Ok im intrigued, how did everyone here come to know what they know?
For me, as a child i was never interested in babies. Apparently i asked my mum once where babies come from and was satisfied enough by her answer "from an egg" that i never asked again! Unlike my sister who apparently was quite persistent when she didnt get an answer from our nan!
When i was about 7 i had a book aimed at kids about the human body. It explained how everything worked by comparing it to everyday objects in a way kids would understand. The last page was about reproduction and had two cartoon trains. The blue one had a bit sticking out, and the pink one had an indent, you get the idea! I remember reading about it and being so disgusted at the thought of it!
As i got older i suffered many "talks" from my mum, and didnt get any real education until i was 12. That was in science as it was hurriedly done and only covered the basics in getting pregnant. We didnt have any kind of safe sex education until year 9 and that was just a teacher failing to put a condom on a banana. The only other bit of sex ed was in our last year when people came in to talk about stds and bought along horrific photos to scare us all.
Most of my education actually came from those teen girl mags like cosmo girl. I think i learnt a lot more from those articles and the Q and A pages than i ever did from a formal education, or my mum, who tried her best but no teenager wants to talk about sex with their mum!
I remember we had some sort of book as children...all I remember from it was naked drawings of people of all shapes and sizes...my mum got me a book about puberty when I got my first period...my parents always told me if I was going to have sex use a condom. I had no sex ed in school, but a few kids (me included) our counsellor thought were at risk were advised to go to this youth group which ended up being mostly about self esteem, but also reiterated to always use a condom and actually overvalued female virginity in my opinion. I learnt a bit through friends, a bit more through practice, and a lot through the internet!
Ah puberty, i forgot that! I remember at primary school in the final year there was a video about puberty. All the parents were invited to view it after school and then decide if they wanted their child to see it or be taken out of the lesson. My parents couldnt make it so they were allowed to borroe the video to watch at home. That ended up with mum making me watch it with her!
I remember i started my periods not long after and i asked her if i was going to have them forever. Her response was "no they stop when you get older, after about 50".
I took that literally and thought i was going to be bleeding every single day until i turned 50!
My mum had the 'talk' with me, when I was 10, as I had just started my aunt flo.
Then in year 7 at senior school, we had 2 lessons on this, one where it was girls only and the lads had a class of theirs and then one lesson together.
My parents have always been really upfront with me, and I read a lot as a kid - for (I think) my 6th birthday I got an encylopaedia as a present from some relatives and the bits on reproduction were in the first 20 pages. In year 6 or something we got shown some cringey 70s video where this kid ran around asking all his relatives about sex and bodies but it wasn't very useful really.
In high school we had a 3 week course of classes in year 10 and 11, I think, one class per week in PSHE. They were decent compared to what I've heard about other people's sex ed - we had a segment where we talked about consent and how to say no, and one on STDs, and another on something else I don't remember! We didn't do the condom-on-banana thing, apparently that was because we were a C of E school...
Ah puberty, i forgot that! I remember at primary school in the final year there was a video about puberty. All the parents were invited to view it after school and then decide if they wanted their child to see it or be taken out of the lesson. My parents couldnt make it so they were allowed to borroe the video to watch at home. That ended up with mum making me watch it with her!
I remember i started my periods not long after and i asked her if i was going to have them forever. Her response was "no they stop when you get older, after about 50".
I took that literally and thought i was going to be bleeding every single day until i turned 50!
Basically this.
My mom bought me a book about puberty when I was like nine, but I generally learnt most things from the internet and older friends.
My school sex ed was decidedly bollocks, as I've mentioned before. Very much too little too late, as protection, STDs and abortion were only covered in Y11....
I vaguely remember the condoms on bananas thing in about Y10 though, as I discovered I was allergic to spermicide.
I've learnt a lot through research (and practice) mainly out of interest and respect for my body and for sex. I'm pretty damn liberal, and I know that faces controversy, so it pays to be educated.
I havent really heard anyone have much positive to say about sex ed in schools. I think mine was bad because it was an all girls grammer school they had they attitude that a, we were all girls so nobody was having sex with each other, and b, that sort of thing only happened at comprehensive schools.
