Kerry Cohen - Dirty Little Secrets

Cicely’s story is probably familiar to many mothers with teenage girls. Their daughters are precious, lively, compassionate kids. Their mothers know how to reach them. They enjoy their time together. And then all of a sudden something switches. The daughter goes away. She stops communicating. When the mother tries to talk to her, wanting open discussion, the teen gets angry and stomps away. She yells, “You don’t understand!” and slams the door. But of course the mother understands. She understands better than anyone.

And yet, according to studies of mothers and adolescents, mothers understand less than they think. According to studies by James Jaccard, Patricia Dittus, and Vivian Gordon in Child Development , mothers tend to underestimate their daughters’ sexual activity. {50} 50 1. James Jaccard, Patricia J. Dittus, and Vivian V. Gordon, “Parent-Adolescent Congruency in Reports of Adolescent Sexual Behavior and in Communications about Sexual Behavior,” Child Development 69, no. 1 (1998): 247–261. Most all the girls I spoke with affirmed this pattern with their mothers. Plenty told me that their parents would freak out if they knew the extent of what they did with boys—threesomes and oral sex, for instance. They’ve hidden hickeys and lied about where they were going and who they were spending time with. One said, “My mother thinks I’m such an angel. She tells her friends how sweet and smart and together I am. It makes me want to puke. She has no idea who I really am.”

Much research supports that a healthy mother-daughter relationship is prohibitive of promiscuity among teens. Adolescents’ perceptions of their mother’s disapproval of premarital sex and their satisfaction with the mother-daughter relationship are significantly related to abstinence for teens, less frequent sexual intercourse, and more consistent use of contraception among sexually active youths. {51} 51 2. Robert W. Blum, “Mothers’ Influence on Teen Sex: Connections That Promote Postponing Sexual Intercourse,” Center for Adolescent Health and Development , University of Minnesota, 2002, www.allaboutkids.umn.edu/presskit/MonographMS.pdf .

However, in a survey of one thousand fifteen- to twenty-twoyear-old girls and one thousand mothers of teen girls conducted by Seventeen and O Magazine through the research firm Harris Interactive, only 4 percent of girls claimed that their beliefs about sex were influenced by their mothers, and 40 percent said that talking to their moms about sex didn’t really affect their decisions. {52} 52 3. Liz Brody, “The O/Seventeen Sex Survey: Mothers and Daughters Talk about Sex,” O, The Oprah Magazine , April 14, 2009, www.oprah.com/relationships/The-Sex-Survey-Oprah-Magazine-Womens-Sex-Survey .

All these mixed messages for mothers don’t help the already-terrifying process of raising teenage girls. Lydia, a self-proclaimed loose girl, told me that her mother relayed those mixed messages in the home. She walked around naked saying, “We’re all girls here.” She encouraged her daughters to feel comfortable with their bodies. But she also told them they should not have sex or lead on boys, who would do anything to get into their pants.

“It was confusing,” Lydia said. “So ultimately I just did what I wanted.”

This sort of disconnect is reflected in the Seventeen and O survey, where 90 percent of mothers claimed that they’d spoken to their daughters about how to make the decision to have sex, but only 51 percent of the girls claimed to have had the same conversation.

A few things are at work in such numbers. One is that mothers are generally uncomfortable talking to their teens about sex. Following the dominant discourse about girls and sex, mothers talk about the issues involved—pregnancy, abortion, and STDs. Most adolescent girls claim that their mothers don’t talk to them about the aspects of sex that they deem more important—such as the emotions involved and the physical feelings. Generally, they feel like they’re receiving warnings and rules, and that the conversation is rarely much of a two-way street. {53} 53 4. P. Averett, “Parental Communications and Young Women’s Struggle for Sexual Agency,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 2004; Virginal Blacksburg and Kimberlee S. Schear, “Factors That Contribute to, and Constrain, Conversations between Adolescent Females and Their Mothers about Sexual Matters,” Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of The Oxford Roundtable , September 22, 2006, 4751–4872. One of the girls I interviewed told me that her mother would never even know all the things she wasn’t saying; the girl knows that there are certain topics her mother doesn’t want to hear about from her, and one of them is definitely her desire to be with boys sexually.

Mothers are uncomfortable partially because sex is such a taboo subject for teen girls. But they’ve also adopted the social standard that if you discuss sex and sexual desire with your daughter, she’ll fall down that slippery slope into promiscuity. As a result, many tell their daughters about abstinence. They let them know that sex before marriage is off-limits. Then they assume (or pray) that the girls will follow their advice.

Girls, too, often feel uncomfortable talking to their mothers about sex, particularly when they fear judgment, rigidity, or attempts to control. But even without those factors, talking about sex with any parent is burdened with embarrassment.

Certainly, this adds to the reasons that one of the more important topics missing from most conversations about sex is masturbation. Letting a girl know—from early on—that it is perfectly fine to touch herself in private is a great way to support her natural sexual feelings without needing a boy. Even the well-known sex therapist Laura Berman said in an O Magazine interview about talking to daughters about sex, “It’s important to talk to her about having a sense of control and pride over her body, and to let her know there are ways she can make herself feel good before she’s ready for sex, like self-stimulation.” The interviewer asked, “Seriously? Mothers should talk about masturbation?” Berman replied: “If you want to raise a sexually healthy daughter, yes. That may mean attending to your own sexual health. A lot of women grew up with the idea that masturbation is wrong or dirty.” Indeed. {54} 54 5. Aimee Lee Ball, “Everyone’s Doing What ?” O, The Oprah Magazine , April 7, 2009, www.oprah.com/relationships/Teenage-Sex-Dr-Laura-Berman-on-How-to-Talk-to-Teenagers-About-Sex.

It’s not just the conservatives and abstinence advocates who wince at such a conversation. “That is private business,” one mother said to me. This head-in-the-sand approach, though, puts a wall up between teen girls and adults. As long as mothers don’t talk to their girls about sex, they are setting up a greater likelihood that their girls will use sex to self-harm.

Masturbation is a major taboo, and a long standing one at that. Some of the myths are familiar—you can go blind, you’ll grow hair on your palms, or your reproductive organs will fail. Others contain that common double standard—boys masturbate, but girls don’t, or girls who do masturbate are hypersexualized, exposed to images or experiences they shouldn’t have been.

But the real truth about masturbation is that it’s as natural and normal as it can get when it comes to sexual exploration. The larger percentage of the population masturbates, and they do so through old age. {55} 55 6. D. Herbenick, M. Reece, V. Schick, S. A. Sanders, B. Dodge, and J. D. Fortenberry, “Sexual Behavior in the United States: Results from a National Probability Sample of Men and Women Ages 14-94,” Journal of Sexual Medicine , 2010, 7 (suppl. 5), 255–265. In fact, one study suggests that 20 percent of all senior citizens masturbate at least once a week. {56} 56 7. A. Das, “Masturbation in the United States,” Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 33, no. 4 (2007): 301–317. The joke goes that 98 percent of the population masturbates, and the other 2 percent are lying. Although statistics suggest that men masturbate more than women, I think we can all agree that this is due to both the stigma put on women for having desires and the likelihood of girls’ and women’s lower honesty in reporting masturbation occurrences, as women are traditionally not accepted for their sexual desires. If girls and women are expected be in love to have sex, then certainly admitting their solo sexual desire is too risky.