Here is a scary statistic, one third of teens who had unexpected pregnancies didn't use birth control because they didn't think they could get pregnant. What is worse is they thought they couldn't get pregnant because of some widely disproved myths, like you can't get pregnant your first time or believing (for no reason) that they are sterile. As parents, this is absolutely our fault. These are basic, biological facts our children should know about their bodies.
Why are we so afraid to talk about biological facts when it comes to our kids? We talk about everything else. But I know why. My grandmother never spoke to her daughters (my aunts) about sex. Hell, she never even told them about their periods, she left that to my grandfather. Our mothers didn't talk to us about sex and so we don't know how to talk to our daughters.
Not me, my mother was a teen mom and she made it damn clear that I could get pregnant and why I didn't want to and it worked.
We teach our kids to walk and talk (sometimes in two languages) and eat but at some point certain topics become off-limits with no clear reason why. We aren't afraid to talk about drugs or school. We freely discuss religion and in many case, especially if our family came to the U.S. to flee a bad government, instill our political beliefs. And yet we don't say, this is your body, here is how you use it.
I don't ever remember having a "sex talk" with my parents but I don't ever remember not talking about it with my mom. I do remember a friend of mine, when we were about 16 years old, crying to my mother that her periods were so bad she didn't know what to do and that she was afraid to go to the gynecologist because her mother told her it would hurt. Six months later, my friend had a cyst explode and she needed surgery. My mother was livid–how stupid to suffer such consequences because you won't talk about things that make you uncomfortable.
Better to be uncomfortable than to have your 15 year-old raising a baby, just sayin'.
Did your mom talk to you about your body? Do you have a hard time talking to your kids about theirs?
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