About intercourse

In any case, if you and your teen-ager do manage to talk frankly together, sooner or later you will come to the question of sexual intercourse.

Like Betty, your child will doubtless have managed to gather the general facts. So also has Craig.

"The man puts his penis inside the woman," he states concisely. "I know that. But just where?"

Like Craig and like Betty, your child also will be after details. These, as you know now, you'll do well to explain in your own simplest and most comfortable way. Don't be afraid to draw from your own experience. And when you don't know, don't be afraid to say so, with a promise to consult book or doctor to find out.

"Which hole?" . . . You know now that to either boy or girl it's important knowledge that a woman has a third opening with a special channel or tube leading up from it to the uterus where her babies will grow. (We've talked about this already.)

"How is it done?" . . . You know this too.

"How often?" . . . It depends . . .

"But" said Nell, "you can't have that many babies."

"It isn't done every time to have a baby," her mother assured her. "It makes two people who love each other dearly feel closer and more intimate, more at one with each other. It's done for love many times . . . How often depends on how they both feel."

"How do they feel?" . . . Here is the tough one, the one at which the boy or girl invariably seeks to arrive if he dares.

But after you've considered it, you'll see that this one isn't too difficult either!

You'll need first to recognize what the adolescent is really after.

Actually he knows how it feels. He has known a long time.

The answer that your teen-ager usually wants to this question is not information or fact, but sanction for the feelings he has had in touching himself. For he intuitively knows inside him that these feelings are like those he will have in intercourse. He is now after reassurance; to know that his feelings are normal, healthy and good.

When Betty came to this question, her mother answered, "Those feelings? You know them. They're like when you look at a romantic scene in the movies or like when you touch yourself. Only even better. Because you're together with someone you love."

In this simple way of putting it, Mother shows Betty once more that Betty's experience with similar feelings has been wholesome and sound.

Betty gazed thoughtfully out of the window. And then she said an astonishing thing.

"That helps a lot, Mother. I'd been wondering whether I could hold out till I got married. Lots of girls don't. I think they're curious. Now that I know what it feels like, I won't have to do so much research."

"My!" thought Betty's mother, "haven't both of us grown up tremendously since we've talked on and off about these things over the last couple of years?"

How to help these adolescents not to be driven to do so much research? How to help them feel secure and satisfied enough to maintain controls? This is probably the biggest of all questions in the minds of parents. It, too, is part of what must be included in the sex education of today's youth.

So let us turn to it next and consider it in the context of rising interest in each other that boys and girls feel at this age.

If easy does it comes hard to us

Ideally what our boys and girls want is someone who can talk with them comfortably about sex. Someone who is not embarrassed. Someone who becomes neither bothered nor excited over the subject. Someone who is easy within himself.

We have repeatedly read these specifications! They are the ideal ones no doubt. But we haven't been brought up ideally. And not many of us can reach this ideal.

However, there are some things we can do to help us feel at least somewhat more comfortable.

The first of these takes us back to the matter of language. Betty's mother used the funny old little-girl term. That made her feel more comfortable because it was more familiar. On the other hand, for some people the less familiar words are the more comfortable ones. In speaking of bodies, for instance, some feel easier using such terms as "vulva" to designate the whole external female genital area, "vagina" for the opening and the channel inside, "clitoris" for the "small, humpy place that has such good feelings," as one girl described it, and "penis" and "testicles" or "testes" for the male organs.

And so as the first step to help get you at ease, choose whatever terms are the most comfortable for you. (In spite of the advantages to your child of using familiar terms, your maximum comfort--which may be shaky anyway--comes first!)

The next thing is to be frank about your feelings concerning the terms your child uses. If you can accept them sincerely, so much the better, as we have said. But don't be insincere. Insincerity makes you less comfortable. Moreover, your distaste will be sensed and will become a deterrent to frankness between you.

It's better to stop your child if his language distresses you (even though you know again this isn't ideal). One mother said, for instance, "I know you and some of your friends use those words. But I don't personally. And I've never liked them. I get too embarrassed. So let's not, around me."

Supply your teen-ager with words if he fumbles. But don't make your condemnation of his words an over-all, indiscriminate business. Let him know you know that some people use such terms decently and that your feelings against them are personal with you.

This brings us to another point: If you feel embarrassed on any score in talking about sex, better say so!

Right straight out: "I feel uncomfortable talking about sex! I wish I didn't. But I do."

"I still feel a bit tense!" confessed Betty's mother, when Betty came with more wonderings several months later. "When it comes to the sixty-four dollar question that we've never really gone into . . ."

