The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is the Teen Sex Talk Different for Sons and Daughters?

Hanna, I think you hit the nail right on the head. Most modern moms are profoundly ambivalent about their daughters' sex lives (sons too, but we'll get to that in a second). I would find it incredibly creepy if a mother told her barely legal daughter, "I'd love it if you were sexually active!" And what about from a daughter's point of view? I didn't want my mother's approval or disapproval when I became sexually active; I didn't want her involved at all. This is something that young adults need to navigate for themselves, for the most part, but of course parents should be there for questions and problems should they arise. My own mother handled this situation well, I think, and of course it still mortified me. I was a freshman in high school and was quite far from wanting to have sex. My mom came into my room bearing a brown paper bag and said, "Your father and I don't condone you having sex in high school, but if you're going to have sex, we want you to be safe." With that she opened the paper bag and left me with a pack of condoms. The message was certainly mixed; but it didn't sway me towards continued virginity or desire to lose it. All it made me want to do was bury my head in my pillows and die.

Emily, I wonder if mothers' attitude to their sons' sex lives is the other side of the Tami reaction: they worry, not just about their sons getting hurt, but also (assuming their sons are heterosexual) about their sons being insensitive towards their girlfriends. They remember all the jerks they dated and pray that they have not spawned a scumbag. Would any mothers of sons care to weigh in?