Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [28]
The Boy Scouts of America, the Christian Coalition, and the Roman Catholic Church are all vocally opposed to masturbation. Christine O’Donnell, who ran for the Delaware Senate in 2010 (and lost), spoke on MTV in the 1990s about how masturbation was a sin because it was equivalent to committing adultery.8 In 1994, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the U.S. surgeon general, was forced to resign from her position because she suggested that masturbation should be a part of sex education. Conservatives and moderates were outraged to the point that Elders left her post.
Meanwhile, when we look beyond opinion and stigma, research suggests that masturbation is an essential part of sexual development, and girls’ hesitations about masturbation are correlated with having uneasiness about intercourse.9 The sex educator Sharon Thompson notes that one of the things masturbation teaches is that all those things we feel happen inside our own bodies.10 So many girls make all that sexual excitement about the other person. In reality, those feelings are their own creation and they could have those feelings without needing a boy around to feel them. Assuming that girls will develop more confidence about their sexual feelings if they do masturbate, they might also be more self-directed about their sexual behavior. They will likely know better what they want and what they don’t. And what better way for girls to acknowledge and attend to their sexual desires without putting themselves in the way of STDs and pregnancy?
So how should mothers address sexual behavior with their girls? Lynn Ponton, author of The Sex Lives of Teenagers, created a comprehensive list of considerations, including starting early, before adolescence; being conscious of talking to your children about sex and sexual feeling without mentioning your own; continuing the conversation and communication long beyond a singular talk; and recognizing that your work as a parent is to guide and suggest but not to direct.11
If daughters are going to have sex, and we know from the statistics that many will, then mothers should make condoms available to their daughters. We know that adolescents use condoms more than adults do, which means they are willing to use condoms.12 Therefore, parents have a responsibility to keep their children as safe as they can by providing condoms in case their teenagers are choosing to have sex. And parents need to talk with them about condoms early. A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that mothers who discussed condom use with their teenage daughters before first intercourse had daughters who were three times more likely to use condoms than those whose mothers discussed condom use with them after first intercourse.13
Another very important issue arises when it comes to mothers and daughters regarding sexual behavior. Many mothers are still dealing with unresolved feelings surrounding their own promiscuity. They either continue to act in loose-girl ways, or they feel anger or pain or resentment about those feelings themselves (see chapter 9 for more about the grown-up loose girl). We know that modeling is one of the primary ways children learn. It doesn’t matter what mothers say to their daughters if they don’t walk their talk.
Children—perhaps especially teenagers—are hyperaware of hypocrisy. Communication to teens about sex—from media, from parents, from educational institutions—is loaded with mixed messages. Teenagers look perhaps most critically at their parents for hypocrisy and will quickly dismiss a mother’s admonishments if she isn’t following the same advice. And if a mom is acting out sexually, needing too much attention from men, or even focusing too much on romance, girls pick up those messages more than anything else that might be said.
This