MIND MOVES Marie MurrayIf you are of a certain age you will remember your anticipation of "the talk" and "the book". These consisted of the embarrassed incoherent mumblings of your same-sex parent about the facts of life. Monologue completed you were then presented with a book of minute apologetic print that contained a hybrid of medical and theological incomprehensibility, ostensibly your guide to sex.
The talk was unheard, the book unreadable, but the message was clear: don't do it. With your mortal body and your immortal soul at risk this admonition removed ambivalence, liberated adolescents from sexual pressure and from participating in what they were not emotionally ready to engage in. The talk was brief, peremptory and useful - then.
Today, there is equal implicit understanding between parents and adolescents that the sexual behaviour of either is not for explicit discussion by the other. Most adolescents recoil at the mere mention that their parents could have engaged in sexual activity other than on the single occasion required for their personal conception.
That service to humanity having been rendered, they believe their parents are best deployed devoting their energies to ensuring their offspring are kept in the lifestyle to which they believe they are entitled. In return, adolescents shield their parents from the reality of the sexualised world in which they live and the range of culturally provided sexual seductions into which they are constantly invited by market forces.
Besides, because many parents still find talking to their children about sex exceptionally difficult, by the time they eventually share the facts of life, adolescents are already more sexually knowledgeable than they, with a stunning vocabulary of sexual savvy.
And with acute adolescent intuition young people do not reveal to their parents what they know, how they acquired this knowledge and just how young they were when adult TV, films, lyrics and magazines provided their first powerful perspective on sex. Feigned innocence is best and parental gullibility validates the time worn adolescent adage that "the less parents know, the better". Parents are worried enough. No need to stress them further with reality.
It is, therefore, with infinite regard for parental sensibilities, that sons permit their fathers to sweat their way through the singular time-honoured heart to heart, man to man, father-son, birds and bees exposé. By implicit complicity between father and son neither will burden the other with further discussion and both will reassure the mother that the encounter was informative, productive and comprehensive.
Daughters receive more intermittent instruction, usually of the cautionary kind, with euphemistic reminders about being careful and not getting into trouble. And for many parents, if adolescence passes without adolescent pregnancy, parents content themselves that they have fulfilled their duty to their children whose moral and behavioural decisions in adulthood are now their own.
But is this enough? With the age of first engagement in sexual activity ever decreasing, with the incidence of sexually transmitted disease ever increasing, with a society ever dissociating sex from relationship, relationship from commitment, commitment from consequences and performance from love, there is much more to know about sex and sexuality than the anatomy of an act.
With what used to be termed the one-night stand transformed into an occurrence that may take place on more than one occasion, with more than one person in one night outside a teenage dance venue, it is time to be aware of and protect young people from these callous couplings. With sexual exchange preceding exchange of names and with social life conducted for many young people through a haze of alcohol or other substances, the traditional talk is as outdated and useless as the quill and ink for email.
Dialogue from the earliest age is now required to provide an information source more worthy to shape our children's gender identity, body image, self-worth, sexual understanding and life-long ambitions than x-rated movies, MTV, the magazine rack and the internet to which children and adolescents often report unrestricted access. To love is to challenge, respect and protect. We need to challenge what they hear, restrict what they see, denounce what degrades them, deplore what diminishes them, promote what inspires them. We need to know what they know, understand what assails them, respect what concerns them and guide them.
The research is clear: young people who enjoy ongoing warm, affirmative discussion with parents about their worth and potential, who have clear authoritative (not authoritarian) behavioural boundaries drawn and reinforced, who are not deprived by excess and who, when necessary, experience the love enshrined in the simple word 'no' are at least risk from anxiety, anger, alcohol abuse, sexual exploitation and depression. It's time to talk.
The Crisis Pregnancy Agency is launching a DVD and booklet to assist parents in communicating with their children on sexual health and relationships on March 7th. This free resource will be available to borrow in libraries nationwide, or visit www.crisispregnancy.ie or email: info@crisispregnancy.ie
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview. mmurray@irish-times.ie