Sex ‘Eeewwwducation!’

One morning while I was driving my teenage daughter to school, I asked her how she’d feel about giving me an interview for an article I’m planning to write.

"On what?" she asked.

After a moment’s hesitation, I took a deep breath and said, "Sex education."

"Eeewww! Dad! Do I have to?" was her instant response. Her face contorted. She began to squirm in her seat, with much effort because of the seat belt. She knew there was no escaping this discussion.

I couldn’t blame her; she knew that however objective my questions would be, her answers would pretty much betray what we parents secretly want to know about our teenage children’s sex or love life.

But being the dutiful daughter that she was – and is – we did manage to talk about it without embarrassing each other.

I began by recalling one banner story I recently read in The Philippine STAR: "More young Pinays into premarital sex."

As a father of a teenage girl, one who, I’m proud to say, is mature for her age and has a good head on her shoulders, I am still quite alarmed by this bit of information backed by statistics provided by no less than the University of the Philippines Population Institute. We used to call it Pop-I.

I’d probably pop an artery if I knew my daughter was one of those who admitted contributing to the "narrowing" of the gap between young Filipino males and females who engage in premarital sex. At the back of my mind, I was asking myself, "Would she tell me the truth?"

In their school, apparently, there have been no reported incidents of students being caught in flagrante by school officials, or between students and teachers for that matter. Some high school students do make out from time to time, but their stories are more fodder for the rumor mill, a source of derisive giggles and, perhaps, veiled jealousy, than issues that reach the attention of, and require immediate action by, school authorities.

The young and the precocious do not even call it PMS anymore – like we used to in the old days – but simply sex. PMS, to most of them, is nothing but premenstrual syndrome, that monthly annoyance inflicted upon most daughters of Eve.

Heavy Monday traffic allowed us to do more "sharing," even as I dared not share the lurid details of my juvenile raging-hormone days. Thus, I began to search my mind, my heart, even my soul, on how I would proceed discussing this matter of sexuality with my pubescent progeny. For obvious reasons, I had some reservations about my mission to educate her.

First, how do I talk to her about sexual responsibility vis-a-vis conservative Filipino values?

In our family – which I think is more liberal than the typical Filipino family – sex education is still confined to freewheeling conversations among grown-ups over meals. Teenage family members present manage to pick up information here and there from our no-holds-barred exchanges. Face-to-face, heart-to-heart talks between parents and teenage offspring on this topic are, however, pooh-poohed, avoided at best. Is this old-fashioned thinking or mere hypocrisy? Maybe a little bit of both, with a dash of fear that opening up a teenage girl’s mind to the "ways of the world" might transform her into an "easy chick."

Second, would my unsolicited advice be welcomed?

A father’s attempt to talk about sex with his teenage daughter – even in the form of an interview for an article – can be tricky business because she is at that "not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman" phase. The questions "Where to begin?" or "How to begin?" readily come to mind.

Although my daughter and I have a fairly good relationship and she does seek my advice on personal matters from time to time, I have yet to sense any need on her part for me to impart some fatherly worldly wisdom.

Which brings me to a third question: Should I let the other female grown-up members of our family, or her teachers, assume this daunting task?

On the first option, we hit a blank wall. She wouldn’t even discuss it with her female cousins, so forget about her seeking guidance from her mom, aunt, or grandma.

One might think that teachers enjoy a higher degree of confidence and confidentiality when their students want to learn about sex. I discovered that this isn’t so either. Sex education in public schools, or even in private schools for that matter, has recently been in the news because of the adverse reactions its introduction has elicited from various sectors of society – parents, religious groups, politicians, civic organizations, etc. Everyone seems to think that their belief and judgment ought to be heard.

Admittedly, there are valid issues being raised, such as how to insulate our children from misinformation, how to police the sources of information, or what intervention the State should adopt in order to fulfill its mandate as protectors of every citizen. But amid all this squabbling over who’s right and what should be done, the central character in this sordid topic is totally overlooked – the reluctant pupil.

What do the children think about all this?

They must be wondering, just like my daughter, why sex education is suddenly a huge and sensitive issue. "Hellooo! Do we have to hear all this?" immediately comes to her mind. Our parents and their parents and grandparents certainly did not have to be instructed on how to do what generations before them had been doing, with great success I might add, if the healthy population growth in this country were to be used as a yardstick.

It must be remembered that the need to procreate is purely instinctive, drawn out of each individual by his or her particular body clock, but reined in by social and moral rules made up by civilized man to separate every beast from every human. Various religions further added an otherwise simple and primitive human act by setting their own rules and condemning specific sexual behaviors.

While establishing certain taboos, especially in the area of sexuality, may be ideal to maintain social order, there is still strong resistance to the idea of edifying our young on the finer points of reproduction.

Teachers may not relish the idea of going beyond the purely biological aspect of sex education lest they be accused of sexual harassment; this makes their lessons half-baked at best. Parents are fully capable of discussing sex in the context of relationships and emotional commitment, but I discovered that many find it extremely awkward to discuss the topic graphically with their sexually-primed children. I probably belong to this group of parents.

The reality that most grown-ups should accept is that kids today are smart, and they have all these communication and information tools that were not readily available to us during our time that could help them in their quest for knowledge. Yet, we learned about sex and relationships. Lack of any formal sexual education did not create generations of club-toting Neanderthal men who jumped at every ovulating female to satisfy their bestiality, or females who flaunted their rear ends during mating season like cats in heat.

Our kids are no different, but this generation would rather learn about the true workings of the birds and the bees among themselves – not by self-exploration, thank heavens, as I tacitly learned from my daughter, but by observation and absorption. No parents, no teachers, no grown-ups, please. Just them.

Any form of sex education would, at this day and age, be superfluous because of the pervasiveness of materials that basically perform the same function. In other words, as my daughter confirmed, they would prefer to read about it in books and magazines, watch it on television, in the cinemas, or on video discs; discover it through Internet pop-ups, or discuss it in chat rooms, then when they get together, talk about it amid teenage-girl giggles.

But try asking them if they want to talk about sex, and they would, much like my daughter, quickly grimace and say, "Eeewww!"

After everything has been said and done, we parents are left with no palliatives to our anxieties except to trust our children and to trust ourselves that we raised them properly.