Kids and Sex--One Family’s Guide to Preteen Questions

After delivering the “Where do babies come from?” explanation and before grappling with the sexual experimentation of their kids’ teen-age years, many parents expect a period when their children’s curiosity about sexual matters is temporarily dormant.

According to this theory, pre-adolescents are predominantly interested in developing friends of the same gender. The last thing on their minds is sex.

But that’s not the way it was happening in the home of Betsy and Michael Weisman. Piqued by supermarket tabloids, television, or a phrase overheard at school, the Weisman children were coming home with all kinds of questions. What was all this fuss about abortion? Teen sex? Contraception? Friends with children reported receiving the same types of queries.

Looking for some help, Betsy Weisman found plenty of information about where babies come from and volumes on the physical and emotional turbulence of adolescence. But there was almost nothing at all for kids with an intellectual curiosity about a stage they were a few years shy of experiencing.

A Frank Guide

The Weismans decided to do the research themselves, and the result is “What We Told Our Kids About Sex,” a thorough, frank guide to 102 questions that pre-adolescent kids ask. The book was published in February by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Besides information on puberty, sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth and venereal disease that can be learned in a junior high school health class, the Weismans have included material on toxic shock syndrome, adoption, DES children, transsexuality, pornography, AIDS, prostitution and child molestation.

Written in language that can be read by a child alone or by parents and children together, the book follows a child’s thought patterns and was guided somewhat by questions brought home by 13-year-old Anne Weisman, youngest of the couple’s three children.

“With a 9- to 12-year-old child, you’re talking about activities that happen to other people; this is the easiest time and the best time to talk to them,” said Betsy Weisman, a director of the Children’s Museum of San Diego. “Most people wait until they’re worried about their own kids. Then when they present it to them, it’s threatening to them.”

Lenore Lowe, community services director for Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside counties, confirmed that there is little published sexual information for this age level, despite the group’s estimate that the average child is likely to see 20,000 sex-related images each year on television.

“There isn’t a great deal of information out there for the pre-teen-agers. You would really have to go into a bookstore and order special things,” she said.

Don’t Be Embarrassed

In an era when AIDS presents the possibility of a fatal mistake by an uninformed adolescent, parents cannot afford to be embarrassed about discussing sex with their children, said Michael Weisman, an associate professor of medicine at UC San Deigo Medical Center. But according to research studies noted in the couple’s book, less than than 20% of parents ever have meaningful discussions about sex with their children.

“I think the most important thing is for the public to know it’s OK to talk to your kids, and not to be embarrassed by your kids’ questions,” said Michael Weisman, who added that his parents “did not have the confidence” to discuss sex with him. “There is a lot of false sophistication that kids appear to have today. And parents are intimidated. But it’s not true that kids know a lot of this stuff.”

“There’s AIDS out there,” his wife added. “People are telling you that you have a responsibility, this is life and death. And yet, you’re confused. You’re a parent, but you’re having trouble talking about it.”

The book is intended to be completely value-free, but the Weismans would be the last to recommend that such information should be imparted to children without a discussion of the parents’ beliefs on these subjects. The first and last chapters urge parents to voice their opinions, whatever their moral persuasion.

“We are confident that all parents have their own set of strongly held beliefs and values; but we also believe that these parents alone can communicate these values and beliefs to their kids. The material in this book has to be placed within the context of these individual parental norms,” the Weismans wrote in their final chapter, “Is That All There Is About Sex?”

Early Sex Education

Despite some arguments to the contrary, the Weismans are convinced that explicit information on sex is not likely to make kids go out and experiment when they get a little older. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York City, several research studies support the position that there is no evidence that sex education leads to earlier sexual activity.

In a recent study by Johns Hopkins University, researchers found that extra counseling and information, plus the presence of a nearby health clinic where contraceptives were available, actually delayed the first sexual encounter of some inner-city Baltimore teens by an average of seven months.

The Weismans’ technical expertise, their unbiased attitude and their orientation toward parents as dispensers of sex information won them the praise of U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who has been waging a campaign for sex education as early as the third grade. Koop’s recommendation has been used in newspaper advertising for the guide, which is in its first printing of 10,000 copies.

The Weismans forwarded the book to Koop’s office last fall, shortly after the surgeon general issued his “Report to the American People on AIDS.” The timing did not hurt their efforts to encourage the surgeon general to read it or earn a favorable review of the book, said Michael Samuels, Koop’s assistant.

“The surgeon general feels very strongly that sex education should be done at home,” Samuels said. “The problem with that, besides other inhibitions, is that a lot of people don’t feel technically qualified to discuss it.”

This book “provides the kind of technical information from a medical point of view that parents need to talk with expertise to their children,” he said.

There was a time when the Weismans believed that their advice would never see print. A first manuscript, written about four years ago, was turned down by more than half a dozen publishers, who believed that the book should include more on the emotional side of exploring sexuality.

The Weismans resisted, believing that such an approach was inappropriate for pre-teens, who seek knowledge but are not yet ready to participate.

“Most kids want to know if sex is just for having babies,” the Weismans wrote in the book. “Can people have sex and not have babies? What are miscarriages? Do you have to be married to have sex? How about masturbation? What is AIDS? What is a virgin?”

HBJ agreed to publish the book, but persuaded the Weismans to change it from a guide for children to one for children or adults. HBJ also came up with the title, which suggests that this is one family’s experience, not a prescription for other families.

Gregory, Lisa and Anne Weisman said that sex has always been open for discussion when they raised the question with their parents.

“We could always come to our parents and talk to them,” said Gregory, 18, a senior at Torrey Pines High School. “And we would never get a beating around the bush or a hush-hush” response.

The kids’ classmates are still a little astounded by that, and by the Weismans’ decision to go public with that information.

“Three people have come up to me and asked me questions,” Anne said.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you ask your mom?’ And they just burst out laughing.”