Talking to Your Kids About Sex

Excerpts from: Sex, Lies And ‘The Talk’
Published: Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Author: Elicia Brown, The New York Jewish Week

When my daughter Talia turned 3, I told her about the mommy’s egg and the daddy’s seed, and how the fetus developed inside the uterus, and how the baby emerged nine months later.

And then, for a time, I waited for questions. But Talia, who can pry and prod with the persistence of a reporter, who perceives the slightest shift in my tone, who will stop whatever she’s doing when she detects an “adult” conversation nearby, made no further inquiries.

So when Talia turned 7, I asked: “What do you think? How do the egg and seed get together?” Talia, the wise Upper West Side child, explained how the surgery works, how a doctor plants the father’s seed inside the mother’s body. “Well, yes,” I admitted. “That does happen. Sometimes. Sort of. ”

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I wonder if my discomfort stems from America’s Puritan heritage. Surely, it can’t be blamed on Judaism, which, after all, celebrates physical pleasures, which demands that a husband satisfy his wife’s sexual desires; it is a tradition whose adherents include some of today’s great “sexperts” from Dr. Ruth Westheimer to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

I seek out Bat Sheva Marcus, an outspoken Orthodox Jew known to discuss the female anatomy at her Shabbat table. As a sex counselor and the clinical director of the Medical Center for Female Sexuality, Marcus should be well suited to instruct me on the etiquette of The Sex Talk. “Should there even be a Talk?” I wonder. “Wouldn’t it be less dramatic to sneak these facts of life into casual conversation? Or even less traumatic, I could skip it all together, taking the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ route — as in, my daughter doesn’t ask questions, I don’t give answers.”

Marcus laughs. “Sex is a big deal,” says Marcus, who advises a formal discussion with a book on hand. “For us to pretend it’s not, is not reality.” She realizes that for children, the act of intercourse “will sound about as appalling as if you were to stick your nose in someone’s mouth and blow your nose” — an analogy Marcus borrows from “Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens.”

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