In a nutshell it was Y7: men and women have sexual intercourse to reproduce
Y9: condoms are available for sex, heres the science teacher failing to put one on a banana
Y11: if you have sex without a condom you will catch one of these infections on these posters. They even asked if anyone was allergic to latex. One girl raised her hand and they then told everyone her only option was a femidom. Im no expert but this was in 2005. Surely there were more options than that?
We were never taught about the emotional side of sex, or the dangers other than stds. Abortion was never covered and nor was any other form of contraception other than condoms.
Sex education at school seemed to only cover puberty and periods and my parents never gave me the talk. Never learned about condoms, so when I started first having sex, I never used them. Learned from magazines and my own experiences, was quitea a late starter compared to friends.
I don't recall my parents ever giving me "the talk" when i was 9-10 in school we got to watch videos about puberty and sex i remember one video this young lad was too scared to get out of the pool because he had a boner i certainly remember the girls getting a pack of booklets and samples
around 12-13 all the girls were given a box of tampax between
14-16 one science lesson was given to the mechanics of reproduction and there was a couple of pse lessons on std's and condoms i actually learnt more reading teen mags of the time like just seventeen & sugar
I have a sister 2 and a half years older, but the way our birthdays fall with the school years she was 3 school years above me. I was about 8 or 9, she came home and told me about what she learned in her year 7 biology class when they have one lesson on reproduction. Actually i never had "the talk" with my mum, even though i was 20 when she passed. when i was in year 7, we had one lesson on reproduction in the first 3rd of the year in biology, i had a VERY unethical teacher, who at the end of the lesson, said to a class of 11 and 12 year olds "so if you want to go and shag someone, use a condom" He was caught later that year sleeping with one of his 15 year old year 10 students who was a friend of my sisters. He jumped rather than be pushed and quit so he wouldn't be fired. After that it was briefly touched on in my year 9 health and social education class, but i was off ill the day they did the condom on the bananas part, so i had actually never even touched a wrapped a condom til a few months ago (I'm 25). I heard a few people stole some of them to use, nasty shock for them considering schools are only allowed to use out of date ones in the lessons. I had to drop out due to ill health half way through year 10 so no idea what was covered in the second half or year 11, my OH is 5 years younger and he said theirs didnt start til year 9 either but they did have to watch birth videos and late stage abortion videos and such. Personally i think waiting until year 9 is too late, by that point they're turning 14 and half of them have already had sex. I lost count how many girls had pregnancy scares in year 9. I stood in a corridor hugging some random girl i barely knew after she broke down in tears that after being 2 or 3 weeks late she'd been having an unusually long and heavy period when she was usually regular and suspected she was miscarrying. Another girl came in to Geography late and was PROUD to announce she was late from going to the doctors with her mum for the depo shot after her THIRD abortion, she was only 2 months past her 14th birthday. Luckily i was and still am proud i didn't just sleep with anybody, i have kept even my first kiss for the man i want to marry and that was the right choice for me and one i will never be embarrassed or ashamed of. Everyone i know that i've ever talked to about it has massively regretted losing it so young and to someone they didnt have a future with. Teenagers are growing up too soon, with some being as yound as 11, maybe it's time they start teaching it in year 6.
I don't recall my parents ever giving me "the talk" when i was 9-10 in school we got to watch videos about puberty and sex i remember one video this young lad was too scared to get out of the pool because he had a boner i certainly remember the girls getting a pack of booklets and samples
around 12-13 all the girls were given a box of tampax between
14-16 one science lesson was given to the mechanics of reproduction and there was a couple of pse lessons on std's and condoms i actually learnt more reading teen mags of the time like just seventeen & sugar
Was the video an animated one? Im sure thats the same we saw as i remember something about a swimming pool. Im sure there were also loads of naked overly hairy people in it too. For some reason im thinking it was chalk pastels or something like that. Very old fashioned though.