Betty giggled. "Yes, Mom, you've always blushed whenever we've come within miles of that one! We almost got to it a couple of times and I could feel you backing away."

"Or turning and running!"

Then Betty's mother managed something else that held value. You can try this one also: Be frank about the mistakes and embarrassments of the past instead of evading them.

"Like the time you spelled out that four-letter word and asked me what it meant!"

"Yes," nodded Betty. "You got red as a beet and said I shouldn't say anything so horrible ever again. So I made up my mind I'd never ask you anything again! My! I was mad . . ."

"Uh-huh," thought Betty's mother. She knew, as you no doubt also know by now, that it's good to: Let your child get his old hostilities out for all the times you have not attended adequately to his sex education. It may help clear the air and make him more friendly. And if he's more friendly you'll be more relaxed.

"After all, I felt hostile to my folks for holding out on me. Why shouldn't Betty feel angry at me for having held out on her?"

She hadn't forgotten, and you don't need to either, that it helps to: Try recalling how you felt when you were young. This can bring more understanding of how your child feels right now.

Out loud Betty's mother continued: "I was stupid to renege on that most important question!" Once more acknowledging her mistakes.

"Yes, you were," Betty agreed, the bitterness quite apparent.

"You didn't like me at all for it." Mirroring Betty's feelings.

"No, Mother, I didn't. If you'd told me things straight out, you could have saved me from a lot of worry and fretting . . ."

"I realize it, darling. But believe me, I didn't know enough to then."

"But you're doing all right now!" Betty's smile was radiant. "And it's twice as hard, I know, when you've had parents as old-fashioned as yours."

Then with rapport reestablished Betty confided, "I still have a lot to get straight. The basic facts--those I've managed to pick up. But there are so many details I can't figure out . . ."

As Betty went on, Mother found herself listening and answering with fewer qualms than ever before.

When it comes to you and your child, if, after thinking everything over, you still feel you don't want to, or can't, go into such discussions, if you feel that you would be too uncomfortable in coping with such questions--don't drive yourself.

You can possibly find someone else for your child to talk with. A doctor. A psychiatrist. A minister. (There is a whole group of pastors these days interested in psychology.) A family counselor. A psychologist. A gifted teacher.

Or, if you choose, you can go to someone for yourself. To help you revamp your own attitudes. You can, for example, join a group where parents can discuss their own feelings under trained leadership in an endeavor to become easier and more comfortable inside.

However, there may still be a hurdle, not in you but in your child.

Even though you get past your own old prejudices, it still may be hard for your child to discuss these matters with you. His feelings may get in the way more than with a person about whom he cares less. For one thing, he will perhaps feel less concerned with a more distant person's opinions of him should he reveal thoughts he has believed were "bad." For another thing, he may find it easier to talk to an outsider since many of his sexual worries and embarrassments arose originally from imaginings that were born out of his relationship with you, his parents, in bygone days.

Teenager - They want plain talk

Without thinking, Betty's mother had slipped back to the baby term "tee-tee" that Betty had used in bygone days. Talk of this part of the body had since then faded out of the picture. Betty had never acquired any other term. And so, when Betty's mother referred to it now, she did what came most naturally.

After listening to a speaker recently another girl in her late teens went up eagerly to the platform. "What a relief it was," she confided, "to hear you talk so simply about the things that others are so stilted about. It was good to have you use our language."

Had Betty been accustomed to the word "vulva," it would have been a different matter. As it was, the most comfortable expression for both Betty and her mother was the baby word. And so Mother's use of it in the beginning facilitated their talk. Later she was able to work in as synonyms the more scientific names.

Not infrequently language difficulties get in between parent and child and slow down communication.

Long before adolescence most children have talked with other children and have acquired their own vocabulary. By the time they are in their teens, these youngsters ordinarily have used colloquial terms among themselves. This is the language in which their imaginings and wonderings are set. As one boy put it, "We want to ask about things in the way we think about them to ourselves."

But if by chance some of these words slip out, parents are prone to grow indignant.

"P-lease, Bud, stop that gutter talk . . ."

"Heavens! Lucille! Where on earth did you hear such horrible words?"

The adolescent feels taken aback. Here is an extra stumbling block thrown in his path when he is trying so hard to find his way among conflicting ideas, supposed truths, superstitions, facts, and feelings.

He craves the familiarity of whatever language is most familiar. He likes also to feel that we are using language that is comfortable to us and that comes out of the homeyness of intimate usage, not out of a textbook lecture prepared just for this occasion and as distant as the moon and the stars.

