Knowing how to talk to our children about sex is often complicated by the fact that few of us spend time considering our own sexual values. Sexual values are the beliefs, priorities, prejudices, thoughts, and feelings we have about sex, sexuality, and gender.
There are at least two important reasons to clarify your own sexual values.
- Doing so can help us act more consistently in our own lives. Because we don't always ask ourselves tough sexual questions, we sometimes act in ways that contradict how feel, because we haven't taken the time to clarify our own sexual values.
- An important way to make sure we are not passing along the sexual values we hold that we might not like (prejudices, old beliefs that we wish we could change) is to clarify how we feel personally from what we hope for our children. Clarifying this for yourself can stop you from passing along old patterns to your kids.
