Your boys are likely to get LESS sex education in school than you did.
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Think about that for a minute: However little you learned about sex, conception, contraception, pregnancy, sexual health, and relationships in school, odds are good that your son is learning even less.
That fact is mind-blowing me to me. A few years now past the emergence of the #MeToo movement, most of us have realized how incredibly inadequate our sexual education was. It’s CRAZY that my kids are learning less than I learned in the 1980s. (Especially because my mom is the only reason I learned as much as I did! My mom, a former Catholic nun-turned-mother & Registered Nurse, believed that accurate sex education was crucial — so much so that she volunteered to create & teach sex ed at my Catholic school. Yes, that was absolutely as embarrassing for me as you’re imagining. And yes, my sex ed was limited because it was taught through a strictly Catholic lens — no sex before marriage; sex is for procreation — but at least I understood the biology and mechanics.)
The abysmal lack of comprehensive sex ed in schools means that we parents have a lot of work to do at home. We have to talk to our children about consent, relationships, gender equity & gender diversity, sexual health, and sexual violence, as well as the mechanics of sex. That’s a lotta material to cover, so I’m going to make it a bit easier for you.
We’ve recorded a number of ON BOYS podcast episodes on talking to boys about sex & consent — and we’ve collated them into a Spotify playlist.
And here is a list of BuildingBoys posts that may help you tackle some tough subjects:
And a couple articles I wrote that you might find helpful:
I can’t have The Talk (or, more accurately, The TalkS) with your son, but I can (& will!) share information and resources with you to make your job easier.
Here’s to building boys!
Jennifer
P.S. I’m running a Halloween special: Building Boys subscribers who upgrade to a paid subscription by Nov. 7 will get a FREE paperback copy of my book, The First-Time Mom’s Guide to Raising Boys. I’ll mail it to you directly and can sign and/or personalize it, if you wish.
IN THE NEWS
My Relationship With My Son Was Failing. A Horror Movie Turned It Around.
Highlights:
“The whole time I watched him out the corner of my eye, expecting him to cover his face or need a break from the film. I was shocked to find that he was completely unfazed. Once it was over, I discovered, to my surprise, that he did not find it scary … not even a little bit. But watching it together did do something else. It got us talking.”
“Quinn kept asking to watch movies, and after, he wanted to talk about how the movie affected him. Over the next year, we would watch edited versions of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and The Conjuring. After each film, he would say that the movie was not very scary but we would still discuss how the movie affected him emotionally.”
“[T]hese films were helping him work through emotions he had not yet felt comfortable expressing. They were helping him come to terms with fear he felt, but did not feel comfortable expressing.”
Boys Don’t Cry? Survey Finds Men Actually Weep More Than Women — 4 Times a Month!
Highlights:
“According to the poll of 2,004 Americans, men cry on average about four times a month. Women, on the other hand, weep about three times in a given month.”
“The stereotype that men don’t seek professional help for their mental health...seems inaccurate — as two-thirds of male respondents have done so at some point in their lives, compared to just half of the women.”
“Other stereotypes appear to hold true, as men (63%) are almost twice as likely as women (34%) to hide the fact that they’re getting treatment for their mental health.”
Leading Pediatric Groups Declare “National Emergency” in Children’s Mental Health
Highlights:
"Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mental health emergency room visits went up by 24% for children ages 5 to 11 and 31% for children ages 12 to 17 between March and October 2020.”
“Leading pediatric medical associations are calling on policymakers to increase federal funding for mental health services”
Experts Sounds the Alarm on the Crisis in Sex Education Across the U.S.
Highlight:
“Despite substantial evidence that comprehensive sex education works to promote sexual health among adolescents, as well as strong support for its implementation from health professionals and parents alike, delivery of sex education in the U.S. has declined over the last 25 years.”
ON BOYS podcast
Practical Parenting Strategies (w Amy Williams)
On Building Boys
How to Get Boys to Do Homework, Part 2
…If you son’s homework is of the truly pointless variety — if you son already understands the material, or could easily pass the test or complete the rest of the assignment without doing part of the homework — schedule a meeting with the teacher to discuss the issue. Ask for alternatives. Perhaps your son could test out of certain homework assignments. Or do half of the assigned problems instead of all of them.
Beware: your son may not want you to talk to his teacher. He may be afraid that the teacher may simply assign more (and more difficult) homework. And that may well be the case. If the teacher wants to assign additional homework, though, ask if it can be tailored to your son’s outside interests, or completed in an innovative way. (Could he make a website instead of writing a paper? Submit a spreadsheet from his side business instead of re-creating one from the textbook?)…