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Marriage Enrichment
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Assignment II What did your partner learn from her/his family of origin about sexuality? I was once asked during an on-line talk show, to answer the question "When do we teach our children about sex?" My answer was "from conception." I was attempting to broaden the discussion from a narrow focus on genital behaviour to a more comprehensive one that sees "sexuality" as encompassing the breadth of what it means to be human. sex - u- al(l) - ty
From the moment of conception, for planned pregnancies, when the planning starts, prospective parents begin to think and therefore define what it will mean to have a "girl'" or a "boy" child. They begin to hope and dream what the child's life will be for themselves as well of course as for the child. As soon as the child receives gender identification, "It's a girl" or "It's a boy", the people in the child's life begin responding in often pre-defined and consistent ways to the gender identity. The parents in particular send powerful messages to the child about it's body, their comfort level with the child's and their own body and how accepting they are that the child is the gender that was assigned. Even before the child is two, he or she will want to know the names of body parts. the way a parent answers questions or responds to the child touching her or his genitals will also give the child an impression of how acceptable is it's own body. Often before puberty, children start asking questions about reproduction. A parent needs to able to answer in an age appropriate way with the child, yet in a way that conveys trust in the child's understanding and ability to manage the information and most crucially, in a way that does not convey guilt or shame. In the book Children the Challenge, Dreikurs tells the story of a young mother and her son. Johnny comes home from school all excited. He asks "mommy, where did I come from?" As a concerned mother, she launched into a long explanation of the human reproductive cycle. Exasperated, Johnny interrupted the lecture: "O mom! David told me he came from Chicago. Where do I come from?" The next stage of teaching about sexuality concerns itself with relationships. Often in early puberty, or before, parents need to talk to their children about forming relationships, respectful communication and appropriate sexual behaviour. In this stage especially, but certainly not limited to this stage, parents share their own values about sexuality. If the parents have not thought through their values and understood what they have brought with them form their own upbringing, this stage can become very conflictual. One of the most common "problems" parents identify when bringing their youth into counselling is "sexual acting out." Your assignment is to have a conversation with your partner to learn what she/he has brought into the relationship in terms of "sexuality", using the fullest definition of sexuality that you can comprehend. This conversation especially benefits from asking about your partner and sharing about yourself. |
