Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
With the never ending winter here in the midwest I've been in a funk watching too much TV.
Many sit coms have had an episode where the parent has to give the kid "the talk" about sex.
It got me thinking... my parents never gave me "the talk" about sex.
They also never really talked to me about money, whether I should do my homework, how to buy a car, how to get into college, buy a house, what jobs I should do, or anything like that. Really, they never talked to me or my sibs about anything practical.
I just wonder how common this was. I am Gen X. It seems like millenials have "helicopter parents." I think mine were whatever the opposite of helicopter parents are. Did your parents teach you about any of this stuff? Or even mention it? Did you get "the talk?"
I am Gen X too (now 45) and I "sort of" got the talk.
When I was in maybe 5th grade, my mom bought me a book called the Teenage Body Book, which was very 70s, but a really good resource. I actually still have the book. It wasn't her idea to buy it--I had asked for it when my older cousin had gotten it for Christmas.
I already knew where babies came from, mostly because of an Aftershool Special that was on when I was younger called My Mom's Having a Baby. I remember watching it, and I had known that the baby was in there, but this show answered the question as to how it got there (part of the man's body fits into a part of the woman's body). I thought "Oh! that makes sense!"
I had already learned about menstruation from conversations with friends, mostly around the book Are you There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I think I read that in 4th grade. It must be noted that back in those days, we started getting periods later, not like today when girls might actually have it in 4th grade.
So by the time my mom decided to try to give me the "talk" is was basically: What do you already know? Do you have any other questions? Here's that book you asked for, let me know if you want to talk about anything in it. Don't ever embarrass me by getting pregnant. Oh, and if any grownups ever try to touch you in that way, tell me right away. (This was weird that she decided to warn me about child molestation when I was pretty much past the age when kids tend to get molested.)
When she asked if I had any questions, I asked how old she was when she got her period, which she answered truthfully, and how old she was when she first had sex, which she didn't really answer truthfully (I'm positive she and dad didn't wait ill they were married. I mean, it was the mid 60s).
And that was that.
Now that you mention being a generation-Xer, I wonder if many of us learned this stuff from the Judy Blume book and the Afterschool Special. I think those two resources really took a lot of pressure off our parents to articulate things they were not comfortable talking about.
I'm 42, and was never given such a talk by parents/family/grown-ups.
They were "book people" (and my parents were divorced), so I figured things out (bit by bit) from reading.
The Science Book by Sara Stein was a very down-to-earth, nuts & bolts book covering many topics in chemistry, biology, and physics for kids-
there was section about fertilizing hen eggs, which led into the part about "and how do humans do it ?".
In addition to that (which was tough to visualize), my mother gave me a couple illustrated books for just that purpose,
called "Where Did I Come From" and the sequel about the physical changes one undergoes.
Never needed anyone to exhort me *not* to get pregnant, I already knew I didn't want that.
Also, as a pre-teen, I took up scouring "women's magazines" for possible insight,
such as Glamour & Mademoiselle, which had articles about "adult" topics incl. relationships and bodily realities.
At least in theory-I knew what was going on before being confronted with it in (my own) real life.
Hi. Just curious: Why are people so frightened by "the talk"?
I think my mom was just embarrassed about it. I was handed a book, some supplement to our "World Book Encyclopedia" set...I just gave away my age with that one, lol.
I never really got a talk, but that might be because I came home one day and told my mom I'd gotten in trouble in school for giving other kids "the talk." I was so excited about the things I'd learned in a science encyclopedia, and I was thinking about it very logically - "It's so cool that our bodies are set up like that!" - but the other girls found the details a little traumatic. I look forward to getting a second chance to give "the talk"(s) when I have kids, hopefully with fewer tears.
This was around the same time we got the big menstruation talk at school (4th or 5th grade), which I remember being mostly new information, so I guess I never got that talk at home.
I did once get a neat "lecture" from my very outdoorsy (and not usually very practical) dad about the similarities and differences between sperm and pollen.
I lost my Mom when I was 8, so obviously, she never had "the talk" with me.
I think my Dad was a little too scared and embarrassed to speak with me about it. I learned it in school (from staff). I was 11 when I learned about how sexual intercourse led to pregnancy.
Male, 41, never got the talk nor any talk about the thing the OP refers to - no money management, no career advice, etc. My wife didn't either. We're both very successful - both have graduate degrees and well paying, stable careers.
But my parents were immigrants and were always working and more than that, trying to figure things out as well - like how to buy a house, the best careers, etc. Like the OP's, my parents were very hands off, the opposite of helicopter parents. We have a kid and I don't know if were helicopter parents but we are very much involved, a tremendous amount. Thinking about it, perhaps we do have some helicopter parent traits. But when people say "helicopter parents" I think many mean that those parents say that their kids do no wrong no matter what they do - that's definitely not us.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
