Last week Oprah had Dr. Laura Bergman on her show to discuss how to talk to your kids about sex. Bergman suggests talking to your daughters about self-stimulation so they know they don’t need someone else for sexual pleasure. She went on to suggest that when your daughter is 14-15-16 that you could buy her a vibrator. This sparked something of a controversy with moms online, half of them on the “this is wonderfully progressive” camp and the other half on the “that is just… wrong ” side.
I think if you feel you must initiate a sex-talk with your kid that it’s probably a good idea to include a bit about self-stimulation. But it is one thing to present masturbation as a positive fact of nature — even as a healthy positive practice — and quite another to take your daughter sex toy shopping. Buying your daughter a vibrator without her input and consent is crossing a boundary and is totally creepy. Not to mention that you don’t need a vibrator to masturbate, if you feel you really need to ensure that your kid can get themselves off couldn’t you just give an anatomy lesson? By this time in your child’s life sexuality is a personal issue. Your child has a sex life and aside from answering questions and providing resources you should in no way be putting your self in it.
Dr. Bergman’s suggestion and this type of parenting is about having a quick-fix. Do you not know how to talk to your kids about sex but feel like you need to? Since they were babies did you discourage them from exploring their bodies? Solution: buy them something! But it is not as easy as a few forced conversations and tossing a vibrator in your teenage daughter’s lap. This approach assumes children are things to be managed rather than emotional and sensitive humans, which is infuriating and not true.
Getting the Love you Want by Dr. Harville Hendrix contains a segment about how our natural sexuality is typically discouraged from a young age. Dr. Hendrix explains just how taboo a child’s body is to him or herself by telling a story he heard from a friend about a mother breaking this cycle of discouragement. He paints a picture of a warm sunny day when Chris, a mother of an 11 month old decided to stop by his friends house. It was a gorgeous day in May and they decided to sit on the porch, drinking iced tea. Because it was such a pleasant day, Chris took the child’s clothes off to let him sunbathe and fully soak up the lovely afternoon. After crawling around on the porch for awhile he got hungry. As she fed him from her breast, the baby got a miniature erection from the wonderful sensation of feeding and instinctively grabbed his penis. Unlike most mothers Chris did not slap her child’s hand away, she allowed him to have this encounter, feeling the warmth of the sun, the satisfaction of the milk and sensations of his body all at once, all natural, sensuous feelings the child should be allowed to experience. The truth is, teaching a child about his or her sexuality and their ability to self-stimulate and enjoy their own bodies begins naturally well over a decade before Dr. Bergman’s recommendation.
I think the key is to have an open and honest household that encourages all curiosity while developing boundaries between the parents and children as they age. In an open and honest home I think you might not even need to even have scheduled talks about sex, as your children will come to you and ask if and when they need to. I think this takes a huge amount of self-awareness and self-work on the part of the parent, as what so often happens is that the parent is reminded through their child of their own childhood, when their own autonomy was shut down and the reaction here often is to anxiously repeat the same behavior of their own parents.
As far as the masturbation talks goes, this “sit down, I want to talk to you about masturbation” technique is unnatural and only temporarily eases the parent’s anxiety, erasing the child’s preferences completely. Do you have fond memories of being sat down to get “the talk?” All I can recall is fear, anxiety and dissociation.
In a truly sex positive, open and honest household where children are free to discover their bodies without shame or punishment it would seem that masturbation would be a natural and personal discovery. Isn’t that precisely what it should be? Quick fixes won’t help your teenagers develop positive relationships with their bodies. The beauty of healthy sex cannot be taught by an orgasm machine.
Subscribe to my blog!
Subscribe to my podcast!Related posts:
7 Comments
one of your best posts yet rabbit
I think this is a great summary of the issue, especially the part about buying a toy for your daughter without her input/consent. That is the most problematic aspect of it for me.
Sexuality in general here is steeped in taboo. So, yes, there needs to be a cultural shift that moves away from punishment for wanting to explore what comes naturally.
http://www.indy.com/posts/take-your-daughter-to-the-sex-shop-day
love this article. the last line sums everything up so well! great work!
Bravo, Rabbit! I couldn’t have put that better myself. I am also all for children learning about their own sexuality in an open atmosphere (that encourages curiosity but that establishes certain boundaries between parent and child).
I believe that it’s ultimately better for parents to discuss masturbation as being a healthy part of their sex lives. Masturbation tends to get a bad wrap in this department and a lot of parents get overly freaked out about talking with their kids about something that is not only natural — but is also STD and pregnancy free.
However, I completely disagree with randomly handing teenagers vibrators. I believe that this is going too far into he other extreme and not only is that incredibly creepy, but it can further put a bad or unhealthy association to something is a natural part of being a human being. I , for one , would have most likely been scarred for life if a parent would have given me a vibrator at all during my formative years. You can’t expect a sex toy to give you all of the answers when it comes to how to deal with your own natural sexual desires.
isn’t part of the fun of masturbating the fear of getting caught? like i can’t speak for everyone but i have always thought that was exciting…
I wish I grew up in a sex positive household. My parents didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t even know what a period was until I had mine (and BOY was I scared!). I’ve never mentioned sex to my mom, and she’s never mentioned it to me. I learned everything by myself, and I wish it could’ve been different.
I ended up buying my own vibrator when I was 15, and needless to say I hid it from my family.
I didnt ask my mum about sex and she never approached the subject with me. My first experience of a vibrator was when i found my mums Rabbit Vibrator when i was baby sitting one night … i will never forget it.
2 Trackbacks
[...] Oprah’s segment on buying your daughters vibrators [...]
[...] is stimulated by an Oprah segment about buying vibrators for your daughters to weigh in on talking to your kids about sex. The money shot (er, sentence): “The beauty of healthy sex cannot be taught by an orgasm [...]