Hi Poet,
I haven't read the entire thread in a couple of days, so I may have missed whether or not the whole sex ed in school thing was put to rest. Pardon me if I am dredging up an old topic.
One question that you asked was "what is the harm in it?". To the child, IMO, there isn't any. In somebody else's opinion, based on their values, the damage may be substantial.
Where I do believe that there is damage done is that it is another way that we are expecting the state to take responsibility for what the parents should be doing. And it gives parents the excuse to ignore this responsibility. You mentioned your own experience with your daughters. I suspect that you didn't just sit down one day when they hit puberty and explained to them what was going on with the whole sexuality thing and masturbation and all of that fun stuff. I suspect that you raised your girls in an environment where they could be comfortable with who the are and their sexuality. I suspect also, that if you had not raised them in this type of environment, a discussion about masturbation would have been, for the most part, meaningless to them.
Of course, I consider it a crime (not in the literal sense) for parents to send their kids into adulthood without the ability to cope with the responsibilities and risks of sexual activity.
This is one of those issues that I don't have a passionate feeling about. I don't think that my son will be any better off or worse off with or without sex ed. It is mine and my wife's responsibility to help him grow up to be comfortable with who he is and I have no expectation of a state employee filling in for us. If we do it right, even if he gets some twisted puke that says that his fingers will turn into snakes if he masturbates, he will laugh it off. |
