Conflict arises when a young person’s actions go against parents’ beliefs, and this is particularly so in the context of sexuality. Parents may have to ask themselves, ‘Is it really worth declaring war?’ One area where parents’ attitudes may clash with their children is on a sexual activity with a traditional image problem. Although attitudes to masturbation have progressed a lot in the past twenty years or so, there are still some people who see it as a sin with dire consequences. However, it is now widely recognized as a natural form of sexual expression.
Around puberty both boys and girls become aware that masturbation is a sexual activity and it is an opportunity to explore your sexual responses in privacy. This is probably the first time we become aware of the ability to orgasm. One friend recalls the first time he ejaculated. T remember I was masturbating in the shower one day when I was about thirteen. I saw this white stuff coming out of the end of my penis and my erection disappeared faster than it had ever done before. I had no idea what k was. I thought I had burst something, so I spent the next hour or so checking all my bits and pieces, and nothing seemed to have dropped off. After it happened a few more times I figured it must be okay, so I stopped worrying. Then I heard a few of the boys at school joking about it, and I realized I wasn’t the only one!’
It is a frequent cause of battles within families. A friend, now in her thirties, has bitter memories of the time her mother found out she was taking the Pill. ‘I was about nineteen and I had been going out with Rick for over two years. He was a bit younger than me, but we knew we were both ready for a sexual relationship. My mother always had this expectation that I would be a virgin when I got married. That was about all she ever said about sex at all. Although I never challenged her about it, it had never been my plan. I think I’d been sexually active for about four months. I came back from a weekend away at a girlfriend’s house and Mum found my packet of contraceptive pills when she was looking through my bag for washing. Well, I couldn’t have imagined a worse reaction if she’d found out I had a terminal disease! She cried, she yelled, she called Rick all sorts of terrible names and said I was ruined and all that. I felt guilty, like I’d really let her down. For ages afterwards I had trouble having sex, like every time Rick and I got close I felt like I was hurting Mum or something. It took me years to forgive her for it, and we still never talk about anything really personal.’
The issue here is clearly one of permission to make your own choices. One of the biggest difficulties about being a parent is the ability to accept that we cannot dictate every thought, belief or action of another person, even if it is our own child. The achievement is in equipping our children to make responsible decisions for themselves.
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