【文章分享】跟孩子谈“性”的时间应该比你想的要早 ‘Sex Talks’ Should Start Earlier Than You Think

By Loris Lora from New York Time

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Published July 28, 2021Updated Aug. 3, 2021

本文摘自《纽约时报》育儿专栏，作者是Melinda Wenner Moyer，是一位科学记者，著有《如何养出不混蛋的孩子》（How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes）。

When a friend of mine took her kids to the pediatrician’s office a few weeks ago, her 7-year-old daughter noticed a birth-control poster and asked her about it. Soon after, her 4-year-old son began peppering her with sex questions too: “But Mom, why would a penis ever go into a vagina? Did Dad put his penis into your vagina?”

几个星期前，我的一个朋友带着她的两个孩子去看儿科医生。她7岁的女儿注意到一张避孕的海报，然后问了起来。紧接着，她四岁的儿子开始插入更多有关性的问题：“但是妈妈，为什么一个睾丸会进入阴道呢？爸爸把睾丸放进你的阴道过吗？”

Needless to say, my friend will not forget this particular doctor’s trip. But that conversation was not nearly as memorable as the one that transpired a few hours later at the playground, when her 4-year-old ran into a friend. Suddenly, her son yelled something to the effect of: “Did his dad put his penis in his mom before he was born, too?!”

不用说也知道，我的朋友永远也不会忘记这次特别的看医生之旅。但是，跟几个小时后发生在游乐场的事比起来，这次对话实在没那么难以忘怀。她四岁的儿子跑到一个朋友跟前，突然间大声问道：“在他出生之前，他的爸爸也有把睾丸放进他妈妈的身体里吗？”

Talking to kids about sex can be awkward and, as my friend’s story illustrates, also have embarrassing consequences. Nevertheless, we need to be having these conversations with our kids, early and often. “As soon as children start talking, we should be talking to them about their bodies, and about boundaries and about consent,” said Eva Goldfarb, a sex educator and professor of public health at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

跟孩子谈论性会很尴尬，也会产生丢脸的后果，就像我朋友的故事所呈现的一样。尽管如此，我们还是需要跟孩子讨论这些话题，并且要早，要经常。“一旦孩子开始说话，我们就应该跟他们讨论他们的身体，边界和同意问题。”来自新泽西州蒙特克莱尔州立大学公共健康方面的教授，同时也是一位性教育者Eva Goldfarb如是说。

Yet many parents are not having those conversations.

然而，很多父母并没有跟孩子有这些谈话。

For their 2020 book, “Sexual Citizens,” Princeton University sociologist Shamus Khan and Columbia University sociomedical scientist Jennifer Hirsch interviewed more than 150 Columbia students about the conversations they had — or shall I say, didn’t have? — about sex with their parents. According to the students, discussions at home about sex were few and far between, and what little information they received usually came from their mothers rather than their fathers. When researchers surveyed U.S. adolescents as part of a study published in 2019, 63 percent of the teen boys reported that their parents had never talked with them about contraception, and 44 percent of the teen girls said the same.

来自普林斯顿大学的社会学家Shamus Khan和来自哥伦比亚大学的社会医学科学家Jennifer Hirsch在他们2020年出版的书《性公民》Sexual Citizens一书中，他们就是否跟父母有过关于性的谈论访谈了超过150个哥伦比亚大学的学生。根据学生们的回答，跟家人讨论性知识的机会不多，不仅如此，他们从父母那里获得的少得可怜的性知识通常都是来自母亲而不是父亲。作为一项发表于2019年的研究的一部分，研究者们向美国的青少年发放了一份调查，63%的少年表示他们的父母从来没有跟他们谈过避孕，44%的少女也给出了同样的回答。

Sometimes, parents talk so abstractly about sex that their kids do not understand what they’re trying to communicate. “Parents are more likely to report that they talked with their adolescent about sex-ed topics than adolescents are to say that parents talked to them,” said Laura Lindberg, a principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights. “We always need to be concerned about the gap between what parents think they’re saying and what their kids hear.”

