Sex: Why We Hate Talking About It To Our Kids
by Meg Meeker, MD for huffingtonpost.com
It cost the Rand Corporation millions of dollars to discover this: Teens who watch too much sex on TV have too much sex and get pregnant more than kids who don't.
No surprise there.
But what is surprising is that we parents are often more embarrassed to talk about sex than our kids. We think little of pressing them about school, grades, athletics, colleges and careers, yet we dance around this elephant in every room of our homes.
Why?
I think it's because we're scared. We are filled with that dark sense that no teen, least of all our own, will listen to us. We believe if we did start talking, we would never be heard above the clamor of the hypersexualized teen culture that surrounds our kids.
We are dead wrong. Here's why — and I have medical studies to prove each reason:
• Parents have more power to change their teens' behavior than television, or teachers • Contrary to popular belief, teens want to know what their parents think about their having sex • One million teens get pregnant each year • Approx 9 million people under 25 contract a new STD each year – this constitutes an epidemic, the likes of which our country has never seen.
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