Rachel Brougham: Why talking to our kids about sex is more important than ever

I don’t remember my parents ever really talking to me about sex.

Maybe they did and my younger self blocked it out since there’s nothing worse than to have your parents talking to you about the birds and the bees. Maybe they told me about safe sex, condoms and learning to say no. Maybe they told me about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.

Or maybe I don’t remember these conversations because they never happened and my parents — like so many others — relied on those couple of days a year when we’d have sex ed in school.

I’ve been thinking about the sex education, or lack of, I received when I was younger. I was basically told that sex can lead to a host of awful things and that condoms should be involved. And then I was sent on my way.

The education I received didn’t serve me well and I was left with a whole plethora of questions. I ended up hearing things from my peers that were either partially true or not true at all and figuring things out on my own.

That’s not the experience I want for my own child.

This column isn’t necessarily about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I’m not here to tell you what you should think of abortion or how the recent Supreme Court decision on the topic is about to change our cultural landscape.

But it sure makes me think a lot more about how I want my child to grow up with knowledge I feel I was never properly given.

If you’re a parent and think the court’s recent abortion ruling doesn’t impact you or your kids, you’re wrong. Consider these facts:

More than half of U.S. teens have had sex by the age of 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means if you have a teen in your home, it’s more likely than not that your child has had sex before they become a legal adult. The good news is that according to the study, teens are using condoms. The bad news is that condoms aren’t fail-proof.

In fact, during a typical year, there is one pregnancy among every 32 American females between the ages of 15-19, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that works to study, educate, and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights. This means that if you have children in your home and they have sex before they are 18, there’s a real chance that pregnancy will be an outcome.

Don’t think your daughter will have sex before they graduate high school?

Well, if they go off to college there’s a one in four chance they will experience some form of sexual assault or misconduct, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. One in five women in this country experienced a completed or attempted rape in their lifetime. Even more shocking, one in three female victims of completed or attempted rape experienced it for the first time between the ages of 11 and 17.

That means someone you likely know and love was raped.

Do you not think your son is capable of raping someone? Who do you think is raping one in four women?

What if your daughter gets pregnant, even while practicing safe sex, with her high school boyfriend? What if she gets raped at college and ends up pregnant? What if your son gets a girl pregnant?

The statistics mean someone you likely know and love has had an abortion.

Before you dismiss any of these possibilities, remember the data shows your child isn’t an outlier, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.

Let’s all sit with that for a few moments.

Or better yet, realize that now, maybe more than ever, is a great time to really have these tough conversations with our children.

— Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Rachel Brougham: Why talking to our kids about sex is more important than ever