有时候，父母谈论性时，讲得很抽象，以致孩子都不知道他们想要表达什么。来自专门从事促进性健康和性生殖健康和权利的非盈利机构Guttmacher Institute的首席研究科学家Laura Lindberg说：“比起青少年们的回答，父母更倾向于说他们已经跟孩子讲过性教育话题了。”她还表示，“我们需要关注父母以为他们已经跟孩子说过了和孩子真正听到的这两者之间的差距。”

You can’t assume that your kids will learn about sex in school, either. According to Guttmacher Institute data, 20 states do not require that sex education be taught in school at all, and of those that do, only 18 states require that the information be medically accurate. Just nine states teach students about the importance of consent. When the New York Civil Liberties Union evaluated New York’s sex education curriculum in 2012, the organization found that one school district described the penis as a “sperm gun” and the vagina as “penis fits in here.”

同样，你也不能假设你的孩子会在学校里学到性知识。根据Guttmacher Institute给出的数据显示，有20个州不要求在学校里开设性教育课程。而在那些有要求的州，其中只有18个规定教授的信息必须是医学上准确的。只有9个州会教同意原则的重要性。当纽约公民自由联盟(the New York Civil Liberties Union)评估纽约2012年性教育课程的时候，该组织发现一个学区把睾丸形容为“精子枪”，把阴道描述为“睾丸适合这里”。

If you’re nervous about talking to your kids about sex, consider that the issue may be broader than you think — it encompasses relationships, body parts, boundaries, respect, privacy and consent. “Too often parents approach talking about sex with their kids as a one-time only, birds-and-the-bees type lecture, as opposed to an ongoing conversation throughout their child’s development,” Dr. Lindberg said.

如果你为跟孩子讨论性而焦虑，那么想一想，其实这个话题或许比你想的要宽得多，它涉及到两性关系，身体部位，边界，尊重，隐私和同意。Dr. Lindberg说： “很多时候，父母跟孩子讲性知识只讲一次，类似于小鸟和小蜜蜂这类的谈话，而不是作为一个贯穿孩子成长过程的持续的谈话。”

A good place to start talking about sex is by using the correct anatomical names for body parts. When we use euphemisms, we send the message to our children that these parts of their bodies are shameful or taboo, and that they shouldn’t come to us with questions about them. We need to have clear conversations about what to do if someone touches them in a way they don’t want. You can use books or videos to introduce these topics to your kids if you’re not sure how; Dr. Lindberg recommended books by Robie Harris, which are tailored to kids’ ages, as well as the free videos created by the organization Amaze.org.

谈性最好的一个开端是使用正确的解剖学上名称来称呼身体部位。当我们使用委婉的说法时，我们其实在向孩子传递这些身体部位是让人羞耻的或者是禁忌以及作为孩子他们不应该来问我们相关的问题这样的信息。我们需要做的是跟孩子有个很明确的谈话，比如有人以他们不想要的行为来触碰他们时，他们该怎么做。如果你不确定该怎么教孩子，那么可以使用书或者视频向孩子介绍这些话题。Dr. Lindberg推荐Robie Harris写的书，他的书已经被编辑为适合孩子的年龄。同时，由Amaze.org网站创作的免费视频也是个很好的资源。

（译者注：Robie Harris是一位美国童书作家，她的书，It’s Perfectly Normal争议比较大，被美国图书协会列为21世纪最具挑战性的书，很多父母不会让孩子看这本书，因为书中包含全彩色的裸体图片被认为跟阅读对象的年龄不相符。其实这本书旨在教十岁及以上的孩子有关性健康，情绪健康和两性关系，青春期，怀孕，性取向，性别，性虐待，变性青少年，预防艾滋，避孕，网络安全和短信色情等内容。尽管反对的声音不少，但是这本书也因为其正确的信息，将身体变化和性行为正常化而赢得很多荣誉和赞赏。）

Parents of preteens and teens might also ensure that kids get time alone with their doctors so they can ask confidential questions, Dr. Hirsch said. A study published in July found that fewer than one-third of teens have had conversations with their doctors about sex, perhaps because they have not been given the opportunity.

