Man, my parents were cool as shit about this. And I think it had really good consequences for me later on, like in college.
Sex was positively viewed, but strict about protection (rightly so), and drugs were described as a spectrum with weed being very low, and the scary drugs (heroine) being very scary. They were honest about wanting me to wait for drugs and booze till I was more adult, but let me have a few parties with friends where everyone crashed at their house. It was super fun, and very badass feeling. I got to college and was like … Meh? On partying.
Definitely not the only way to go about it, but the honesty helped me weigh consequences of it all a bit better, I think.
I have the same experience as the first few commenters. These things were never talked about in my home.
How can we as a society justify refusing to educate the youth about these things and leaving them to haphazardly stumble through the same mistakes that we all made?
My mum at least asked ‘do you learn about this stuff in school?’, to which i awkwardly said yeah. We did get some pretty good classes on bodies, the biology of reproduction, and contraception. I even remember having a test on contraceptives in biology class.
Unfortunately, it was very cis-het only. I had to figure out by myself that I should be using protection during sex even if both participants had a vulva.
As for drugs, it never occurred to my mum that anything other than alcohol and nicotine could be relevant to us. She did well on keeping me from smoking just by telling me about her experience as a smoker and how hard it was to quit. I kept my drinking and weed smoking from her pretty well because even a mention would make her angry. To be fair, as an adult I understand she had some trauma from her mum being an alcoholic.
My folks were hippies. Did the woodstock thing and all. I grew up around them smoking pot at parties and stuff. When Nancy Reagan told us all it was bad my parents told me she was full of shit, that smoking dope sometimes was as ok as drinking a few beers and that when I moved out of the house I was free to do what I wanted.
As for sex, pretty much the same thing. Wrap your willie, wait till you’re an adult, and don’t do it here.
I’m as honest with my kids about drugs now.
I still remember what my mother said to me when I got a girlfriend. “Use a condom.” That was it. No pretending it wasn’t going to happen.
As for drugs, my family never liked them. They never told us kids, but my father had an issue with opiates that’s cost him his job and medical license. My older brother also had an issue with opiates.
I used to do a lot of research on erowid on drugs. Between my brother and I it was a lot of don’t be stupid, do your research on what’s safe and what interacts with each other, and stay away from opiates.
For the most part, it wasn’t talked about much in my family, other than my older brother my younger brother and I didn’t gravitate to them too much or hang with people who did. I ended up getting really into weed for a short time, because that’s where my ADHD hyper focus hobby was for a few months. Then I realized I didn’t like not being sober that much.
Don’t do drugs
Don’t do sex
I’m indigenous Canadian and both my parents survived residential school in the 50s. Residential school for indigenous people back then was forced on us, especially for children where they were systematically abused by Christian missionaries. Mom was not so abused but dad was terribly traumatized to the point where sex and anything sexual or remotely sexual was forbidden. Just about everything in life to him meant burning in everlasting hell. Drugs were no different but less so.
So our indigenous Christian home just dealt with it all by forbidding everything.
How did it turn out?
I have seven siblings and we all ended up with alcohol and drug addiction by the time we were teenagers. I cleaned up early and I’ve been sober for 29 years, all my other siblings never fell off the deep end (thank God) but I’m the only one who got officially ‘sober’.
I didn’t have kids but everyone else in my family did before anyone was married. One of my younger brothers picked up the slack for me by having children with four women. I have over 40 nieces and nephews, some by the family, some brought in, some married in and others illegitimate.
We’re all one big happy family … but we’re all gonna burn in hell. Lol
I’m Italian. School explains all there is to know about sex and stuff, so I never needed the “talk” with my parents. I also had a bigger brother that would tell me everything way before the time lol
About drugs, I think I already got everything from TV? I certainly didn’t need my parents explaining to me that drugs are bad.
EDIT: For those curious about how/when SexEd is taught in school in Italy: I had SexEd in my 5th year of elementary school (10yo), 3rd year of middle school (13 yo) and again in high school (I think it was the second year, so 15 yo, and then in my fourth year as well, when I was 17 yo). My parents were required to consent to the school teaching us SexEd only in elementary school; no consent form was required from middle school onwards, it was mandatory.
And I think that drugs were discussed in school as well. I think in middle and high school, around the same time as SexEd.
Non-existent
If you do this, invisible sky god will make your life terrible and you will rot in imaginary pain forever more after you die.
Me: so… Just like now?
This was exactly my experience. Extreme repression of my sexuality via religion.
Shamed for every impulse. Shamed for masturbation (Not by them of course, they had someone from the church do it. I guess the idea of doing it themselves was just too fucking awkward for them). Shamed for porn (Back when porn was waiting 20 min for an image of tits to load).
It is an overall tenet of my advocacy that this cannot possibly be right. We all hit puberty, all we want to do is fuck as we are driven towards it directly by nature.
Maybe there is a societal need to curate that impulse, I can accept that. But not like this. Not through guilt, shame, and fear.
