Mom On Pop
In a pretty simple but low key genius premise, AV Club senior editor John Teti has a podcast where he interviews his mom, Bonney, about popular culture. Mom On Pop is pretty goofy, and also pretty pleasant. After the season four premiere of Girls, the Teti family addressed the rimming scene between Marnie and Desi. It's quite funny-- Bonney has some questions about who the beneficiary of the act is, and John has a lot of neutrally phrased answers. But beyond the laughs, it's pretty heartening to hear even the beginnings of a dialogue between a parent and her kid about sex. It's no secret that I'm a huge advocate of talking with your kids about sex. I believe that giving young people information is powerful and can keep them safe, and that having discussions about consent and the emotional sides of sex can give young people the tools they need to have happy, healthy sex lives.
But it's easy to forget that these conversations aren't limited to young people and their parents. Families of adults can still have conversations about sex. And, like conversations with young people, these talks require not only parents talking with their children, but the children engaging in conversations with their parents. I find myself both amused and horrified when Bonney Teti wants to know if rimming is something that people actually do because I don't want my mom to ask that. (Hi Mom, I know you're reading this blog, please don't ask me what rimming is. I love you!) It leaves me wondering if there are ways to not only help parents initiate these conversations with their children, but to help people become more comfortable talking about these things with their parents.
Challenge: if you feel safe doing so, have a conversation with a parent or an adult in your life that is at least tangentially about sex. Maybe you'll talk about a premium cable TV show you both watch, or about that one time you found a relative's condoms and freaked out about it. How did the conversation go? If it was unpleasant, or was unpleasant to even conceive of, what made it that way?