How (and How Not) to Talk with Your Kids about Sexuality
Some Helpful Strategies
Everyone can remember when they first learned of the so-called “birds and bees.” You know what we’re talking about: how you learned what sex was.
Some reading this can recall a helpful experience where your parents did this well. Or maybe some recall a particularly cringe and embarrassing moment that is now hard to forget decades later. Some others can remember learning this from a television show or a tasteless conversation at school.
Regardless, everyone remembers the moment when you learned the unique ways that a male body and a female body can work together to make a baby.
As we think about parenting in this cultural moment, few issues are more urgent and fraught to talk about with your children than sexuality and sex. This is urgent because if you do not talk about it first, the culture certainly will; it is fraught because as our culture changes in how it understands sexuality, it has unhelpfully elevated it to a status that sexuality was never meant to hold, biblically speaking.
What Do I Say When . . . ?
Andrew T. Walker, Christian Walker
In a world filled with cultural confusion, this book provides busy Christian parents with quick and trustworthy answers to questions their children may ask about life’s toughest topics, including abortion, sexuality, technology, political engagement, and more.
The Bible offers us a comprehensive way to think about sex and sexuality in a way that doesn’t reduce sexuality’s importance or make it out to be something more significant than it is. We cannot escape our sexuality, but neither is sexuality something to wrap an entire identity around.
To that end, below are a few helpful strategies we would suggest when talking about sex with your children.
What to Do
Be intentional. The most important thing to be said about discussing sex with your child is to be intentional about doing so. Perpetual delay and evasion are not what the Lord calls us to when caring for our children. Be assured that if you are not planning how and when to bring this up, your children will learn about it elsewhere.
Be positive. It is common in some Christian corners of the world to treat sexuality as something gross or dirty. That is not how Scripture sees God’s purpose for sexuality. Sexuality is a gift from God meant to glorify him within the context of marriage. When talking with your child about sex, be sure to speak positively about why sexuality is a gift from the Lord and not something to be embarrassed about.
Be biblical. The most important feature of discussing sexuality with your child is to put Scripture first. Go back to Genesis 1–2 and look at God’s plan for sexuality. There we see that God designed sexuality. He created marriage between husband and wife. It is the God-appointed means to unite husband and wife and to bring forth children. Unlike all other relationships, it is meant to embody the depth of their relationship.
Be comprehensive. By “comprehensive” we mean that it is important to put sexuality in the context of the biblical storyline. Sex was patterned by God for something good. As sin always does, it disrupts, warps, and destroys. This warping effect impacts all good things, including sex. But Jesus affirms the original intention for God’s design for sexuality, and as we live our lives for him, we have the Holy Spirit’s power to help us glorify God in our sexuality. Sex is vitally important to God’s design for creation order, but sexuality is not where we should go looking to understand the entirety of our identities as our culture does.
Be convictional. In our day, it is easy to want to shy away from what the Bible teaches on sexuality. We should resist the temptation to want to downplay what the Bible teaches on sexuality because it puts us on opposite sides of the culture. But God’s design for our sexuality is tied to God’s design for creation order itself. This means that obeying God’s design for sexuality is to align ourselves with God’s plan for how all of his creation is meant to flourish.
Be age-appropriate. You will have to determine what your child can handle, and there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Some children are more mature than others, even at the same age. This means that you should be as honest as possible based on what you know about your child.
Be clear, not graphic. Again, considering the need to be age-appropriate, parents should be clear in what they communicate about sex and sexuality. Still, they should not feel the need to disclose all the finer details that describe sexual intercourse immediately. Keep things more abstract at younger ages, and be more specific as your children age. Children should be taught to honor their body and not to disparage it. They should also be taught that their bodies are theirs and that privacy is essential to their safety.
It is common in some Christian corners of the world to treat sexuality as something gross or dirty. That is not how Scripture sees God’s purpose for sexuality.
What Not to Do
Be naïve. The worst thing a parent can do right now is believe their child can be sheltered from these conversations for as long as parents want them to be. They cannot. Our culture is awash with sexual imagery and sexual confusion. Arguably, no feature defines modern America more than its obsession with sex. You must be sober-minded and realistic about the culture you and your family live in.
Be evasive. If you do not have this conversation, those around you in the culture will form your child’s worldview on your behalf. Children have questions, and parents should have answers. If questions about body parts arise, don’t ignore them. Again, be age-appropriate and as fact-specific as your child can handle. It’s a simple matter of biblical parenting that you have the singular responsibility to help your child encounter the world.
Be negative. While we are hesitant to criticize “purity culture” since that concept has already become a convenient scapegoat in much of the culture, we should be cautious in not portraying sexuality as gross or scandalous. If sexuality is portrayed as wholly negative, it will pollute the child’s mind regarding what sexuality is. If it is something that is treated like a hot stove that is merely to be avoided, we are giving our children a truncated view of what sexuality is. That’s why it is so important to speak positively about sexuality as a gift from God to be stewarded. If sexuality is something beautiful and given by God, it’s not merely something to say “no” to; it is something to anticipate as a benevolent gift of God. This may sound a little bit controversial, but the purpose of talking with your child about sex is not about instilling an “abstinence” mentality alone. Of course, while sexual intercourse should be abstained from until marriage, if all we do is put guardrails around it, we simply heighten the temptation in our children’s minds that sexuality is dangerous, not a beautiful gift from the Lord within marriage.
Andrew T. Walker and Christian Walker are the authors of What Do I Say When . . . ?: A Parent’s Guide to Navigating Cultural Chaos for Children and Teens.
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