The author has recently published her second novel, “Free to Love” (Pocket Books). She has also launched her Ivana Signature Collection of fashionable clothing and jewelry on the Home Shopping Network.
Sex Education: A Matter of Life or Death
My children are my treasures. I do not want to lose them to AIDS or, for that matter, have them find themselves responsible for unwanted children who could have been avoided. What I do want is to provide them with the strongest possible foundation I can so they will have the chance to grow into healthy, caring, and productive adults. This is why I feel that sex education is so important.
In today’s society-in the United States as well as in most other Western nations-sex sells. This magazine is proof of that! But way beyond these pages, sex dominates advertising campaigns, catalogs, newspapers, TV programs, billboards, radio, music, movies, and on and on. Like it or not, the fact remains that from early on, our children-whether consciously or subconsciously-are exposed to sex. Some people are demanding that Congress do something about violence in the media because of its supposed effects on children. I feel that it’s more important for our government to ensure that sex education is offered in high schools. Many private schools currently provide such courses. Mobilizing public attention in this arena has become a matter of life and death.
Any parent knows that one of the toughest periods of their children’s lives is puberty. I remember that as I reached this time of my life, I experienced extreme changes in temperament in what seemed like the time it took to flick a switch. It was almost like being another person. You travel on an emotional roller coaster. You realize that something is happening to you and your body. You realize that you have more power then you have ever had, and yet you feel powerless. You can see that you are growing up. You know that it’s okay because your classmates are all going through the same changes. However, since my parents were very traditional, old-fashioned Europeans, these effects of puberty were not topics for discussion. As a result, I, like most of my peers, did not entirely understand the maturation process. None of us had the benefit of an adult who sat us down and tried to explain the biological, physical, and emotional changes we were going through. But back then this type of ignorance could be tolerated. AIDS was not hanging over our heads.
I am a mother of three. My oldest child is a 16-year-old boy who’s going into his third year at boarding school. About a year ago, I was having lunch at Le Cirque with a very dear friend of mine. During dessert our discussion became focused on the topic of raising children nowadays. In the middle of the conversation, my friend asked, “Do you know if, the first time your son had sex, he used a condom?”
As you can imagine, my jaw dropped into my creme brulee. She was talking about my little boy and sex in the same sentence! I could hardly believe my ears. Noticing my reaction, she reassuringly patted the back of my hand and said, “Ivana, I did not mean to upset you. It’s just that at his age, these things can happen. I realize that it is not something a parent is ever really prepared for, because, after all, it is your child, and children like yours don’t do things like that. When, in reality, they do.”
I thought for a long time afterward about what my friend had said. And I finally came to the conclusion that, of course, she was right. It can and it does happen. Dusting off the cobwebs in my mind, I remembered some of the girls and boys in school when we were that young boasting about their “first time.” I guess I had never really thought much about what all the fuss was about because I was so wrapped up in becoming a champion skier. My goal was to make the Czech national ski team and, one day, go to the Olympics. To become a competitive skier, you had to train nine months out of the year. If you were ever going to make it, the rules you had to obey were simple. One of them was, no boys.
Now I was being confronted not only with the possibility that my own teenager was having sex, but with the additional issue of the use of condoms. I knew that if I did not face this squarely, I would be putting my head in the sand. Pretending that teenage sexuality would not be a factor in my children’s lives would be ignoring the human condition. And, additionally, I knew that my children’s generation was discovering their sexuality when those joyous, exciting feelings can lead to an early death. It is no longer simply a matter of the birds and the bees. What is a parent to do?
First of all, let me just say that I do not promote sex between adolescents. As an adult who has led a full and balanced life, I know only too well what depths of understanding and maturity it takes to enjoy a meaningful relationship. Happiness in love is not simply a physical or hormonal matter.
Furthermore, of course, I am no sex therapist or psychiatrist, and I have no pretensions of becoming any kind of New Wave Dr. Ruth. What I am is a realist, and, much more important, a concerned parent.
After my “creme brûlée” discussion, I sat for many long hours agonizing over how best to confront this issue. Yes, I now have one son who is a teenager. I also have another son and a daughter who are both about to enter puberty. I knew that I had to sit down with my son and talk about sex, including the proper use of condoms. As I said, I knew that this discussion had to go way beyond the facts of what happens to a boy’s body when it begins the transformation from childhood into adulthood. We also had to fully and honestly discuss the facts about disease. And that, I’m happy to say, is what we did.
But I’d like this little essay to be about more than me and my children. I want everyone to fully understand how important-life-and-death important-sex education can be. Recently, an article in The Washington Post reported that 70 percent of the women who die from AIDS are between the ages of 15 and 25, and H.I.V. is spreading quickly and silently among our teenagers. These are alarming facts. I have also read that after 12 years of debate and hesitancy, the United States government’s three leading health agencies have declared that latex condoms, when properly used, are highly effective in blocking the spread of the AIDS virus and other sexually transmitted diseases. Another story, this one in USA Today, stated that a brief but intense AIDS-education program not only increased knowledge but changed behavior among New York City high school students, resulting in a decline in teenage promiscuity.
The Washington Post article also made the point that proper sex education exposes young people to the dangers of promiscuous behavior, thereby encouraging them to choose between playing safe or not playing at all. And if they do choose to be sexually active, they will be more likely to practice safe sex. After all, anyone who is fully aware of the hazards of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS would never engage in sexual activities without using a condom.
I think that any responsible person-and, certainly, any responsible parent-should agree with or at least see the reasoning behind why the facts about AIDS and sexual awareness belong in schools. Obviously, we are accountable for the welfare and proper upbringing of our children. And I believe our nation’s educational system is the perfect forum for getting this information across. We could have mature, educated, and responsible teachers dispassionately present the facts in the classroom. This is certainly a far happier prospect than having our children learn about sex from friends on the streets or, worse, to remain completely ignorant. And while it might be nice to think that parents could fulfill this function, the reality is that many parents are simply not up to being objective about sex …. And there are all too many parents who, for many reasons, just aren’t around their children very often and therefore never get the opportunity to discuss these issues.
There’s an old saying, There’s no fool like an old fool. But we, as parents, cannot afford to be foolish when our children’s lives are at stake. That is what sex education comes down to …. And that is the issue we must all face honestly, without pretensions or hypocrisy.
