Parenting Daily

Continuing along with the inspiration for yesterday’s post, it’s time I do a post on sex and teens. Obviously, this will have to be an ongoing series as there is entirely too much to talk about in just one post. While parents may wish talking about sex was a one time gig, it really just isn’t. The world is too complex, there’s too much potential for exposure to sexual topics, and children are exposed to more adult topics earlier than ever—you need to talk to your children about sex more than once in a lifetime.

A recent article in Slate magazine highlights the findings from a study  published this month in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study reviews data from 2,271 adolescent males and females, ages 15-19, taken in 2002. The teens self-reported their answers through a computer-assisted process—that means they didn’t have to face someone and reveal their answers on sensitive topics such as… oral sex.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. If you lived through the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal , you know all about oral sex, blow jobs, and off-label uses for cigars. Well, guess what? Your teen also knows all about oral sex.

The Journal of Adolescent Health study reveals that 54% of teen girls and 55% of teen boys admit to having had oral sex. Better yet (I’m being sarcastic!), most teens see oral sex as the first step towards vaginal sex. As in, you do oral before you venture into the actual coital sex. This is quite backwards from some generations, who either completely abstained from oral sex or who didn’t venture into oral sex until after “perfecting” the vaginal sex experience.

Okay, so if you’re still reading, give yourself a pat on the back. It’s hard to face talking to your teen about sex, period. But having to talk about oral sex is probably making your mind scream. Take a deep breath cuz it’s going to be okay. As I mentioned earlier, they probably already know all about it. Your job is to be frank, talk about safety precautions (condoms, dental dams), and let them know that oral sex is not a “safe sex alternative.” You can still contract sexually transmitted diseases and infections from oral sex.

And just in case you want to know more basics on oral sex, here is a wikipedia link (wikipedia being an online encyclopedia with references and editors and such, so it’s not smut or porn!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_sex.

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