My column in The Kerryman. 3 April, 2013
When I was growing up in Kerry during the 80s, one thing I swore, I’d never begin a sentence with, ‘In my day…’ For nearly 30 years I’ve stuck to that.
In my day young people were expected to be as ignorant about sex as their parents and it worked. It worked because any mistakes this ignorance caused, were quietly shipped off to a distant relation, or to England, or a Laundry, or if it involved a Priest, simply moved to another parish.
Then things started to attack our ignorance. Our generation was given a huge scare by AIDS. There were strong women looking for control of their bodies and futures. Some pregnant women wouldn’t be shamed into giving up their babies. We learned that girls and their babies died, if left out in the cold. We discovered Bishops, even our own Bishop Casey, had normal sexual appetites, which they indulged. We discovered some Bishops would not protect our children from perverts with other kinds of appetites.
We learned that children who received sensible sex education were more likely to have positive experiences of sex, to wait till they were older to have sex and to be safe having sex. We learned that young people with good self-esteem were less likely to make choices about sex they later regretted.
Today we have the internet and even with the poor quality of internet speeds in Kerry, we know that the average age that children are exposed to pornography is 11. Think on that, 11.
What hasn’t changed since the 80s is that parents who are too embarrassed to speak to their children about sex, will teach their children to be too embarrassed to speak to them about sex. What hasn’t changed, is that the only one more ignorant about sex than a teenager, is two (or worse three) teenagers about to have sex.
How do we help teenagers make the best possible decisions? First, parents get over the embarrassment and talk to your children about sex. Be the people your children turn to. Second, teach your children to value themselves too highly to be pressurised into making decisions they are not ready to make. Thirdly, make sure they have access to information. All kinds of information. Finally, investigate the information they are looking at. If they look up something, like threesomes for example, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to try that. Most likely they’ve heard the term and just want to know what it actually is.
Young people these days (another phrase I hoped to never use) are exposed to exactly the same pressures we once were, only lots more of it and in a lot more ways. A large part of that is the internet. Fortunately the internet can also help teenagers and their parents to better deal with these intense pressures.
Take for example the charity, SpunOut.ie. If you are a parent of older teens, have a look at it. It has over 3000 articles and some of them will make you uncomfortable and maybe even spitting mad. It is however a huge source of information for 16 to 25 year olds and for you the parents.
The HSE part funds this charity with a donation worth less than the cost of a TD and gets much more in return. This little piece of the internet gives young people and their parents a common language. But it is a dead language, unless you’ve raised your child to be a young adult, with confidence enough to make decisions you may not agree with, but that you can respect.
