Lessons from "The Sex Lady"

Deborah Roffman has been dubbed "The Sex Lady" for her strong advocacy for teaching kids about sex the right way. Here's an example:



Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer, in "'The Sex Lady' offers lessons for parents" in today's edition, writes glowingly about Roffman and her new book. Roffman's book is titled Talk to Me First: Everything You Need to Know to Become Your Kids' "Go-To" Person about Sex. Reimer lauds Roffman for the way "she employs the fundamental elements of parenting — affirmation, information, clarity about values, limits and guidance — and applies them to a child's developing sexuality."

I don't claim to know much about teaching kids about sex. My reaction to Reimer's column is, however, one of great concern. Reimer writes that so much has changed in "the four decades Deborah Roffman has taught [children] about their bodies," and that:

... the only thing that hasn't changed is the discomfort of their parents when they try to talk about sex. Even the sex has changed, becoming casual and transactional, invasive and pervasive. Marketing and advertising have driven the mercury higher. Technology has put sex only a touch or a keystroke away. "The boundaries that used to separate children's lives from adults' lives have in many respects vanished," said Ms. Roffman ...

And, per Roffman:

"We spent the 20th century carving out the stages of child development, and marketers have managed to collapse them. Now 8-year-olds are just short 14-year-olds. And 14-year-olds are just short 20-year-olds."

I know this much: there was a time in human history when the line between childhood innocence and adult sexual maturity was a clear one. It was crossed at the appropriate age by virtue of initiation ceremonies that were once part and parcel of religions. For example, Jewish bar mitzvah ceremonies, as originally conceived, were when a young male of the species could finally say (in Hebrew) "Now I am a man" ... and mean it!

The treatment of young women was somewhat different, since the onset of menstruation is in itself a threshold. But the point is that there was a threshold, and religions enforced it.

Not today. Our religions seem to have yielded to the general culture and "dumbed down" the whole concept behind thresholds, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, and religious initiations in general. Or maybe it's that the secular culture has drowned out our religions' ancient messages.

So now we hear from Reimer that Hoffman:

... writes with candor about ... the 12-year-old who announces to her stunned father that she will be going to parties this school year and she will probably be performing oral sex when she gets there.

Say what? Seventh-grade girls going to parties and performing oral sex? When I was in seventh grade, at a class party in 1959, I kissed a girl (her name was Carol Scott) for the first time, and considered myself bold for having done so. My how times have changed ...

... for the worse.

I agree with Roffman in the video above that "abstinence only" sex education in schools is not the answer, and that an admirable goal is to bring up children to be able to think clearly about sex. The goal of "chastity," mentioned in passing by Roffman, is, I agree, not the same as the goal of "abstinence." As I define chastity, though, it is a matter of "just saying no" in specific situations because you have made a personal choice to do so. So I think I have to disagree with Roffman's words in the video, to the extent that she seems to believe "abstinence only" actually means "chastity" — which she thinks is an inappropriate goal.

I'd say there still needs to be a threshold of maturity on the early side of which "just say no" is a rule, not a choice. Our sex-drenched culture, as Reimer says, obliterates that threshold ... mainly, I'd say, because sex sells products (left).

So I think we need to make at least three changes in our culture. One, as Reimer and Roffman say, we need to teach our kids about sex the right way. Two, we need to give our pre-teen children back their childhood by insisting on the old-fashioned rules concerning bodies and sex. Three, we need to get our churches and religions back on the same page with us, and us with them, because without religion's underpinnings for sexuality's thresholds, there is no earthly reason why 8-year-olds should not consider themselves short 14-year-olds.