For years in books about child psychology and sex education, parents have been told to use a scientific vocabulary. But with added observation and more vivid and direct contact with children's actions and fantasies, the eyes and ears of those who work most searchingly with them have become more perceiving.

All of us know that the mechanics of translating a foreign tongue can interfere with an understanding of what is said. Curiosity then goes unanswered. This is often what happens when we reply to our children's questions in words that are foreign and often strained. We answer technically but we leave their curiosity hanging in mid-air.

We adults very commonly use some of the same common terms as our children. And yet we avoid these terms assiduously when we talk with them.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves: Are we afraid of revealing dark secrets and shames? We needn't be. After all, gutter meanings do not lie in the words of themselves but only in whatever gutter thoughts we connect with them.

Our own use of these words has probably not been gutter usage. We have probably spoken them in moments of hearty and wholesome love talk and love play.

Without realizing it, however, by avoidance or indiscriminate condemnation, we may put needless barriers in the way of our children's free questioning and of our making things clear. We may once more give a youngster the impression that his terms are not nice and that he is not nice.

We can gain confidence better by saying, "There are lots of words for these." Then we can go on and name several of them and by so doing show that the lowly words he has most probably heard do bear mention as well as the more scientific synonyms. "I've called it by such and such term--what have you called it?" Or "These are my words for it--what are yours?" Or "Here are some of the words I've heard used. How about you?"

If we can show him that we are interested in what he has been calling things and are willing to listen, he may bring out his wonderings more readily since he can express them in his own vernacular. This may be distinctly personal. Or it may be the group language used in his particular set or locale.

We may fear, however, that if he uses these words with us he will grow too free with them elsewhere and fling them about.

But judging where and when to use certain terms is not new business in his life. Nor is it new business in our dealings with him. 'Way back when he was little we shushed him in company when he spoke about toileting. More recently, when we started applying the newer ways of discipline, we talked with him about confining his criticisms of us and his gripes against us to the privacy of our company alone. "Lots of people misjudge you when you talk in public, for instance, about being angry. They think children should always be respectful, never mad at their parents. And they think mad-talk exceedingly bad. When we're alone it's all right; but not in company."

The same sort of thing applies now. Said Randy's father, "Lots of people misjudge you when you talk like this. Many grownups believe these words are dirty. As you know, many children do too. They do have dirty meanings. But some of them have love meanings also. It all depends on how you use them. . . . I'd be careful though, because you don't want to be branded foulmouthed by people, young or old, who consider them foul."

Randy looked thoughtful and answered, "You know, Dad, you said an awful lot then. It's strange but I can usually tell whether it's the dirty use or the clean use that a person intends."

"And sometimes you want to ride along with the dirty use as well as the clean one?"

"That's true. It seems sort of smart."

At least it fits in with the revolt need that many an adolescent feels intensely. When he uses these terms smuttily, this frequently serves as outlet for hostility. Forbidding won't accomplish much. But understanding may. The terms are then no longer expressly forbidden. His use of them is no longer a gesture of throwing his parents' veto to the winds.

Healing old hurts

Betty's mother here has done something tremendously important. She has put good body feelings in the category of being good. She has lifted from them the old onus of being wicked and "bad." She has attached them to the warm and lovely yet primitive act of mothering in which body and spirit combine. And she had admitted to wishing that she might have got more of these feelings herself.

She smiled back at Betty. Then she went on. "I've learned that lots of things feel good to babies and children and to big people, too. Things we've been told we should be ashamed of. I've found out we shouldn't be at all!"

Betty stared at Mother, her eyes round and big. "What do you mean?" with a catch in her voice, eager yet somewhat afraid.

"I, too, felt my heart getting a little poundy," her mother confessed when she told of the experience. "But I decided I wasn't going to let Betty go on as I had--so stupidly ashamed of everything human. So I barged ahead! I tried to remember all the mistakes I had made in needlessly stopping Betty from enjoying her body. At the time, of course, I thought I'd been right. But why let old mistakes stay uncorrected? Especially when something as vital to your child is at stake."

Betty's mother thought back. "When you were little," she said, "I was a thumb snatcher, for one thing. I've learned now that it doesn't hurt jaws or mouth for a small child to suck. But I did everything to you then to make you stop.

"And then I was a dessert holder-upper. Custards and apple sauce and the other nourishing, sweetish foods your little body enjoyed with its taste buds! 'No,' I'd say. You couldn't have them unless you ate all the things you didn't like first. That was foolish too.

