Motherhood Series: Sex Positive Parenting
As the priorities of children today shift towards more inclusive and fluid goals, the objectives of parenting must inherently also shift away from more traditional and conservative values. The dual-dynamic of parenting is complex, as your choices and relationship with your child as a parent can sometimes intersect or move in different directions. This is why both being able to hold onto your sense of identity and autonomy, while also nurturing and educating yourself and your child, must be held to the same standard of importance. While these two identification “boxes” may seem too different to merge, by realizing the whole autonomy and identity of your child, you can demonstrate proper boundaries and practice them in a safe space, increasing your bond. After all, the parent-child relationship is just like any other relationship, in that it requires care, comfort, growth, and independence.
By implementing sex-positive parenting into your parenting style, you are giving your child permission to grow and lead independent lives with your full support. This gives your child the opportunity to open up to you in new and different ways while they move through their various stages of life, eventually reaching adulthood with a sense of security and purpose. Thus, being a sex-positive parent means having multiple conversations with your child over the course of their life in age-appropriate ways. In fact, much research suggests that starting these conversations early allows for a more comprehensive understanding of sex and less awkward conversations down the line.
Becoming a sex-positive parent is not easy and first requires the examination and deconstruction of any preexisting sex-negative thoughts you might hold in yourself as an individual. Doing this work is complex and laborious, so if you find yourself struggling, don’t be afraid to reach out to a sex therapist for extra support. Once you have established yourself as a sex-positive individual, having early and open dialogue about the normalization of bodies and gender identities is the best way to allow your child to come to you with any initial questions they may have. This is also a good way to practice the teaching of consent while still young—everyone deserves the right to autonomy over their own bodies and consent essentially stems from the building of personal boundaries around one’s own body.
When your child is eventually ready for a more comprehensive conversation, it should go beyond the typical “birds and the bees.” Being available to your child, in collaboration with their sexual health teachers and other support systems, is crucial so they understand the nuances of sex and feel truly ready to engage in it when they so desire. In this sense, explaining that sex is not just for conception, but can also be for pleasure might help your child understand that these decisions should be made with intent and with the purpose of their own satisfaction, not simply performance, as is the typical narrative portrayed in media.
Most of the underlying battles beneath these conversations surround getting rid of the shame and stigma associated with sex and sexuality. Whether it be your child’s relationship with their body, other bodies, you, their partners, or their own sexual pleasure, they should feel safe and comfortable expressing all their complex emotions to you as their parent. They should also be made aware that none of these actions are inherently shameful so they can begin to internalize messages of acceptance and joy. If you, as the parent, have been taught the opposite of this, begin unpacking this before discussing the topic with your child. This will help both of you in the long run. Besides conversations about these concepts, the best way to teach children proper actions is to model them yourselves. Remember that children are always watching their parents for emulation later, so the way you speak about your body is just as important as the way you speak about theirs.
Moreover, there are other considerations to be made on the basis of gender. Studies show that mothers of daughters more often only discuss sexual risk instead of sex-positive viewpoints. Additionally, fathers of daughters were shown to not discuss any sex-positive topics whatsoever. Another study showed that with frequent parental communication about sexual agency mediated through emotional engagement and autonomous support, their daughters had larger levels of sexual agency two years later. In contrast, sons report learning less about sex from their parents than they do from their peers or the media, and the lessons they learned from their parents skewed significantly more sex-negative than in other sources. Because it is widely accepted that children will be taught about sex at some point from “one source or another,” concrete education can fall through the gaps. It is thus the job of the parent to make sure that learning is a positive experience and sets the child up for growth, rather than feelings of shame and guilt.
This may seem like a lot of pressure and while these teachings shouldn’t be taken lightly, remember that your sexual agency is just as important. For this reason, when parents are also sex workers, straddling the identities and society’s perceptions of opposition between those two categories has a mental toll on the individual, eventually leading to a mental toll on the child. Feelings of shame and unsafety abound in this arena, where street sex working mothers are forced to provide for their children while also spending much time away from them in order to do so, impeding their ability to bond. These issues persist in the legal and policy systems as sex work occupations are often scrutinized by the court in proceedings involving the child. Additionally, access to resources is not readily available to this population, although they are some of the ones who would benefit most from these. All of this institutional, systemic, and societal sex negativity affects not only the parent’s sexual autonomy but also the child’s understanding and acceptance of sex as a positive experience.
The good news is that things do not have to be this way. As proven time and time again by individual experiences, including previous Sexual Health Alliance’s speaker, Jasmine Johnson, embodying multiple roles and passing on a myriad of personal experiences to one’s child is extremely common. To boost these results and limit the amount of sex-negativity in the world, pilot programs intended to provide comprehensive sex education from the standpoint of sex positivity should be advanced, solidified, and applied elsewhere. Furthermore, decriminalizing sex work would allow for parents to be parents and for occupations to not be subject to police state radicalism. Ultimately, being a sex-positive parent means many things, but mostly trying your best for your child.
By Emily Carriere