The XX Factor: What women really think.

Boy Talk

Communicating with boys is the theme of the day in the New York Times, which has a front-page article on how market researchers are communing with young guys to help Disney carve out a boys' entertainment niche, as well as the Science section column on how pediatricians tackle the sex talk with boys. Like you, Jessica, I like the basically egalitarian core of the message the doctors urge, which is an emphasis on respect and consideration; that strikes me as right, and something kids (especially teenagers) of both genders can't hear enough about. And I was surprised that the subtext of the Hollywood story seemed to be gender convergence, too. Forget the Girlz vs. Boyz approach to marketing, apparently. Expert "boy-whisperers" like Disney's Kelly Peña have discovered that boys aren't so into the stark winner-loser paradigm after all, and the no-girls-allowed ethos seems to be out.

But also like you, Jessica, I have my doubts about the adult presumption that all this communication is, or even should be, quite as open and revealing as it's cracked up to be. I'm dubious about the doctors' claims that if adults are at ease, the conversations about sex won't be awkward—and I wonder if it's a service to parents to suggest they can expect that. I'd say the Talk is easier to conduct with respect and consideration—qualities parents should model, after all—if adults aren't envisaging lots of cozy sharing and caring.

And based on the other Times article, I'd say the market researchers are kidding themselves if they think they've established great rapport with boys, whom I'd credit with doing a great job of keeping their own counsel in the face of those who want to snare them into endless show-based merchandizing. Certainly Disney's probing hasn't produced much in the way of insights: Show the underside of skateboards in movies, use check marks not Xs (which remind boys of bad grades). The boys aren't talking much, and it's not clear the adults are listening very well when they do. Disney seems to have concluded boys want "fun with a purpose," though the rare comment offered by a kid in the story did not exactly confirm that. The boy helpfully defined a popular boy pastime—to "crash"—for the nice, nosy lady. "After a long day of doing nothing, we do nothing."

What Aretha Franklin Can Teach Your Teen Boys About Sex

The New York Times health section must have been reading my mind: They answered the question I asked last week, "Is the Teen Sex Talk Different for Sons and Daughters?" with an article and a blog post today. According to pediatrician Perri Klass, M.D., the way you should talk to your adolescent sons about sex is both the same and different from the way you might speak to your daughters. While it's important to teach both boys and girls basic tenets of politeness, Klass writes that, as a pediatrician and a mother of boys, "I acknowledge that for their own protection, boys need to understand that there are people—male and female—who will see them as potential predators, and judge them automatically at fault in any ambiguous situation."

However, Klass notes that a little respect (as Aretha says) goes a long way. Klass quotes Dr. Lee M. Sanders, another pediatrician who takes care of teen boys, about how he approaches the subject of sex: "We’ll talk about respect, about whether they feel they are respected in their own families, the respect they have for their mothers, the respect they see other men paying to their own mothers or sisters—do you think that applies to other girls that you meet?"

Tara Parker-Pope's related blog post opens up the question to commenters, and in the peanut gallery Alex Lickerman, M.D., argues, "If the adults participating in the conversation are comfortable talking about sex, the child will be as well. We’re the ones who make children nervous about this topic. Before having this discussion maybe we should examine just how comfortable we are or aren’t with our own sexuality." As someone who was a teen not so long ago, I disagree with Lickerman—my parents weren't awkward when talking to me about sex at all, and yet I was still mortified—but I want to hear from the moms out there, especially the moms of sons: Do you speak to your sons and daughters differently about these issues?
 

Teens, schools, sex, lies, and sex

Well, Jess, my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I wondered whether it was healthy for anyone if adolescents lived with their parents. I guess I need to either improve my written tonal control (is there a personal trainer for that?) or learn to use emoticons.