"But worst of all," and here Betty's mother drew a deep breath, "when you began to touch your tee-tee, which is the thing that feels best of all, why I had fifty-nine cat fits. I've found out since that it's harmless and I could have saved both of us a lot of worry. But I didn't know then . . ."

"You mean"--Betty's mouth hung open--"it's not true that it drives people crazy? Nothing terrible happens to them?"

"No. Not one single terrible thing. It's perfectly natural and normal and I was a very foolish woman ever to have made you think anything else."

In this, Betty's mother was bringing out what has been well established: We know now that masturbation does not injure a person or make him "nervous." We know, however, that anxiety, fear and shame over it often does.

Many an adolescent has acquired just such feelings! They intrude into the respect he has for himself as a person. And this is often what hurts him most.

At the stage where the adolescent now finds himself, sex impulses, as we know, surge freshly. The sight of a girl or a boy to a member of the opposite sex, the sound of a voice, the thrill of a chance touch, daydreams of love and romance--all bring body sensations akin to the earlier ones that were "bad." Just as the love-rivalry "bad" feelings and the touching "bad" feelings got attached to each other earlier, so the adolescent love surgings get attached now. Like a snail pulling in its horns, the boy or girl may retreat from healthy contacts. Or he may run wild to prove to himself that anxiety has no foundation.

What Betty's mother was doing was trying to reassure Betty that fear and anxiety and shame of body enjoyment had no place.

Teenage asks about birth

Knowledge about the "third opening" is relieving also when it comes to the worries over birth.

"I couldn't see how the baby was going to get out of either of the other two holes," young teenage Betty confides. "It makes a difference, though, knowing you've got such a stretchable place."

Her mother nods, "I used to think I'd burst when I had a child. Before I knew there was an opening that could stretch wide enough to let the baby through . . ."

"I used to think . . .

"I used to think . . ."

Betty chatters on, and Mother listens, adding just enough about her own former childish ideas to let Betty feel that she herself was not strange, different or "bad" because of what she had felt and thought.

"You can help lay the ghost of these earlier fantasies by talking about them," Betty's mother had learned.

"It must hurt all the same, Mom. Doesn't it--just terribly --when the baby gets born?"

"It used to, in our grandmother's day. It still did in mine. And I guess in some instances it does now. But doctors have developed new methods of pain killing. And there are ways, too, of exercising and preparing one's muscles during pregnancy that make it possible to have what's called 'painless' or 'natural childbirth.' There are books about it one can get."

"Before I have a baby, I will."

Then, after a moment, "Mother, . . . tell me . . . something else I've wondered about for the longest time. Doesn't it bother you to have a baby pulling at your breasts when it feeds?"

"I used to think it would, so I didn't nurse you children. But I wish now I had. They say it feels good."

"You mean to the mother?"

"Yes. Sort of thrilly and cozy and warm."

Betty glanced toward her mother, her face illumined. This was something new and wonderful, having mother talk about good feelings that could come to one's body. She sighed contentedly, "Gee, Mother! And I'll bet it feels good to the baby too."

Menstruation

One mother explained to her daughter Nora, whom she noticed maturing, that when she got old enough to manufacture full-grown eggs which could grow into babies she would be a woman. "You'll be able to tell when it happens . . ."

"How?"

"Some blood comes out."

"You mean that's the signal?"

"Yes. It's a kind of signal that tells a girl she's growing up."

Came the day when Nora started to menstruate. She ran into the room where her parents were reading and triumphantly announced, "What do you know, Mother and Daddy? I'm making eggs."

Actually there are egg cells inside the body when a baby girl is born. Actually these cells only become mature enough to be fertilized somewhat after the onset of menstruation. Menstruation is a sign that a girl is well on her way to this ultimate goal of womanhood. But what was more important here than these technical details was that this child was taking this physiological transition from girl to woman in good emotional stride. Many do not.

Some girls in their unconscious minds imagine they are in some mysterious fashion being punished for earlier "badness" --for curiosities that should not have been there, for littlegirl wishes to shove Mother out and possess Father or for touching themselves . . .

Threats they have heard in the past may now be catching up with them along with what they imagined when they first heard these threats.

Moans Paula, "Everytime I start flowing the thought jumps up in my mind, 'See, I've been hurt.'"

"That may be my fault," says Paula's mother. "I used to warn you not to touch yourself for fear you'd make yourself sore. I was full of those awful scare stories my mother told me. But I've learned lately that they don't hold an ounce of truth."

Some girls do not feel ready to grow up. They may unconsciously wish still to be babies. Or they may hope that by staying babyish they will manage still to get some of the things they have wanted and missed.

