When I was a teenager, talking about anything remotely was taboo. My first memory of talking about sex goes something like this. I am at my maternal grandparents’ house in Salem, Tamil Nadu. The ‘kids room’ in my grandpa’s old spacious house has heat, and a fancier than the rest of the house. This is a time when summer vacations seem to be gone forever. I’m 12 years old, without cousins or books, and I’m bored out of my mind. In desperation, I read old issues of Reader’s Digest. One of them follows the story of a cured addict who describes how he feels after taking heroin shoots as “a chemical orgasm”. I ask my mother, “Amma, what is intercourse?” She says, “Show me the words.” Then, without missing a beat, she replies, “It’s a spelling mistake. They mean creatures.” I learned two things. First of all, that my mother may have instinctively lied. Second, if I had a question remotely related to sex (I suspected it was about this), I needed to look elsewhere for answers. Later that year, he sat me down after school and over a plate of Chinese food gave me a horrifying description of a bleeding uterus and baby-bearing ovaries. It had nothing to do with what I really wanted to know, and I couldn’t eat chow mein for years.
I was hooked until I entered medical school, and then I had my first experience of ‘imposter syndrome’, when my non-physician friends turned to me for advice on all things to do with the body, including sex. Started coming Who was ever going to believe that a medical student with swag knew mechanics but lacked operational knowledge? My bestie Evie crunched some sly statistics and we clearly reflected that we were probably part of a small percentage of women who weren’t sexually active in their mid-twenties.
When I became a mother, I was determined not to let this happen to my children. So, when the kindergarten teacher at my kids’ school said, “We have two eyes and two ears, why do we have just one?” I wasn’t surprised when my 4-year-old son responded with “one penis.” I took it upon myself to educate every single class in my children’s school from class 5 to above. It was pleasant to have a bunch of 13-year-olds hanging on to my every word. Such a mix of naivete, curiosity and wisdom, I was amazed by his questions. Can kissing cause breast cancer? How much do porn stars get paid? Whose responsibility is it to use condoms?
Cut back a decade, and we find that not much has changed for middle school kids. Some recent studies in the US asked young adults what they thought was the ideal parent-child communication on sex. The surprising answer was that they wished their parents had open conversations with them and had been before them more often. But parents today still feel awkward about having to ‘talk’ themselves, never did.
When parents ask where to start, I tell them it’s okay to ask questions for their kids. They’re usually fine if you tell them you need time to think about the answer, but they’ll remember if you don’t get back to them. They may not ask you again. As wonderful nurse and educator Meg Hickling says, “Your child really wants to ask these questions and they want to hear the answers from you. Never miss a teachable moment. Celebrate them.”
The secondary schools where I did a ‘physiology’ session requested me to do a session for their parents.
In the parenting sessions, it became clear where the children inherited their biases. One man who shouted during a parenting session, “Don’t teach my son about homosexuality! I don’t want you to put ideas in his head” was the father of a 12-year-old boy who missed another catch in a game of cricket. Said “fagot”.
My generation needs a different kind of education. We find ourselves restless and confused by the rapidly changing world.
Over the years, young adults and teens have been my mentors. They are educating me about their beliefs about sexuality and gender, and these are often different from those of their parents.
I’m no longer the cool mom or doctor who talks openly about sex to them. I am a late learner who has a lot to do. I am surprised when people my age roll their eyes and say, “Kids these days – you can’t fix anything!” My experience has been the opposite. ‘Children of today’ are always ready to instruct and explain and it is okay to make my mistakes.
I’ve learned from them to think beyond binaries, and to understand gender as well as sexuality as a spectrum. I have learned not to make assumptions about identity, but to inquire about preferred names and pronouns. Last month at my daughter’s graduation, I watched with envy the easy jokes between her friends—diverse in gender, sexuality, and myriad other ways. On the doorstep of his world, it was as if there was a mat on which it was written, ‘Welcome everyone’. Isn’t that what we want for our world?
Vibha Krishnamurthy is the founder and executive director of Umeed Child Development Center