Dad never even hinted at any kind of advice like wearing condoms or abstaining or “being careful” with any of my girlfriends. I guess the fact I was not very attractive and was sort of religiously brought up seemed to keep me out of any accidental pregnancies or STDs. As a parent now it’s not easy to talk about these things but we don’t shame each other for being naked or use “baby terms” when it comes to reproductive organs.

My parents were Catholic, so they never talked about sex per se. My “talk” was my dad saying, “I want you to remember to always respect women. And that means not doing anything inappropriate.” Very informative.

“wear a condom”

that’s it, that was the talk

My mother was very conservative and never talked about sex. She discovered I had discovered boobs on the internet though and freaked out, and I found out about sex with a Christian book left on my bed. It explained how I was being possessed if I masturbated

Honestly, not really. I live in a pretty conservative family, so I never had this talk. Thankfully, I (think) I have my facts through.

I learned everything from the internet, my parents never told me a thing! Luckily, I had stumbled onto a very sex positive forum, and that’s where I got all my info—not pr0n. I asked a lot of questions (I wasn’t even 13 yet) and the folks there were very helpful. I learned how to not let anyone disrespect me, how to respect others, how to actually do… sex… anything at all—I had NO knowledge before going into the forum.

I had sex ed but it consisted of “this is your body changing, babby happens when sperm goes to egg”, I didn’t even know that for sperm to get to egg, penis goes into vagina! Or what an orgasm was! It was quite the journey.

The first time I heard about sex from a friend, I was around 5 or 6 and went to my mom if that’s true. My mom went to the library, got some sex-ed books for kids and talked me through it. It ended up being not one single talk, but multiple, age appropriate ones spread over the years.

She didn’t do a perfect job, I’d say. There were many things left unknown and she was awkward with the topic (not an issue as a kid, certain issue as a teen).Though, considering that she got all her sex ed from magazines back in the day, definite progress on a generational scale.

I’m confident that I could do a better job than her, because she did a better job than her parents. That’s how it all works, no?

Like most parents, my mom was uncomfortable talking to me about sex, but unlike most other parents, she recognized her discomfort as her problem and she did her best to work around it. She didn’t want me to have the same hangups. Fortunately, this was the 1970s, and she had a lot of resources available. There were lots of books about sex, and she gave me some, and left others around the house for me to read when I wanted.

At the time, I don’t think there was any specific law against allowing your kid to look at, say Playboy magazine, much less more explicit material. You’d probably get prosecuted for it now, which is reasonable. At that time, Playboy was still fairly softcore, just air-brushed breasts and gauzy drapes. And there were “nudist” or “natural” publications, with people having sex out in nature without the photo tricks used today, so you really couldn’t see much. I was allowed to look at those for a while, although I think the adults felt ishy about it, and soon put those away.

I grew up in rural Ohio, USA. We had sex ed in 5th grade that covered the very basic biological stuff. I think the following summer, we were supposed to go to a waterpark but had to cancel because my step-sister was on her period. Mom came in to talk about it, I showed her the pamphlet that school sent me home with, she read through it, then said to ask her if I had any questions. That was the first and last time any of that came up.

my stepmother tried to explain how the hymen works to me, but described it as a “stopper” instead of the ring of tissue it actually is. so, I wound up mutilating myself in an attempt to “break” it. having one or more sexually repressed religious people as legal guardians can lead to some gnarly results.

surprisingly, middle school sex ed taught me a bit more than you’d think it would, including how a condom is put on.

Got the talk at ~17, about 5-7 years too late.

When I was a pre-teen I asked my mom about it because I’d been playing The Sims 2 and figured out that your sims can woohoo or they can try for baby, and both look like the same thing. And of course 1 sim day after the lullaby jingle plays upon woohooing the female sim enters the first trimester, and 3 sim days later you have a new baby sim in the family. She was very factual about it all, but didn’t bother to talk at all about anything other than explaining vaginal sex. I had to piece the rest together from what I learned at school.

Fortunately I had fairly decent sex ed, except it was painfully boring and felt no different talking about human reproduction than when in highschool biology we talked about how plants reproduce (complete with extremely vague heavily photocopier-burned diagrams of anatomy that look almost entirely unlike what it’s depicting which we had to label) but they at least discussed condoms and birth control pills, and even demonstrated a condom on a wooden phalis when I was in high school so that’s a lot more than I’m sure some kids get

For my own kids, my oldest is 5 and has already asked. I’ve left it extremely scientific because she’s way too young for a proper talk in just explaining that a male secretes sperm that fertilizes an egg which eventually forms a baby. She wanted more detail but I had to leave that at “when you’re older”. I’ll probably have to give an updated talk when she’s 7 or 8 to make sure she knows about periods and maybe I’ll then go into more detail so she can be armed with knowledge should any boys take an interest in her (and statistically many boys have watched porn by age 10 which is terrifying)

My father once mumbled something about “keeping it in the cage” that was about it.

After a tear through multiple foreign women I figured it out myself.

No.

I was lucky to have an elementary and middle school that still did sex ed talks. My dad wasn’t in a talking mood after roofing all day every day and my mom was a puritanical prude who would much rather I figure it out than actually tell me how to exercise caution in order to avoid pregnancy.

My mom peaked in my room and left me with the American Girl book about hygiene and female anatomy. I don’t think it said anything about sex. Just had to navigate that part of life armed with (mis)information from whispered conversations with friends over sleepovers.

I think back on how many experiences I had growing up that could have gone wrong. This was all happening just as AIM chatrooms and chat roullette were popular. And there were so many creeps that my friends and I talked to because we were curious. No normal adult was giving us the information, but plenty of adults online were happy to talk and ask for favors in return. Shivers down my fucking spine.

I am so thankful that I was too nervous to do anything and usually ended conversations quickly. But the risk of genuine harm was right there, and our parents had no idea. We laughed whenever we saw a penis appear on chat roullete and clicked away, but we were not mature enough to know how fucked up it was. It was our parents’ job to guard us from that. Not by putting blinders on us. But by affording us the respect of an important conversation.

I am so passionate about people having this discussion with their kids. Kids are curious. The fact that the subject is taboo makes it even more exciting for kids. It is such a crucial moment in the transition to adulthood. Ignoring the conversation endangers them by making the subject seem exotic and inticing.

Have the conversation with your kids or someone else will. And you will have no control over how and when that happens.