Thirteen year old Pranav asked an obvious question to his father last week, ‘Where do babies come from?’. Last night he went a step ahead and directly asked his nervous father, ‘What is sex?’.
His father followed what his own father said, ‘Go study!’. So there you are. Our so called Indian sanskars and maryaada prohibits our parents from discussing sex with us. Sex education is indeed necessary when kids reach the curious growing-up years. When all we see around us starts puzzling us, we turn towards our parents for a solution. But that’s just the first and the last time. After such an incident, Pranav won’t ask his parents the same question again. Indeed he’ll Google his way through, ask a couple of friends and end up not knowing what he’s supposed to know exactly. Thousands of guys and girls like him end up with a different understanding to the word ’sex’ here in India. Sex is something we’re not taught at school, not discussed at home and certainly not anywhere else. It’s something we see on television, internet and discuss in great deal with our close friends.
So what is it that’s stopping our shy parents from opening up? Well, it’s sex-is-bad attitude to start with. Pranav’s parents are angry at him for bringing the matter up whereas they could have sat down with him and discussed it in a clean fashion. It’s the typical ‘haaaww’ attitude towards sex that drives children to excessive porn, unsafe sex and dangerous sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.
So what to do? I don’t think you’re reading this if you’re a parent. You would have obviously clicked on that little cross box on the right side of your browser the moment you read the header for the post, fearing your kids might be around. Or even if you had the courage to read it, you would have stopped by the time you’d come to this. But if you’re really reading this and if you’re a parent, it’s my simple honest advice to go out there and discuss the topic with your kids. They need to be told each and everything. They need to learn the right things, the right way. Don’t shy away from it. Learning about sex is as important as learning to walk. So teach them the right things.