But I was thinking of precisely such parental traumas as The Sex Talk. Meghan, I love how your mother spoke to you! Very early on, my mother told me (this would have been, oh, 1973?) that If People Needed Planned Parenthood, It Was A Good Thing To Go There. I had no idea what she was talking about yet. She was clearly uncomfortable. Then she took me to her gynecologist, a very stern woman who gave me The Contraception Talk. By the time I was in college—and I got out of high school like a bat out of hell, at age 16—my dad implied jokingly that I must be getting plenty of exercise in bed, and told me flat out that he assumed I was using contraception.

It was the anti-virginity era, and what I wish is that someone had said to me: if you never have sex with a boy, that would be just fine. Later I learned that they all suspected that I was heading toward the land of Sappho: my parents, my little brothers, and probably passersby as well. So parents, here's a tip: It sure would have saved me years of misery (and a lifetime of pap smears) had someone said: You don't have to have sex with boys. Ever. Liking girls is just fine. You could even grow up to marry one.

The Teen-Sex Talk That Wasn't

Hanna, you said you tear up remembering Tami's sex talk with Julie from Friday Night Lights. But the television teen-sex talk that always gets me is the one that wasn't. In a truly spectacular episode of My So-Called Life, Angela, under pressure from Jordan Catalano to, you know, go somewhere, cries out silently—futilely—for someone to intervene. The family doctor is too distracted by delivering the "safe sex" message to tell Angela that she shouldn't have sex—even with two forms of birth control—until she's ready. The dad's too oblivious to pick up on her desperate offers that maybe she should just stay home that night. And her proudly slutty best friend Rayanne is too excited for her to join the post-virgin club to whisk her away from the abandoned house where Jordan has taken her to do the deed (and where Rayanne has gone, we assume, for something similar). One of the trickiest parts of being a teenager is admitting when you need boundaries—and one of the trickiest parts of raising one is decoding that need. That's an arena in which Tami shines: she often butchers her shot at being the "cool mom" (or cool principal) by being stern and saying no. In Angela's case (though she surely wouldn't have admitted it aloud, especially not to her mother), a stern sex talk was exactly what she wanted.

I don't actually agree with Emily that Tami's message about sex is inconsistent. She told Julie to wait until she was ready. It's pretty clear Julie followed that advice by the calm, mature way that she describes to Tami her loving relationship with Matt—a far cry from her cold affect two seasons earlier when, while squeamishly thumbing through sexy underwear, she tells Tyra she just wants to get the first time over with. Still, I'd say risking inconsistency by switching from a mantra of "don't" to a reassurance of "it's OK" is a far better play than being consistently silent.

Don't Make Rules About Teen Sex

Emily, Jess, Hanna, when it comes to teens and sex, the language of "condoning" doesn't seem that useful to me. After all, it just reinforces a kind of pressure and rebellion, a dichotomy that takes authority and security away from the girl (or boy) trying to figure out how she feels about sex. And sex is, finally, extremely personal. That's part of what makes it so hard to agree about. So, Emily, rather than condone or disapprove, I think parents need to cast the discussion about teen sex in terms of autonomy and making good choices. (Also: Protection!!!) Basically, I think you say what my mom said to me, which is actually similar to what Tami said to Julia. In the midst of some crisis, I had mentioned that a friend of mine was having sex. My mom's response made me stop and think (even if it was awkward, too). She said, pretty simply, that sex was a very special thing that could be beautiful (yes, she used that word!), but sometimes wasn't. And that for my sake, she hoped I would make sure it happened in a way I felt good about. A lot of her meaning was conveyed in her tone and in her attitude, which was direct, inclusive, and not embarrassed. It had as large an impact on me as her words. It made me feel that having sex was my choice (which took it out of the realm of rebellious activity) but also that she had motherly hopes about how I'd feel about my choices. 

Because sex is so personal, the idea of assigning an abstract age at which it is "OK" for kids to have sex doesn't feel terribly useful to me. (I grant that under 15 seems too young.)  Put it this way: I had sex for the first time when I was 17, with a boyfriend I absolutely loved. In college a year or so later, I briefly went out with someone I liked but was much less close to. I am confident that if I'd "waited" and had had sex for the first time with him, I would not have felt as good or as secure about it. In other words, older is not necessarily better. Kids have to choose for themselves. They can only do this if they truly are choosing for themselves, if parents are helping them see that choice is a way out of peer pressure, and that their choice is valid. Talking openly--rather than handing down rules--has an additional boon: some studies show that countries or cultures where parents routinely talk to their kids about sex have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs.

