Talking birds and bees

Why do we find it so hard to tell our children about sex? Whatever our hangups, we need to tell it like it is, writes Robbyn Swan

Yesterday my daughter called for help from the living room - where she was busily giving birth. Her brother, the obstetrician, was hiding under the sofa as she puffed and panted and pushed her dolly "Baby Benjamin" through the tails of her nightdress. The play-acting was accompanied by a passionate row about how the baby got in there in the first place, and exactly where and how it would make its exit. "Who's right, Mum?" the tearful new mother asked me. She's seven, and her learned obstetrician is 10.

As the parents of three young children, my husband and I find that the subject of sex comes up on a regular basis - and one has no choice but to soldier on. A new European-wide survey suggests that's not the case in other homes. The study carried out for pharmaceutical company Bayer Schering Pharma reveals that more than half of Irish adults claim to have learned what they know about sex - not at home - but from their friends. Another 35 per cent say they learned it in the classroom.

That's great, as far as it goes. But in Ireland it doesn't seem to go far enough. The Relationship and Sexual Education curriculum has been compulsory in Irish schools for the past 10 years. Although 90 per cent of our schools are following the programme to some extent, research indicates that in many schools implementation is patchy at best. There is anecdotal evidence of teachers too embarrassed to talk to students about sexual health, contraception or sexual orientation.

We mums and dads, meanwhile, are managing yet again to avoid the harder parts of parenting. In the UK, the teen helpline Parentline Plus says fathers are ducking out of giving their children "The Sex Talk". Their reason? Fear that it will "spoil" the limited amount of time they have to spend with their offspring. And it's not just men who are letting kids down. A close friend recently admitted that she'd yet to take her 17-year old daughter for a gynaecological exam - on the grounds that she couldn't "bear to subject her to that". What? Time and again I have been shocked to hear people say they dread talking about sex with their children.

We have only ourselves to blame if teenage boys are as confused about the birth process as my 10-year-old, and if their girlfriends know less about female anatomy than my daughter. Our kids want us to talk to them about this stuff. In a recent survey, half of all young people polled said that they would like their parents to be their main source of information about sex. Sadly, only a small number said their parents were providing that information.

MY MOTHER WAS an obstetrics nurse and is still - at 70 - a natural childbirth instructor. Talking about sex has been her bread-and-butter. Having given me "The Talk" at 11, she put me to work shortly afterwards knitting wombs - pink drawstring pouches just big enough to hold a plastic dolly - for use in her childbirth classes.

Finding me holding hands with my boyfriend at 15, was for her an opportunity to try out the latest instructional video on the birth process. Admirable frankness? Transparent manipulation? No matter. It worked.

Figuring out what will work for this generation is a challenge - one we urgently need to meet. According to the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, more than 20 per cent of girls age 15 to 19 become pregnant here each year, and the number of those travelling to the UK for abortions has increased substantially.

Our children, moreover, are bombarded with sexual imagery in song lyrics, fashion, television, computer games. We can't turn the tide, so it's time we joined in - and vocally.

My seven-year-old, a typical child of the naughty noughties, likes nothing better than to karaoke to the Pussy Cat Dolls' song Buttons: "You say you're a big boy, but I can't agree. 'Cause the love you said you had, ain't been put on me . . ." In the supermarket last week I noticed that the magazine my darling tot had picked up at the checkout desk featured helpful tips on fellatio and the joys of the Rampant Rabbit vibrator. And, as already described, she's got a keen interest in motherhood.

In that atmosphere - and absent real, practical information from me - how long will it be before she puts two and two together and makes a baby? Nothing is more enticing than the forbidden. Nothing is surer to get our kids into trouble than that which they think they must hide. So I say "Let's talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be . . ."

Instead of falling into the "just say no" trap, let's give them the whole story - with lights and whistles. Talking about sex in a way that will earn your child's respect and attention must include acknowledging how good good sex is. To pretend otherwise is to lose all credibility on the subject, and with it any hope they'll accept the smallest bit of our well-meant advice.

My stepson, a young actor, made his stage debut a couple of years ago. The entire family - from five-year-old half-brother to my mother and her 90-year-old sister - were booked to see the performance.

A few days before the show, thoughtful stepson rang home. He'd forgotten to mention, he said, that much of the play took place in a large bed with him simulating sex with a young woman, his stage partner in the play. Was that all right? My mother and her aged sister were undeterred. "My dear, do you think I got to 90 without knowing these things?" the aunt chuckled. As for our five-year-old, we figured he'd doze off long before the raunchy stuff started - and so it turned out on the night. What to do about our nine-year old son? We decided to take a chance and see how things turned out.

The show over, as we headed for the car, my husband put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "Was some of that hard to understand then?" he ventured.

OUR SON CAST his father an "I've-been-around" look. "Nah," he said, "not really. There wasn't anything I didn't understand." We were startled. Once back home we turned to the practised sex educator - my mum. If our son thought he knew "everything", she advised, it was probably time to sit him down for "The Talk". Better that than abandon him to smutty talk in the school playground. So my husband invited the boy into the study for an extended closed-door - father and son only - chat. Our all-knowing son, I later learned, listened wide-eyed, rapt with attention, to information that - it turned out - he knew nothing about. At the end of the session, my husband if he had any questions. Was there anything that concerned him? "Well," came our son's reply, "that bit about putting your willy into the girl is a bit weird isn't it?" My husband, rarely at a loss for words, had a ready answer. "Believe me," he assured our boy, "you get used to it." That initial "Talk" opened a dialogue - one filled with serious exchanges as well as comradely banter. Long may it last.