but many others still feel the effects after they are parenting.  And why shouldn’t they?  We’re not shocked when soldiers come back from the field with PTSD.  Well infertility is a crisis, and it changes you to the marrow.  We can’t expect people to be dragged through the trenches of infertility and then emerge with a baby in their arms exactly the same as they were before they started.  Or without a baby in their arms and just going through life as usual.

I haven’t gone through menopause yet, so I have no clue which statistical category I’ll fall into.  But will it become the new infertility in the emotional sense?  Will women slyly insinuating how much sex they’re getting and how fantastic it is become the dividing line between women?   Will those who can’t or have no desire to have sex feel inadequate?  And what role do the hormonal imbalances of infertility (when that is the reason for the diagnosis) play in the pleasure factor of sex down the road?

I understand completely if people want to comment anonymously for this, but I would love to hear your thoughts on whether sex lives become an area of life to covet like parenting when either is held out-of-reach***.

* Apologies if this post is hetero-focused.  Libido issues can affect all regardless of sexuality.

** Of course, this isn’t the only usage of Viagra, and many younger men use the drug too.

*** Sometimes having sex is within our control, but other times it’s physically impossible due to bodily changes.