On a side note: As a non-parent, it often seems to me that parents focus on the issue of age and sex because later always seems better to them. It means that much more time when they don't have to confront their own rightfully ambivalent, complex feelings about their kids having sex.

Is That a Threat or a Promise?

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?

Teen Sex, In Defense of the Mixed Message

Tami: So do, you  love Matt?

Julie: I love matt

[Tami smiles]

T: Does he love you?

J: Matt loves me

Then she asks about birth control, despite Julie's resistance. Then, through her tears, she says:

You know, just because you're having sex this one time doesn't mean you have to have it all the time. If ever you feel taken for granted, you can stop anytime. And if you ever break up with Matt, it's not like you have to have sex with the next boy.

J: Why are you crying?

T: Because I wanted you to wait. Not just because I wanted to protect you. Because I love you and I want to make sure nothing bad ever happens to you.

God, I tear up just typing it.

Scripting the Great Teen Sex Talk

Great points, Jessica, about the many and complicated ways in which teen sex plays out. Agreed that broader questions, like whether kids can imagine good futures for themselves, can matter more than what parents say to them about sex per se. Still, I want to probe this a little more. OK, so we encourage teenagers to wait 'til college (I'll go with that timeline for the sake of argument) and then give them access to birth control if they ignore us. But what else do we say when that happens?

 
In writing our way through this season of Friday Night Lights, Meghan and Hanna and I were all struck by the great sex talk the mother character on the show, Tami, has with her daughter Julie when she finds out that Julie has slept with her boyfriend. He is sweet and kind. They love each other. They are 17 and in high school. Like many parents I know, Tami dealt with sex by saying don't do it, don't do it--and then reassuring her daughter that it was all OK after she went ahead anyway. Isn't that sort of schizophrenic, or at least incomplete? Is there another more consistent set of talking points for parents here? And shoot me for asking, but is the answer different depending on whether you're talking to a son or a daughter?

Teen Sexual Reality Much More Complicated Than Purity Mythology

Your question is a good one, Emily. The flip side of the purity pressures are well-drawn in Ariel Levy's excellent Female Chauvinist Pigs. I remember one girl Levy spoke to in particular—a pretty, leggy California high schooler who had sex utterly without pleasure. She did it to keep up with her fellow popular Janeses; she did it because she felt it gave her a measure of power over the men in her life. Sex didn't make her feel good, not one bit.

For me, one of the biggest problems with Valenti's book is that she makes the personal political to an outrageous degree with vignettes about her adolescent sexcapades. Her attitude is essentially, I had sex in high school by choice and it worked out, so having sex in high school is a positive thing. For many, many women this is not the case. From what I observed when I was a teen, most of my cohorts were happier when they waited until 17 or 18 to become sexually active; it is a rare 14 or 15-year-old who is secure enough in herself to have sex without regret. I think we should encourage teens to wait until college, but supply them with the proper contraception if they choose not to. As we all know, encouraging people to wait until marriage is completely unrealistic.

However, teens are so woefully undereducated about sex in this country that the first step should be to get them proper information from the get-go. The next step after that is more difficult because we cannot remove teenagers from their own social ecosystems. While a teenager in rural Alabama may be pressured by the so-called purity myth, a teenager in San Francisco may be pressured by her sexually active friends. The best bet is to encourage internal traits—like self-confidence—that help teens make the right choice for themselves. Again, I will return to Margaret Talbot's point in the New Yorker article Red Sex, Blue Sex: teens who feel they have a lot at stake will delay sexual intercourse and when they do have sex, have it responsibly. If I knew how to make all teen girls feel like they have a future worth waiting for, I would be a trillionairess.

