In this monologue, the speaker reflects on growing up without parental or school sex education, learning instead from peers and trial‑and‑error, and contrasts that with today’s reality where children as young as 10‑12 encounter pornography. Citing alarming statistics and personal anecdotes—such as a son’s experience with a partner who could tell he watched porn—the speaker argues that early, honest parental conversations about healthy, consensual sexuality are essential. She discusses the importance of modeling appropriate affection, sharing boundaries, consent, and the #MeToo movement, while also acknowledging past mistakes like oversharing details from her own divorce and online dating. The central message is that parents should proactively educate their children about sex, pleasure, and consent before they encounter explicit content, creating an open environment where kids feel comfortable discussing intimacy.
Chapters
Talking to your kids about sex. I don't know about you, but when I was younger growing up, I didn't learn about sex from my parents. I didn't really learn about sex in school. I learned about sex from my friends and from a lot of trial and mostly error. And it wasn't until I was much older that I really understood about sexual pleasure and and my body and all of that. But these days, of course, things are quite different. People as young as 10 or 12 are learning about sex for the first time through watching pornography. The statistics around that are staggering, horrifying, and very scary. And some of the stories that my friends have told me with younger children bringing home explicit images on their phone that have been shared by their friends, and they're only 10, is really, really awful. And as a parent, we have responsibility to inform our kids about sex—sex that's healthy, sex that's pleasurable, and sex not— that's non-consensual, that doesn't take into account people's boundaries and and all of that kind of stuff, because if their first exposure to sex is through pornography, you can appreciate how much that's gonna screw with their brain, not just for when they're at that stage of life, but potentially for their entire life. My kids and I have had some very, very full and frank discussions about sex. Mainly from when they were in their late teens and they were starting to explore this. And I was discovering that, for instance, one of my sons had watched a lot of porn and then realized that real life was quite different. And another son told me of a woman that he had— was going out with who asked him if he watched porn, and when he said no, she said, "Yeah, I can tell." So So even young women these days are very aware of when they're with a young man who is, you know, watching too much porn. And it's not just about sharing with them what sex is about. I think it's also about if you're with a partner, if you're in a relationship, being affectionate with your partner in front of your kids, not overly affectionate, but affectionate enough so that they see you as a sexual being. And I know that I got divorced very— my kids were very young, and I did a lot of online dating and went out with a lot of people and did a lot of stuff, and I overly shared, which in retrospect was not really the greatest idea. And we've had some conversations about that during which it's been clear to me that, that doing all of that was Not great, but you know, we moved on. And since then, if things do arise with my kids around their sex lives, around relationships, we can talk about it. And I feel really blessed that they feel comfortable enough to be able to have those conversations with me. But I think it's because I set that pattern of behavior of being able to be open with me around those conversations around sex and intimacy when they were growing up. So it never— nothing was really off-bounds, nothing was off-limits. We talk about Me Too, we talk about boundaries, about consent, about sexuality, all sorts of things, because I think it's important that they do feel comfortable having those conversations. Now, you may feel very uncomfortable, and I get that, and I'm not an expert But all I'm saying is that I think as parents we do have a responsibility to have those chats. And the sooner we do that, especially if our kids are coming home with explicit images on their phone, the better. Because one thing I don't want is my kids to learn about sex from porn. Do you?