Dr. Hirsch还建议青春期前和青春期孩子的父母应该给予孩子单独跟医生对话的时间，这样孩子就可以问一些隐私的问题。一项七月份发表的研究发现，只有不足三分之一的青少年曾跟医生聊过性，也许是因为他们没有机会。

To instill an understanding of consent and body autonomy, we should also let our kids make their own decisions about who they touch (and are touched by). Avoid instructing children to give their friends hugs at the end of each play date, for example, and make sure they understand that they don’t have to be embraced if they don’t want to be, said Emily Rothman, a community health scientist at the Boston University School of Public Health.

在向孩子灌输同意和身体自治的观念时，我们也应该让孩子自己决定他们想碰谁（以及被谁碰）。来自波士顿大学公共健康学院的社区健康学者Emily Rothman举了一个例子，比如，避免教导孩子在一天玩乐结束的时候拥抱他的朋友们。（译者注：再比如一个朋友想抱抱你家孩子，可是孩子表现出不情愿，那就不要为了面子强迫孩子去被抱。）

It’s also wise to talk to kids about pornography from a young age — even as young as kindergarten, Dr. Rothman suggested. You can frame these early discussions as being more about nakedness than about sex, though. “You can say, ‘Sometimes grown-ups like to look at naked photos or movies of other grown-ups, and they do it because it’s fun for them and makes them feel good, but we don’t think it’s that good for kids’ brains,’” she said. When kids start chatting with friends over digital devices, we should also make clear that it’s never a good idea to send naked pictures to others, that this is called sexting, and that it can get kids in lots of trouble.

Dr. Rothman建议，在孩子小的时候，就算只上幼儿园，就开始跟他谈及大片（发不出来，只能这么说）也是一个明智的做法。你可以把这类讨论更多地表达为罗体而不是性。Dr. Rothman说： “你可以跟孩子说， ‘有时候成年人喜欢看别人罗体的照片或者电影，他们这么做是因为对他们来说这样有趣，并且让他们快乐。但是我们认为看这些东西对孩子的大脑发育不好。’” （译者注：对这个建议的争议很大，多数评论里给出否定的观点，不过倒是有人在做观看大片对青少年的影响的研究。）当孩子跟朋友们使用电子产品聊天时，我们也应该清楚地跟孩子讲明，给别人发罗体照片是坚决不可取的，这种行为叫做瑟qing短信，会让小孩卷入麻烦之中。

This all said, parents shouldn’t only talk about sex in a negative way, either. It’s important that our kids understand that sex can be a joyful and important part of adult life, and that it’s OK for them to get pleasure from their bodies. Parents might worry that framing sex in a positive way — or talking about sex at all — will make it more likely that their kids will start doing it, but the opposite is, in fact, true.

这意味着，父母也不应该只讨论性中消极的一面。让孩子知道性可以是快乐的，是成人生活中重要的一部分，成人可以从自己身体获得快乐，这样的观念也很重要。父母可能会担心宣扬性积极的一面，或者全面地谈论性会让孩子更想去尝试。但是，事实正好相反。

A 2015 study reported that when parents introduce their kids to the issue of sex with a stern, scare-mongering lecture, their kids are more likely to have sex during the teen years. When parents have more supportive and receptive conversations with their kids about sex, on the other hand, those kids are less likely to take sexual risks. And in a 2012 nationwide survey, 87 percent of teens said that it would be easier for them to postpone sexual activity and avoid pregnancy if they were able to have open and honest conversations with their parents about sex.

2015年的一项研究表明，当父母用严厉的、恐怖的贩卖商品式的讲座向孩子兜售有关性的知识时，孩子更有可能在青少年时期有性经历。另一方面，当父母用一种支持的、乐于倾听的态度跟孩子讨论性的时候，这类孩子不太可能去冒险。在2012年的一项全国性调查中，87%的青少年表示，如果他们跟父母能够用一种开放的、诚实的态度谈论性，那么他们更容易推迟性行为的时间，同时避免怀孕。

When we talk to our kids about these important but complex issues, we share our values and our wisdom, which allows them to make better choices. And if they choose to yell out “penis!” on the playground, it’s not the end of the world.

当我们跟孩子讨论这些重要的、复杂的话题时，我们分享的是我们的价值观和智慧，从而让他们今后可以做出更好的选择。如果他们选择在玩乐场地大声喊出“睾丸“，也不是世界末日的到来。