Busting the Purity Myth--What Replaces It?

Over on Talking Points Memo Cafe, I posted this week as part of a discussion of Jessica Valenti's new book, The Purity Myth. Jessica makes a strong and convincing argument against fetishizing virginity and judging how ethical girls and women are based on when they first had sex, or how many partners they've had. Amen to that. She also says that some of the time, there's nothing wrong with teen sex. This opens up a host of questions: If we quit cautioning kids against having sex, what do we say instead? From my TPM post:

Jessica cites a survey showing that "47 percent of teens who had experienced some form of sexual intimacy said they'd felt pressure to do something they didn't want to do--and young women were more likely to have had this experience than young men." I would bet that a disproportionate number of those girls are low-income and not white, exactly the girls who Jessica and many of us are particularly concerned for.

Will taking away the taboo take away the pressure, or even reduce it? Again, I'm not sure. I'd argue that we want teenagers to have sex lovingly and safely--or not at all, because sex can, sometimes, explode with meaning. Probably, we want teenagers to have sex sparingly, because a lot of their relationships aren't especially loving and safe. That's not necessarily what the testing of adolescence produces. And so I think there's a lot of work to be done to figure out what should replace the purity myth--the details and multi-faceted layers of what kind of sex ed makes sense for what kind of kids, and how parents should weigh in.

Thoughts? 

Rule Britannia

According to an article published in the London Times today, we Brits are now the most promiscuous nation in the world (of the western industrial nations, that is). In terms of one-night stands, total number of partners, and our "relaxed" attitude to casual sex, we beat Australia, the United States, Italy, and France. France! Where having extra-marital affairs is a favorite national pastime! If nothing else, at least now we might lose our reputation for being frigid and repressed.

In all seriousness though, Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe as well as the highest teen STD infection rate in Europe (although both are significantly lower than here in the United States, where abstinence-only sex education doesn't seem to be helping much). Premature sex education in British schools (it can be taught to children as young as 4) has long been blamed for the epidemic, along with the inappropriate sexualization of children by toy manufacturers and the media. But here's a thought. In Britain, we also drink more than any other country in Europe (apart from Ireland and Finland, bizarrely), and our alcohol-related death rate has doubled since 1991. We've also, according to this reasonably insulting story in the New York Times, been causing havoc on summer vacations with our abhorrent, booze-soaked behavior. Could there be a correlation somewhere between the beer goggles and the newfound sluttiness?

Post-Marital Sex

Talk about a sex-ed message that seems tone deaf to adolescents, no matter how you slice it. For any teens who might have been in the congregation listening to the exhortations to parental "whoopee," can you think of any greater gross out? And if they could bring themselves to think about it, the reverend's diagnosis of sex-starved couples undermined the promises preached to youth: These teens are being told to save themselves, the better to enjoy the bliss that arrives with marriage. I wish I thought the spectacle of their elders' confusion could help kids see what a complicated business sex can be, but somehow I don't think that's what sinks in.

Engaged and Underage

Linda's piece on Slate yesterday notes that the statistics on teen pregnancy show a grim reality for girls in Bristol Palin's situation. The numbers on teen marriage don't look much better. A 2001 study found:

If the wife was a teenager at first marriage, the marriage is much more likely to dissolve than if the wife was at least 20 years of age at marriage. ... After 10 years of marriage, 48 percent of marriages of women under age 18 years at marriage have disrupted compared with 40 percent of marriages of women who were 18-19 years of age at marriage, 29 percent of marriages of women who were 20-24 years of age at marriage, and 24 percent of marriages of women at least 25 years of age at marriage.

So will those wedding bells ring when Bristol's 17 or 18? It might make a difference. Of course, quickie marriages can work—see Rachael's parents' story below.

But how's this for unfair? We're discussing the odds that someone in Bristol's circumstances will end up broke, uneducated, and divorced, while everyone's drooling over her boyfriend. A New York blogger calls him "sex on skates." The New York Daily News rhapsodizes about "the handsome teen with a light dusting of whiskers on his chin—his dark brown hair curly and wet," calling him "ruggedly handsome" and "broad-chested." I guess I'm the only one who can't get past his almost-mullet.

