Kerry Cohen - Dirty Little Secrets

The Boy Scouts of America, the Christian Coalition, and the Roman Catholic Church are all vocally opposed to masturbation. Christine O’Donnell, who ran for the Delaware Senate in 2010 (and lost), spoke on MTV in the 1990s about how masturbation was a sin because it was equivalent to committing adultery. {57} 57 8. Christine O’Donnell’s now-famous television interview is available at “Christine O’Donnell’s 90s Anti-Masturbation Campaign,” www.msnbc.com , September 14, 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHcqcXo_NA . In 1994, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the U.S. surgeon general, was forced to resign from her position because she suggested that masturbation should be a part of sex education. Conservatives and moderates were outraged to the point that Elders left her post.

Meanwhile, when we look beyond opinion and stigma, research suggests that masturbation is an essential part of sexual development, and girls’ hesitations about masturbation are correlated with having uneasiness about intercourse. {58} 58 9. D. Rosenthal, S. Moore, and I. Flynn, “Adolescent Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, and Sexual Risk-Taking,” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 1, no. 2 (June 1991): 77–88. The sex educator Sharon Thompson notes that one of the things masturbation teaches is that all those things we feel happen inside our own bodies. {59} 59 10. Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), 160–161. So many girls make all that sexual excitement about the other person. In reality, those feelings are their own creation and they could have those feelings without needing a boy around to feel them. Assuming that girls will develop more confidence about their sexual feelings if they do masturbate, they might also be more self-directed about their sexual behavior. They will likely know better what they want and what they don’t. And what better way for girls to acknowledge and attend to their sexual desires without putting themselves in the way of STDs and pregnancy?

So how should mothers address sexual behavior with their girls? Lynn Ponton, author of The Sex Lives of Teenagers , created a comprehensive list of considerations, including starting early, before adolescence; being conscious of talking to your children about sex and sexual feeling without mentioning your own; continuing the conversation and communication long beyond a singular talk; and recognizing that your work as a parent is to guide and suggest but not to direct. {60} 60 11. Lynn Ponton, The Sex Lives of Teenagers: Revealing the Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls (New York: Penguin Group, 2000).

If daughters are going to have sex, and we know from the statistics that many will, then mothers should make condoms available to their daughters. We know that adolescents use condoms more than adults do, which means they are willing to use condoms. {61} 61 12. Michael Reece, D. Herbenick, V. Schick, A. Sanders, B. Dodge, and J. D. Fortenberry, “Condom Use Rates in a National Probability Sample of Males and Females Ages 14 to 94 in the United States,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 7, suppl. 5 (2010): 266–276. Interestingly, black and Hispanic adolescents use condoms the most. Therefore, parents have a responsibility to keep their children as safe as they can by providing condoms in case their teenagers are choosing to have sex. And parents need to talk with them about condoms early. A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that mothers who discussed condom use with their teenage daughters before first intercourse had daughters who were three times more likely to use condoms than those whose mothers discussed condom use with them after first intercourse. {62} 62 13. “Patterns of Condom Use Among Adolescents: The Impact of Mother-Adolescent Communication,” American Journal of Public Health , October 1, 1998, www.cdc.gov/std/general/Condom_Use_Among_Adolescents.htm , www.cdc.gov , June 8, 2009, retrieved April 2, 2011.

Another very important issue arises when it comes to mothers and daughters regarding sexual behavior. Many mothers are still dealing with unresolved feelings surrounding their own promiscuity. They either continue to act in loose-girl ways, or they feel anger or pain or resentment about those feelings themselves (see chapter 9 for more about the grown-up loose girl). We know that modeling is one of the primary ways children learn. It doesn’t matter what mothers say to their daughters if they don’t walk their talk.

Children—perhaps especially teenagers—are hyperaware of hypocrisy. Communication to teens about sex—from media, from parents, from educational institutions—is loaded with mixed messages. Teenagers look perhaps most critically at their parents for hypocrisy and will quickly dismiss a mother’s admonishments if she isn’t following the same advice. And if a mom is acting out sexually, needing too much attention from men, or even focusing too much on romance, girls pick up those messages more than anything else that might be said.

This is not to say that all loose girls have loose-girl mothers, but having a loose-girl mother generally means that the mother is somewhat oblivious, which won’t help her daughter’s emotional health when it comes to sex. Research shows that parents who are insecurely attached—meaning that important bonds were disrupted when they were children—tend to parent in ways that pass on that insecurity to their daughters. {63} 63 14. Peter R. Kilmann, Jennifer M. C. Vendemia, Michele M. Parnell, and Geoffrey C. Urbaniak, “Parent Characteristics Linked with Daughters’ Attachment Styles,” Adolescence 44, no. 175 (Autumn 2009): 557–568.

Janet and Shawna are a mother and daughter who have lived on their own since Janet and her ex-husband Greg divorced. Janet always told Shawna that she didn’t want her to give herself away to just any boy, but when Janet began to date, Shawna felt like she was seeing her mother in a different light. She dressed in sexy outfits. She changed her hairstyle. Once Shawna saw her mother French kissing a date in the kitchen. His hand was squeezing her behind. Shawna felt sick but also slightly aroused. She was happy for her mother, but it also frightened her. She felt like she didn’t know her mother at all.

Janet and Shawna’s situation is a common one for many teenage girls. Janet isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, but without any discussion, Shawna sees her mother’s behavior as hypocritical. There are layers to every story, too, that are harder to see. In that brief anecdote, for instance, you don’t see that Janet also had a history of needing men’s attention. When she married, that need went into a sort of remission, but suddenly free she found herself craving attention again. In this cycle, Janet will find it hard to be there fully for Shawna. But if Janet can build awareness about her own behavior, she can discuss her tendencies with Shawna. They can talk about how women are made to feel in their culture and how hard it is to fight the current. She can promise Shawna that she will work on this issue in her own life and that Shawna can come to her with any feelings about the process, even unpleasant ones. In other words, Janet doesn’t have to be perfect. No parent can be. But she can take responsibility for herself and be honest, the two most important things a parent can do.

Hannah has a very different story. Her parents divorced when Hannah was ten, and a few years later, her mother met Chris at a singles’ dance. Hannah’s mother immediately began to transform, and not in a positive way. Whatever Chris liked, her mother did. For instance, Chris liked high heels, so Hannah’s mother went out and bought a few pairs and she wore them all the time. Hannah didn’t like Chris one bit. He insulted her father, whom he’d never met. And he insulted Hannah, too. When Hannah would say something back to him—something like, “Excuse me?”—her mother told her to stop it, to not act fresh with Chris.