So, as I’ve been talking with parents and others involved with teenagers of the past few months one concern keeps coming up again and again: that adolescents are engaging in oral sex more often and at younger ages than ever before. I have been surprised at both the prevalence and the strength of this [...]
Archives for March, 2007
Sexuality Through the Life Cycle
I met with a young teenager today to talk about sex and sexuality. I asked her to think about and then list how a person might express their sexual being in the following six life phases:
InfancyChildhoodAdolescenceYoung AdulthoodMiddle AdulthoodOld Age
The question was fascinating for her. She came up with a complete blank on anything [...]
Funnies
This is from last Sunday. Made me laugh!
A short story and a short moral question
A friend of mine from many years ago was in serious adolescent turmoil. Somewhere in high school this smart, creative young woman just got lost. As part of loosing her direction, she lost her functional relationship with her parents.
She had her first boyfriend. He was a jerk. They started drinking together. [...]
What parents know about their teenagers’ sex lives
Nothing.
Let me clarify. First, for the purposes of this post, I am defining sexual activities as including everything from hand-holding and romantic kissing to oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse. For much of a child’s early life, his or her parents assume he/she is not engaging in sexual activities. For much of [...]
How early is too early?
I am one of those people who is firmly in favor of contraception. I think it’s fantastic stuff, for me and other people. And I am absolutely clear about why: I think it’s great that women and men are able to engage in sexual activities without having babies, and I think it’s even [...]
Evolution
This is a really fascinating video of a young woman being made up for a fashion shoot. It shows very nicely how much is involved in making a pretty normal person look like a model - digital enhancements and all.
This morning’s question from a Washington Post blog On Parenting by Stacy Garfinkle was:
“How do you keep a 12- and 13-year-old girl away from junk food, cosmetics, alcohol, drugs and sex while under the influence of school, peers and TV?”
There are a couple of talking points here.
First, these are important topics to think about [...]
Continuing the discussion on the sexualization of girls (and their mothers)…
Yesterday Judith Warner wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times about the APA report on the sexualization of girls (unfortunately, you have to be a paid subscriber to read it, but if you are, you can read it here).
Among other things, she has this to say:
We all tend to talk a good game [...]
How about the sexualization of boys?
Much popular attention is given to the impact that our culture has on girls. But I wonder about the impact it has on boys? Boys certainly don’t escape cultural definition of what or how they should be. There is a pervasive cultural assumption that all adolescent boys want to have sex all [...]