Cramps and nausea, aches and sick feelings may be signs of hidden unhappiness about turning from child into woman. Neither the coddling nor the belittling treatment does any good. Listening to the girl and giving her opportunities to talk about herself, on the other hand, may.

Idabelle complained every month. Her mother, before she knew better, would bring on hot drinks and hot bottles. She would dismiss her daughter's moans and groans with supposedly encouraging phrases. "You'll be all right in a few hours. And anyway, dear, this is nothing! Just wait till you have a baby. That really is grim."

Finally, however, Idabelle's mother learned better. She learned about helping a child get out troubled feelings.

"If your child feels mean, give him a chance to get the mean feelings out. That can reduce them. Talking's a good way for the adolescent youngster . . .

"If your child is afraid, give him a chance to get the fear feelings out. . . Don't probe. But don't turn him off either. Let him complain and see what comes.

"Be interested in his troubles and worries. Maybe along with the griping some of the more bothersome thoughts will slip out. If not, your willingness to listen may of itself do more than you think."

So Idabelle's mother figured, "I'll give it a try."

"Oh," groaned Idabelle with a sour look on her face. "I feel so awful!"

"I know how it is," said her mother, drawing up a chair and settling back to listen, real interest showing.

"I hurt so in my middle!" Idabelle moaned. "I wish I'd feel better. I just can't miss school . . . I can't miss the tennis tournament . . ." She paused a few moments and then, very angry, she exclaimed, "Why on earth did you make me be born a woman? I'd have avoided all this misery if you'd only let me be a boy!"

Idabelle raved on until, as suddenly as the complaining had started, it stopped. Idabelle burst out laughing. "Gee, Mom, did you ever hear anything half so absurd?"

"Yes, I have," Mother answered. "Me! I've painted a woman's life in pretty grim colors, as if men had all the advantages . . ."

"Well, they have, haven't they? Look at Jack. He never gets this 'curse.' He goes more places with Dad. He plays tennis twice as easily. Beside which I think you've always preferred him . . ."

"It's true that mothers do have a special kind of feeling toward their sons. But they also love their daughters in a different way."

That was all for the moment. However, with additional opportunities for voicing the fantasies that she would have been more beloved and happier if she'd been a boy--Idabelle grew less incensed about her "horrible fate," and her pain eased.

Even though no "revelation" ever rolls out, acceptant listening that communicates understanding can sometimes of itself bring more relief than do pills.

Many parents believe it wise to check with the doctor if a girl continues to have trouble with her periods. Seldom does the doctor find anything physically wrong. But he can sometimes step in and give the girl opportunities to talk in a more casual and easy way than the parent, who is naturally more emotionally involved. Only under very rare circumstances and only if the doctor finds unusual and severe symptoms should there be actual examination of the sex organs. For the young girl starting out on her course of being a woman such an examination more frequently than not stands as a very grave and shocking threat, as a punishment for secret thoughts, as an invasion of privacy and as a violation of her whole person.

Irregularity in menstruation is very common. Sometimes girls skip several months in between each of their first few periods. Most women remain somewhat irregular and can expect at least a third of their cycles to extend past the time they believe it is due. The idea that one has to be regular to be normal sets up tension which, in its turn, like other worries, may cause delay.

"I'm late," wails young Jinny. "And I know my mother'll think the worst. She never trusts Bob and me. She watches me like a hawk, expecting me to skip . . ."

The worry made young Jinny late just as an intense desire to be pregnant has made many a woman late, or the intense desire not to be pregnant. Letting down on tension often does wonders. Talking out worries to an acceptant listener may help to bring this about.

Prior to the onset of their menses, many girls are worried about personal hygiene and want information concerning it. Showing them, if they wish, just how to wear their napkins instead of merely telling them can make for a bit of needed assurance. However, insisting on such demonstration if they wish to avoid it becomes an invasion of the privacy they crave.

Discussing the matter of bathing and of exercising is also in order. "Many girls go swimming, bathe, take showers, play tennis and enter into other games as usual. Many girls prefer not to do strenuous things. Ordinarily, it depends on psychological choice rather than on physical necessity . . ."

Boys are fully as curious, and often as worried, about menstruation as are girls.

"But why on earth are they so callous?" one mother complained. "When my daughter has her period and doesn't feel like swimming, her brother starts in on her: 'What's the matter?' . . . 'What's happened to you?' . . . 'Why don't you get in the water? You're chicken! What's wrong?' . . . I've told him girls have what's called their period once a month and during that time he should be more considerate. But I might as well talk to a lizard for all the attention he pays."