 Update: The almost-mullet is gone! The McCain-Palin campaign must have made Levi get a haircut before letting him on the plane to Minnesota.

Juneau

This whole weekend has felt like a marathon of Lifetime television. All anyone wants to talk about all of a sudden is the intimate family choices of stressed-out working mothers. Every woman I know is consumed by Sarah Palin’s larger-than-life life: Was it irresponsible for her to continue on as governor, having given birth to a special needs baby? Was it reckless of her to accept a vice presidential tap on top of that? Should she really have been flying in the eighth month of her high-risk pregnancy? Is she doing the right thing by supporting her unmarried teenage daughter whose pregnancy she revealed a few hours ago? Should she have inserted herself into her sister’s messy marriage? Feminist or otherwise, everyone has an opinion on Sarah Palin’s life and family and choices. We’ve all been here before, in our own lives. It’s almost a palpable relief to be able to talk about all this stuff at cocktail parties.

This is the Pandora’s box John McCain opened up when he picked Palin as his running mate—a woman whose family life is vastly more interesting than her very brief political career. Is it sexist that everyone is judging Palin on the former rather than the latter? Yes. But I suspect that all this frenzied close-reading of Sarah Palin’s uterine life was unavoidable. What are the "mommy wars" if not broad female judgments about other women’s private decisions? The truth is, whether or not John McCain wanted to have that big, brutal public conversation about the reality of abstinence and teen pregnancy and contraception and teenage mothers without the means to support their children, Sarah Palin is pushing it all onto the front pages. I don’t think the GOP intended to have this conversation at all, and definitely not on these terms. McCain could easily have named a Margaret Thatcher type whose work/family balance wasn’t quite so riveting. But Palin reflects the reality of women’s lives in America. Come on in, John McCain. It’s messy in here, but we’ve been waiting decades to show you the place.

Read the rest of the XX Factor conversation about Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

Leave Cyrus to the Kids

Like Noreen (who I think very astutely diagnosed LifeStyle's motivation for the offer—and there's something so exploitative about the company publicly salivating over using a tween star to sell contraceptives), I would be discomfited if I saw 15-year-old Miley Cyrus' just-recently-orthodontiaed grin slapped on a condom box in the "family planning" (what a laughable euphemism that is) section in the grocery store aisle. I can just imagine a 6-year-old walking past the department grabbing the box and saying, "Mommy, can I get this?" That might make me sound prudish, but so be it.

Catching Up on the Teen Sex Craze

Wow, I take a couple days off and all heck breaks loose on the teen sex front. I have to agree with Melinda that there is a vast middle ground that is being missed up in Portland, Maine. What have they got against parents up there, anyhow?

One thing that I find interesting from reviewing the posts on the subject is that all of us who support the idea of calling parents at least sometimes are … parents. For better or worse, having children changes your perspective. When I was in high school and college, I always said, “I’m going to be one of the cool parents. If my kids want to drink, I’ll let them do it at home. And I’ll give them birth control, and …” you get the picture. Now that I have children, I’m trying to figure out where I can snap up some GPS-enabled ski jackets. (And they certainly won’t be going to summer camp.)

Just kidding on the ski jackets. But it raises an interesting point. On the one hand, we're better able to keep track of our kids with cell phones and other gadgets, and the concern is we're not letting kids be kids. On the other hand, they're not acting much like children if they're having sex at age 12. But I suspect that some parents use "helicoptering"—knowing where kids are at every moment, signing them up for every activity under the sun to keep them busy and then attending every practice—as a substitute for actual involved parenting. Why, who needs to talk to Suze and Johnny about sex when you know they're not having it, because their RFID tag tells you they're at the mall like they said they would be. (Too bad that unless you're Jack Bauer and can upload the mall schematics to your cell phone, you won't know if they're at the movies or in the broom closet.)