SexEd for Your Kids? No Problems. Internet will Provide.

One of the subjects most underdiscussed in America is what children miss when their parents separate/divorce during their childhood. Now, today’s topic is sex; a topic which is mishandled by just about every parent out there without regard to marital status.

Sex education was introduced into public schools in the late 1960s. It was birds and bees plus ultra in the sense that you could sit in class and learn nothing about sex beyond the chromosomes. By the 1980s conservatives began to protest against that, professing that sex was a subject best taught at home. Of course, it wasn’t. And, it isn’t. Why? Because no parent in America wants their child to have sex before 18, 21, 25. They want it after marriage and for the sole purpose of producing beautiful grandkids. It’s a nice idea but 40% of children conceived today have parents who are not married.

Where do kids learn about sex today?  We don’t have reliable statistics on sex workers but the estimate is 1-4 million. Just for comparison purposes, we do have solid data on electricians: 1.1 million. A lot of the sex workers service customers on-line in forms which vary from porno video websites to one on one contact with the boy/girl/whatever of your dreams. Sorry, I meant your child’s dreams.

The Monday June 23 edition of NPR’s Fresh Air took on this subject. The guest was Carter Sherman and the topic was Gen Z and their relationship with their sexuality. Sherman has made it her business to interview GenZs (13-28) and Millenials (30-44) about their sexual experiences. Her key point is how far we have traveled since the 1950s when the goals of life were centered on marriage and family.

There are parts of this interview which can be dismissed as political and wonky. But, I suggest the listener parse through the political/policy aspects of the interview and focus on the fact that Sherman is talking about what your kids are thinking. It includes a segment of a high school valedictorian’s speech which is simply amazing. I am not a fan of politicized graduation speeches but her words are compelling because it reflects on what children are thinking about their own sexuality in a world where sex is everywhere.

How is this a family law topic? Fair question. In an intact family, we can hope that two loving parents have conversations about how and when to teach their children about sex. I submit from personal experience and from representing hundreds of families that these are conversations long contemplated but rarely undertaken. And when it doesn’t happen, the internet is where kids are going to go. It is anonymous and the kids can feel like they have some control. But what Ms. Sherman points out is that this means kids are turning to pornography. Sherman notes that kids find pornography intimidating and that from her interviews, young people were somewhat overwhelmed by what they saw when watching it. In particular, young people were intimidated by violent or “rough” sex. They did not grasp how or what made this consensual or “normal.”

This brings me to why I write on this odd subject. In recent years I had two cases where this topic came front and center. I was representing  middle aged clients in  divorce. One had a child who was a freshman in college. My client had worried about how withdrawn her son was before going off to school, but he had met and formed a serious relationship with a college classmate. This graduated to a joint visit between boyfriend/girlfriend to my client’s home over a holiday break. It went well, at least from my client’s viewpoint. A couple months later her son called her. The girlfriend had stayed over one night, then went to campus security alleging sexual assault. The young man professed bewilderment. Meanwhile, the college went into full protective mode. You can’t blame the college. It wasn’t there to judge is a physical sense. But in listening to Ms. Sherman’s reporting I have to wonder whether the young man had seen pornography where men dominate and even punish women as part of a sexual experience. Based on what he saw, he thought he was doing something normal. His girlfriend did not share that view.

A couple years later, I had a client call me with a similar crisis. His child was in an elite private school where students lived on campus. The charges were essentially the same except both alleged perpetrator and victim were minors. The young woman alleged sexual assualt. My client’s child said their sex was entirely consensual. Needless to say, in both instances, two parents who were in highly contested divorces were now each being called to defend their children over what they assumed were spurious allegations of sexual assault. In both settings, the parent’s I represented said their kids were not wired to be aggressive males. Of course, they are biased but both families (meaning divorcing mothers and dads) did not come across as parents who would have raised the quintessential “alpha” males.

The interview is well worth the listen. Imagine growing up in a world where you can watch any form of sex the mind can conjure while you are trying to navigate your own sexuality. To be blunt, I doubt that any reader of this would suggest they would want to have discussed this with a parent. But, who is there for a young person to ask whether violent sex, homosexual sex, whatever kind of sex is “normal?”

The parents I worked with had to stop their divorce fights to unite and spend a fortune to have their child defended by attorneys. Suffice to say, it did not produce any reduction in anger related to their own disputes.

Perhaps it is already out there, but to this writer’s thinking the internet could be the “better” way to teach responsible sex education. The child would untethered from direct interaction with a parent but the parent could preview and select the course. It needs to be practical and real but that’s a far better choice than finding your child watching mainstream pornography and thinking that will be teaching sex education. It also can be calibrated to the actual experience of the child. Sex education built around love, marriage, then sex seems a bit off course in a world where dad is vacationing at Hedonism II in Jamaica while mom has taken up with dad’s former personal trainer.

Here’s the interview: ‘The Second Coming’ asks why Gen Z is having less sex : NPR

I tried an AI search for designated sex education websites. Among the answers were Planned Parenthood; Ioza Learning; Get Real; Heilsuvera and Pratandishi Foundation.