Talking and writing about sex has been incredibly liberating and exciting to a girl raised in a Catholic family, where sex (and any mention of it) was as forbidden as that juicy red apple Eve plucked from the tree.
I’ve spent over 20 years talking to women about sex, which was thrilling during my child-free Twenties, but took on a whole new dimension in my Thirties when I started to have kids. Helping other moms and their partners navigate what can feel like a major detour on their sexual journeys has been an incredibly satisfying part of my work and personal life, and I look forward to doing more of that on this blog.
Anne, in a nutshell
Anne’s work life
We just wanted to let you know that the Moms in Babeland blog is on hiatus until further notice. We really wish we were napping, but really, we’re just super busy. Feel free to link or comment, we’re still listening!
There’s a bit of a debate going on over at BabyCenter about whether it’s ok to give your daughter a vibrator when she turns 18. They’ve all agreed that it’s generally not ok to give it to her in front of her friends (agreed), but the number of parents who are steadfastly against the idea of gifting a young woman a vibrator astounds me. So for the record here are 2 great reasons why I think you should:
1. She will learn where her clitoris is, and this will unlock the secrets of her sexuality. If your kids are learning anything at all in school regarding sex, chances are the location of the clit, and how to pleasure it, are not on the curriculum. Most schools’ sex education is limited to discussions of disease prevention (which focus more on condoms and penises than clits), and contraception (again, no need to mention the clitoris here). So as a good parent who supplements all that is lacking in your child’s education, you can explain this yourself or at least give her access to a good book or web site. But her explorations may still not be as fruitful as her male counterparts’ will be—unless you give her a vibrator, and that leads us to reason number 2:
2. A vibrator can give her an orgasm. Maybe you don’t want to take credit for your daughter’s first orgasm, but let me ask you this: would you rather she didn’t have one? Since most women require a little assistance in order to achieve orgasm, a vibrator really can be the thing that helps her figure this out at 18 rather than 48 (and let me tell you at Babeland we sell a lot of vibrators to older women for this very reason). Once she experiences an orgasm and understands this part of her sexuality, she will be more capable of enjoying and subsequently owning decisions regarding her sexuality.
So IMHO, an excellent graduation of birthday gift for any young woman would be a vibrator and a copy of the book Moregasm. It would be like getting a driver’s license and a car at the same time!
And as a mom who puts her money where here mouth is, I tried giving my daughter a vibrator when she was 14, along with a great book and and a pep talk for self-pleasure, because I thought it was an important gesture to make for the two reasons above. She wasn’t ready for it and returned it to my room, but I feel confident that when she is, at least she knows where to find it.
Dear parent: are you in for a surprise. If you have ever read a ‘where do babies come from’ book to your young child and cringed everytime you get to the explanation “daddy puts his seed in mommy because they love each other”, you are in for a long-awaited treat.
What Makes a Baby is a children’s picture book about where babies come from that is totally unique and unlike any other because it’s written and illustrated to include all kinds of kids, all kinds of adults, and all kinds of families. Read the full post »
Babelanders offers sexy non-traditional ways to use personal lubricant (for funny non-sexual uses, see this post):
It’s been awhile since I posted a celebrity mom on the blog, and rather than turning to the pages of People magazine to see which Hollywood youngster is giving birth, let’s pay a little tribute to an older mom who’s always been known for her provocative contribution to pop culture: Madonna.
What a powerful female icon she is, and in recent interviews about directing W.E. (a biopic of Wallis Simpson) we’re reminded of just how many glass ceilings she broke through in the entertainment industry, all with her signature blend of sex and strength. Madonna’s moment of sexy mom-ness came for me when she had her first child (at the same time as I had my first daughter), and dedicated the song Ray of Light to daughter Lourdes. While other moms were playing Raffi for their kids, I cranked up Ray of Light, because the lyric “And I feel like I just got home” perfectly described that deeply intimate love I felt about my new daughter. To this day when that song come on, my girls and dance to it with joy and abandon! Read the full post »
How do you get a bunch of rowdy fourth graders to sit still for a lesson about sex? I asked Canadian sex educator Meg Hickling—she’s been visiting schools for the past twenty-five years dishing out her brand of “body science” with astonishing success. Meg stands before preschoolers, middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, as well as parents, doctors and teachers, but her message and manner are always the same: straightforward sex information delivered honestly, candidly, and with respect for individual curiosity and opinion. Parents and kids alike love her, their word-of-mouth referrals have landed her in classrooms all over Canada, and in the US and Japan as well. She shares the secrets of her success:
“The first thing I say to fourth graders is This is not about how to have sex. This is about your body and how it works. I know you all think having sex is gross and you’re never going to do it. Well, you never have to have sex in your life, but you’re always going to have sexual health to think about. You’re always going to have those parts. We’re here to talk about body science.’”
“I tell kids to think like scientists and that scientists never say “ewwww”, they say “in-ter-esting.” It works like a charm, the kids enjoy repeating it, and the teachers use that for the rest of the school year.” Read the full post »
My older daughter loves musicals. She has aspirations to sing on Broadway. So we watch a lot of musicals, which I must admit (not having been a big musical fan), I have enjoyed very much. Musicals really do put a spring in your step and a song in your heart (which you can use when you’re pushing Fifty). But lately what I’ve enjoyed about them most are the ways they are teaching my kids about life, diversity, sex, history, and morality.
Sure we love the classics like Singing in the Rain, but there ain’t much of a social message there. Give us Hairspray with the drag queen mom, the fat-positive teenage lead, and the civil rights struggle. And they adored The Rocky Horror Picture Show with its fabulous soundtrack and lore–but boy did I answer a lot of questions about transvestites, bisexuality, and geez, even cannibalism. In South Pacific the characters struggle with racism, interracial relationships, and children born out of wedlock. In Funny Girl they see a driven and talented career showgirl who earns more money than her husband (and does exactly what she wants while telling everyone else not to rain on her parade). Read the full post »
I wanted to share with you a letter a friend of mine wrote, a father, for his 18-year-old daughter as she headed off to college.
My Sweet Daughter,
I have taught you so much over the years, and now I need to talk to you a bit about love and sex. I want to share with you the little bit I’ve learned in my life, and offer you a man’s perspective, to help set you on a path toward happy and satisfying relationships. As you move through them, you get to write your own detailed and profound beginnings, middles and perhaps ends on this subject.
First, let me also acknowledge that what a man, a partner, a father says about sex is limited to what they know, what they have experienced, what they can imagine. And, this also assumes you are interested in men. If it is women, or both for you, than much of this still applies, please change the pronouns. Read the full post »
If your activist side needs a break from the Occupy Wall Street protests, you might want to wander over to a site called One Million Moms where someone is trying to start a write-in campaign to have vibrators removed from drugstore websites because kids might stumble upon them.
I’m not encouraging you to join, I’m asking you to counter-protest this silly notion. First of all, drugstores have been selling vibrators for decades, as I know first hand because I bought one in 1978 at the age of 17 in a drugstore (it looked like this), so the idea that the mainstream stores are getting more X-rated is bunk. Secondly, what the heck are we afraid of if a kid stumbles upon a vibrator on a website? That it will lead to some expected curiosity (“mom, what’s that?”) and we might actually have to explain a little sexual anatomy to them? That sounds like a good thing to me. I ran across a survey recently that revealed that women who masturbate have higher self-esteem than those who don’t. So the worst thing that might happen if little Susie sees a Trojan Triphoria on Duane Reade is that she’ll a) want to learn about her body b) will want one and find a way to get one and c) will discover the joys of masturbation and ultimately end up with good self-esteem. Oprah had a respected psychologist on her show a year or so ago who courageously suggested that parents get their daughters vibrators so that they could learn about their bodies and feel more empowered to make good choices when it comes to partner sex. Read the full post »