Schools were rather useless weren't they; even though I am a nineties child information covering sex was a bit rushed over. My mum gave me a booklet on periods when I was twelve or thirteen (ish) which explained the menstrual cycle and in doing so it explained that sperm came from the man to fertilise the egg and if it wasn't fertilised it would disappear along with all your blood. I certainly knew egg + sperm = baby but goodness knows what it involved when actually making a baby. I learnt a lot through friends through my teenage years and knew about abortion, contraception and gay relationships etc by 15 but only by what I read in books, on the internet and from friends. My schools were rather rubbish lol. They should teach more about sex in general and what it involves and not just scare us with Chlamydia stories!
I left school in 1982/3 we had NO sex education at all, nor did my parents tell us anything, being very shy I didn't actually have the 'need' for any education until I was much older, then the internet was available, yes, that long.
My mum gave me the 'talk' at 12, it was the most awkward half hour of my life, she put a condom on a vase & left it so when I picked it up a few days later it slipped out my hand & smashed. She had diagrams & everything!
Never had a talk from mum, sex ed at school was about pregnancy and stds which i supose was useful for some but personally the whole thing was useless because it never occurred to me NOT to have protected sex. I think it'd be really useful to teach about actual sex, like what a blow job is and where guys need to focus their attentions, and that women rarely orgasm for penetration but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get one. Things that that, all kids worry about it but I do think most of it should come from parents and should be taught throughout life, not in one awkward conversation.
Google gave me my sex education, not porn, just finding out what I was meant to do
I don't recall my parents ever giving me "the talk" when i was 9-10 in school we got to watch videos about puberty and sex i remember one video this young lad was too scared to get out of the pool because he had a boner i certainly remember the girls getting a pack of booklets and samples
around 12-13 all the girls were given a box of tampax between
14-16 one science lesson was given to the mechanics of reproduction and there was a couple of pse lessons on std's and condoms i actually learnt more reading teen mags of the time like just seventeen & sugar
Was the video an animated one? Im sure thats the same we saw as i remember something about a swimming pool. Im sure there were also loads of naked overly hairy people in it too. For some reason im thinking it was chalk pastels or something like that. Very old fashioned though.
It wasn't animated they used real people possibly the only one that was animated was where they showed two people having sex strandiihg up
Omg I remember More! Magazine!! LOL!! I used to sneakily read my sisters copies of it. Then when I had money (if I wasn't buying cigarettes) I would buy one.
My sex ed at school was terrible. Honestly disastrous!!! I figured most of it out myself.
But then, In my youth, education on everything was awful. As an underage teen, I was smoking, drinking, and having sex (using condoms I must add, I wasn't THAT stupid!!)
I look back and think that if the education was better on a LOT of things, life would be better for teens. I vow to educate my own children about the above things, I can't have schools giving them crappy education and hoping for the best.
wasn't it called 'position of the month' or similar, where they had the picture drawn of a couple in a sex position? ohhh and the passion stories too lol
pretty sure parents weren't that aware what was in more magazine lol
I never had to have 'the talk' from my parents (I think they were aware I knew everything) and my sex ed in school was learning about periods. Over and over. Not about pregnancy or anything like that, just the period itself. Boys learned about wet dreams. That was it. It was just a puberty talk, except we got it in both primary and secondary school. Never a mention of sex or protection...we skipped over the sex chapter in our biology book too, seriously, he just said we were too immature to discuss the topic and we all knew what it was about anyway so just move on.
I learned about sex when I was a child so don't remember where it came from, I was never lied to about where babies come from so I just always kind of knew as my questions were answered honestly when I was very young? I also learned some things from the teeny magazines like Bliss (before the content changed in it) but again, more about boyfriend problems and puberty than actual sexual relationships.
Reading through this it seems that maybe the three mainsources of information, schools, parents and magazines actually work quite well together!
schools can give the correct information regarding the actual biological aspect, parents can communicate more about the emotional aspect of it, and magazines fill in the gaps of the things you wouldnt want to discuss with your parents! Eg oral sex.
I think parents play a key role though. Although i hated being pestered by my mum to talk, it was good growing up knowing there was a parent i could talk to.
My dad grew up in a traditional old fashioned family where sex was never ever discussed. I remember when my teenage cousin ended up pregnant and kept it secret until she was about 5 months gone and the whole family were shocked, because in their mind people only had sex whenthey were older and in long term relationships.