Making the Call

According to a recent year-long Harvard Medical School study of 141 teens (ages 13-17) from well-to-do families, "40 percent of the boys and 46 percent of the girls had had sexual intercourse before their parents had ever given them advice on how to ask someone out on a date." This is a scary statistic. Keep in mind that the parents in this study who failed to communicate with their children were the same parents who had willingly volunteered to participate in a study about communicating with their children.

I read about these findings (published Monday in Pediatrics) on Newsweek's Nurture Shock Block. Earlier, I'd watched a CNN special report on the difficulty American parents have in initiating conversation about sex with their children. I don't have children -- just a neutered cat who humps his stuffed bunny -- but I do think about my own hypothetical offspring, how I will one day show little Bryon or Millay how to roll a condom over a banana.

No wonder adolescents are confused. Edward in New Moon exhibits supernatural self-control but Tiger Woods can't keep his putter in his pants. We promote abstinence while obsessively fingering the sordid. Sorry, bad choice of words. But if your fourteen year old insists on bumping uglies, shouldn't you first discuss protection before forbidding the behavior? The Centers for Disease Control report that a third of U.S. ninth graders claim to have already had sex. At what age do you have the talk? Not just the one about the birds and the bees, but the birds and the bees and the STDs.

I was a teen anomaly. I didn't even have my first kiss until the spring of my freshman year. Of college. It took place in the dingy basement of a dance club in Durham. Since this was 1996, I was "clubbing" in denim overalls, a flannel shirt, and Caterpillar boots. My hair was pulled back with an actual rubber band. I was sober. He was six years my senior, a sportswriter from Fayetteville who had one of those interchangeable first and last names (like Todd Scott). He told me I was really pretty (right...) and, in a gentlemanly way -- is that even possible with La Bouche playing? -- expressed his desire to make-out. I had that feeling of simultaneously being inside and outside of history. One of my pledge sisters in my music fraternity gave me a thumbs up from the bar. I didn't love the kiss but I didn't hate it. I know I didn't love it because while it was happening I was wondering what kind of sports writing he did and if maybe I should be a journalism major.

I never told Todd Scott that he was my first kiss. I did thank him after.

I like to think that I will be cool and collected (though perhaps go into too much detail) when my own children come to me with questions. I watch enough Oprah to understand that the jump from Rainbow Brite to Rainbow Party can happen all too fast, and I want to be thoroughly, realistically prepared. I take pride in my sexuality and I would hope to cultivate a similar sense of responsibility, safety, and self in others. In fifth grade, I was at a slumber party where someone suggested we watch a Skinemax movie. One of the girls said "Hold on a minute, I need to call my mom first." We all gathered round and held our collective breath while she phoned her mother at 11pm to ask permission to watch soft core porn. We couldn't believe what was happening. None of us would have hazarded that call. None of us had that kind of relationship with our parents. In the end, her mom said yes, but not before posing questions I've returned to many times in my own life: "Is this something you want to do?" and "Do you think you'll regret it?"