I have recently heard from a number of parents of adolescent boys interested in the boys taking sex ed classes from me, and I am delighted! Until this recent spate of interest, all of the interested parents had girls. This is not to say that parents of boys were unsupportive or uninterested in what I was doing – they just didn’t think their boys needed such a class. They all would agree, I am sure, that healthy sexuality is a boy’s responsibility just as much as it is a girl’s. They just didn’t think their boy needed more information or could spend the time to acquire more information than they already had. Parents of girls seem, almost across the board, to see the acquiring of additional information about sex and sexuality as an absolute necessity to their girl’s healthy physical development.
I wonder if this parental belief has something to do with boys getting older? The parents I have talked with over the past several days all have middle school boys. The parents of boys I have talked with previously have mostly had high school boys. Whatever the reason, I am so pleased to have the opportunity to reach young men and help ingrain their sense of responsibility and ownership over their sexuality.