I haven't been posting my monthly columns lately because they haven't been very literary and I usually finish them right around when I need to get them in. We aren't getting much writing, up, though, so here's this month's attempt (it also includes a textbox with recommended sex education books for kids) - what do you think?

Sex-Positive Parenting

Ah, spring. Spring is the season when the sharp green blades of tulips and other burgeoning bulbs thrust their way up through the dark soil and open. It is the season of tender, budding flowers and buzzing bees, of songbirds, eggs and bunnies and other thinly veiled symbols of fertility.

Sex, you know. Spring is about sex.

So much of life, actually, when it’s stripped down to its nakedness, is about sex…that sweet drive to throw our genes forward into eternity and bloom forever. Sex is often a key ingredient in how one’s status as a parent comes about – not always, of course, but more often than not. As parents, however, we often find ourselves very uncomfortable deciding how much kids should know about sex and when…hence the weird stories about pointy-beaked birds and cabbages, and the proliferation of confused young people who fail to understand the finer points of contraception until it’s too late and the bunnies have prevailed. Sexuality is one of life’s most central drives, however, and if it’s the job of parents to prepare their children for adult life, then it’s certainly part of that job to instill healthy, happy attitudes about sex. People mostly agree about this. People feel differently, though, about how it should be accomplished.

I often meet friends and colleagues at H-E-B by happy chance. One day, a social work colleague and I got to talking about our kids there, which of course morphed into kids these days, which of course morphed into marveling at how precocious they all seem. Not like in our day. The seventies and eighties were a chaste time. Honest.

Since we social workers are not generally a lot who are known for our conservative values, I confess to being a bit surprised when my colleague mentioned that her son, a couple of years younger than my pubescent girl, knew nothing. No birds and the bees, no Life Cycle Library, no Talk, no progressive, church-sponsored videos - nada. His mom was glad he did not yet understand the veiled references of the all-too-precocious fourth graders and wanted to keep it that way as long as possible – she wanted to preserve his innocence.

I think we can all relate to wanting to preserve their innocence.

What I am not sure about, however, is how innocent sexuality is going to seem to a young person when it is treated as something to be hidden away and not talked about. My friend wasn’t doing this…it just hadn’t come up, as can be the case for a long time with some kids, but I was surprised that she slightly dreaded the day this would change. I have opted for the other side of the spectrum, providing plenty of information and openness, at what I consider to be age-appropriate levels, and trying to keep the conversation going. I think of myself as being a sex-positive parent.

We’re one of those families in which the children know the proper names for their bits and pieces (not bits and pieces), and, although we don’t discuss it, I’m pretty sure they know what’s going on when they’re told to go watch cartoons on Saturday mornings. We have always answered their questions about bodies, babies and sex with information that is both factual and reflective of our family’s compassion-centered values. That’s part of what I mean by sex-positive.

It’s more than that, though. My older daughter is a young adolescent – far too young, in my opinion, for romance – but she is physically grown up, and I believe that young women like her need to hear more than just wait and don’t. I explain that the consequences of sex can be too great a burden for young adolescents and that I would like her to wait until she is old enough to be a mother, at least emotionally, before she considers becoming sexually active. I would like her to have an education first, and financial security, but at the very least to have a fully mature neurological system – sixteen or seventeen minimum. Minimum. I explain that most young women prefer sex when it is coupled with love, but that love does not have to lead to sex and shouldn’t when desire has yet to fully blossom. I try to explain that sex should be fun and pleasurable, but that it usually isn’t for very young women, and that waiting until one is a little older can really enhance the experience. I don’t say these things just to encourage her to wait – I say them because they are true. I want her to love sex, and enjoy it, when she’s ready. I want her experiences to be glorious, not resigned. They should be sweetly innocent and moving, not silent and shameful. I want her to be whole.

That’s what sex-positive parenting is really about to me.

So, I answer the questions and buy the books – the ones that are informative and the ones that resonate with their young hormones. I try to model a healthy, open attitude about sex and I celebrate the passages of my daughters on their roads to young womanhood. I believe in information - everything in its season, but nothing hidden away. One never really knows, of course, but my hope is that this approach will lead to attitudes about sex that are both informed and responsible, as well as happy and healthy. All we can do is try.