I think I’m fairly lucky in the fact that sex wasn’t a taboo topic (for the most part) in my house. My parents gave me the birds n’ bees talk at an age where I was old enough to understand the basics — I got a book called “Babies Come From People” that was fully illustrated (black & white) with anatomically correct people — real looking people, too, not supermodels.

My parents discussed masterbation with me — not in detail, but that it was an okay thing to do in the privacy of my own room, and that sex wasn’t dirty or evil, but a natural part of humanity. They did stress that it shouldn’t been a subject taken lightly, that it was “meant” for two people that were in love, and I do remember that when I was younger, that “in love” in my mind, automatically meant married. But they never corrected me on that assumption - they knew I would figure it all out on my own and at my own pace.

If there was any discomfort about discussing it, it was generally on my part — I didn’t want to talk about any intimacies with my parents. Hell, I even got all squeamish when my dad jokingly asked me if my high school bf had slipped me the tongue.

And now that I’m in a healthy, stable relationship? My mom jokes about me “shacking up” at his house, and my dad keeps teasing me with the idea that he’s going to ask CB “how many times he’s seen me naked.”

My parents are hippies at heart. Make love, not war, man. And it shows.

My parents never talked to me about sex (aside from my mom freaking out when she saw I had a hickey from my bf when I was 14, and she told me to never “let him do that to [me]” again). Like you, Duane, I also developed some pretty weird ideas about sex early on - compounded by the fact that I was basically a social outcast in middle school and much of high school; and of course that I grew up amid a bunch of fundies (I’m referring to my classmates here, not my parents) who were all too happy to tell me how thinking about sex meant I was going to hell - but then, somehow, it was okay when they had sex in the bed of a truck outside their youth group meeting. I was acquainted with hypocrisy early on!

I feel pretty lucky that I actually worked things out wrt sex on my own. Part of my personality has always been to learn as much as possible about a topic that I’m interested in, and to spend a whole helluva lot of time doing the whole introspection thing; but not everyone is like me, and someone else in the same situation could end up just plained Fucked Up.

So, bottom line: yes, I will talk to my kids about sex. It will not be a taboo in our house. There will be no shame or weirdness attached to the discusison of it. I want my kids to know that they can come to me with absolutely any questions, and they will receive an answer and not be judged for asking.

That’s more what I meant, dave, not so much just talking to them because they would have a skewed view, I guess. I just was using my own experience, which interestingly enough, I turned out to be a sex researcher, as an example of one way kids could gain a strange view of sex if left alone. It was more to focus on kids that aren’t told about sex, and as such, participate in unsafe practices and end up pregnant, positive, or otherwise diseased.

I want to protect my kids from that!

I will totally be open to talking to my kids about it (early!), but won’t push if they’re not ready. Maybe that’s the teacher in me? And of course, I would provide them with birth control. I’d rather have them trust me than a stranger.

…I used to see it as deviant, as something that you only did when you were married…

My parents didn’t explicitly talk to be about sex but that’s kind of the same thoughts about sex I grew up with as well. Of course, I went to christian breathe down your neck school that was more than willing to teach me that sex was for reproduction only.