I mean, they talked about it endlessly.And I think the reason for that is that nobody’s talking to them about it. Porn was one of the things that boys most wanted to talk to me about. So it was kind of only natural after all of that to start thinking about, well, what comes next? What impact does all of that have on their sexuality? And then it was only natural after that to start thinking, oops, only had one-half of the conversation. And, P.S., years later, when - after I was married and about 10 years into my marriage, my mom came into the living room and looked at me and kind of nudged me a little bit and said, “It doesn’t stop after 70, you know.”Īfter I had a daughter, I wrote “Cinderella Ate My Daughter,” which was about the pink and pretty culture of little girlhood and the ways that girls learn to view themselves from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, and how they were being groomed by that culture to overinvest in appearance and to sort of commodify their sexuality. However, it did give me a sense as a young woman that sex was for me, and that sex was also about female pleasure.

I don’t want to hear it.īecause, really, who wants to hear about their parents’ sex lives? And my response was to plug my ears and hum and say, stop it, stop it, stop it. Peggy Orenstein, Author : When I was young - and I would not have thought of this as an advantage at the time - my mom used to always tell me how great her sex life was with my dad. Tonight, she gives her Brief But Spectacular take on talking to kids about sex. In her bestselling books “Girls & Sex” and “Boys & Sex,” she dives into the lives of young people to unravel some of the hidden truths, hard lessons, and other realities of their lives. Judy Woodruff : For more than 25 years, Peggy Orenstein has broken new ground with her intimate explorations of adolescence.

Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein