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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Re: nudity and kids
Message-ID: <1294@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Jul-85 15:43:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: mnetor.1294
Posted: Sun Jul 14 15:43:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Jul-85 17:21:38 EDT
References: <219@cuuxa.UUCP>
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Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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In article <219@cuuxa.UUCP> frye@cuuxa.UUCP (frye) writes:
>This is in responce to Charlie Perkins' posting...
>My personal belief is this: Don't let a child see
>anything he/she will have questions about regarding sex 'til
>such a time as the child can ask those questions an under-
>stand the answers.
>
>I don't believe in creating questions in a child intention-
>ally unless they can ask them and get an answer.

Well, unlike many people of my generation, I saw my parents naked
when I was a child.  Here's what I remember of the whole thing:
It was neat to look at my parents.  I liked looking at my mother's
breasts, and I was curious about my father's genitals.  I would have
liked to take a closer look, but I never did because I was too shy
and felt it would have embarrassed him.  As far as I knew, I was the
only one among my friends who got to see such a sight.  I considered
the others deprived.  Once, one of my friends was very excited because
she had managed to catch a glimpse of her mother without underwear.
I remember thinking she was quite perverted to get so excited about
seeing her mother naked (other people, ok, that was exciting, but
one's *mother*! give me a break!)  My friends knew that I had seen
my parents naked, but they never asked what I had seen.  These kind 
of things were for family consumption (no pun) only.

As a result of seeing my parents naked, I asked ONE question, it was
about why my mother was bleeding like that (I was rightly worried).  I
was confused by the answer, not because I was too young (7-8) to grasp
its meaning, but because it was a stupid answer that didn't make sense
(something like "mommy's bleeding because she's not going to have a
baby").  I did ask other questions at other times, but never did get
satisfying answers.  My parents were ahead of their time in that they
didn't hide their nakedness, but they were still uncomfortable when it
came to talking about sex.  They answered all my questions in what they
thought was the best way: euphemisms about seeds and plants.  I knew
where things were located, but not how they worked and it confused the
hell out of me.  But this is not because I saw them naked, but simply
because, like most parents then,  they weren't very good at explaining
these things.

I did know a lot more about sex (actually "where babies come from" was
a much more interesting topic then) than most of my friends who were at
the cabbage patch level (literally!).  I also had one friend whose
parents bought her one of these books for children at puberty, you know
the ones like "the miracle of birth" where they talk about cats and
dogs having kittens or puppies and then mommies and daddies getting
married because they love each other and then "the man's penis entering
the woman's vagina" and presto, little cells multiplying and drawings
of babies going out head first or twins sharing one uterus.  That
clarified a few things, but not enough.

I certainly don't think that seeing my parents naked troubled me in any
way (no matter what some male netters might think).  What bothered me
was the embarrassment with which my parents answered some of my questions.
When they weren't embarrassed, they did a much better job of it.  When
I asked my mother what a "homosexual" was, she wasn't too involved in
the question so she answered something like "oh, it's someone who loves
someone of the same sex".  I asked her for clarification, like, how
could they do such a thing and she just replied "I don't know, they do,
it's like that".  That was very clear and all I wanted to know.

Anyway, to go back to the topic;  If it isn't clear by now, I think that
based from my own experience, the problem doesn't lie in children having
too many unanswerable questions, but in parents who don't know how to
answer their children's questions.  My opinion is that the sooner the
parents start answering questions, the more accustomed they will get to
answering them appropriately.  I think that what I'd do if I was a parent
would be to give very short and precise answers to the questions asked
and just make sure that the child knows that they can ask more if they
want to know more.
-- 
Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie