“As you get older and your body changes, you might stimulate your penis enough to have what’s called an orgasm. That’s where your body ejaculates semen—it’s how you release the sperm cells needed to make a baby. It adds an extra step of cleanup to the process, so you have to be a little bit thoughtful about where you’re doing that. The shower is a good option because it essentially takes care of cleanup for you.”
“Hey, bud—I don’t super care how long your showers are, but please remember to stick with just water if you’re going to be touching yourself. Shampoo, conditioner, and soap can all irritate your urethra and give you an infection, so let’s skip that.”
“As a reminder, there’s a box of condoms under the sink. You do not have to use them. They are there for you whenever you need to use them. I would encourage you to maybe consider using them if you’re gonna explore yourself because it’s a great way to get used to the feeling of wearing one. They’re going to be necessary when you become sexually active with whoever you become sexually active with, so … use them. Make sure you throw them away in the garbage can underneath the sink. If you need a refill, let me know, or I’ll just try to keep an eye on them and replace them when they’re running low. They’re for you.”
“I found my bottle of fancy lotion when I was cleaning your room. I’m not mad that you used it, but I swapped it out for the unscented stuff from the bathroom because I don’t want you to end up possibly uncomfortable.”
Masculinity
In my own life I’ve found that if I were to ask ten people what it means to be masculine, I would very likely get ten different answers. There have been countless books, podcasts, op-eds, and articles written about the right way to “be a man.” The stereotype that has spurred a huge portion of this discourse is that men can either be happy and horny or angry and aggressive. The confusing part for people growing up identifying as men is that those books, podcasts, op-eds, and articles don’t all agree with the scientific results that tell us this binary is patently false. Frustratingly, not only are some of the voices in the discussion screaming that the binary is true, those voices are also the most easily accessible. Thankfully, there are credible resources, and I’ve shared them with you on page 285 to help you shape the conversations about masculinity you have with your child. But in the meantime, here are some sample scripts to help you help your child navigate what it means to be a man.
Emotions (ages 10+)
“As you go through puberty, you might notice that your emotions feel bigger than they used to—you also might find yourself saying things impulsively, reacting really fast to things, and just generally feeling stuff way more than you did before. You also might feel like you’re at odds with me and other grown-ups. Some of that might be due to your amygdala growing really fast—it’s part of the emotion center of your brain, and when it’s driving the bus, your thinking brain can’t really keep up. I will try my best to remember that this is something you’re going through, and I’d really appreciate it if you tried to remember that your amygdala can be a bit of a jerk. We need to be kind and compassionate with each other, and we need to try to keep communicating. I might call your amygdala out when it seems like it’s taken over—I’ll just straight up say ‘AMYGDALA’ when you’re being a bit much, and that can be our code word for ‘let’s take a breather and talk once emotions have cleared up a bit.’ And you can one thousand percent call me out if I’m chalking things up to your amygdala instead of being a good listener. Sound fair?”
“Uh, dude, I want to make sure we’re on the same page—that movie that said people need to ‘man up’ and ‘stop being a … derogatory word for female genitalia’? That movie was from my childhood. It’s not a healthy representation of what it means to be a man. People with a penis feel just as many emotions as people who don’t have them, and the idea that identifying as a man somehow means you suddenly have only two settings—horny and angry—is stupid. You have always done a great job of talking about your feelings—that doesn’t have to change just because you’re growing up into a man.”
“I also want you to remember that my number one priority is to raise healthy, happy, functional adults. If you are feeling extra down—like you can’t find pleasure in things you used to love, like you can’t enjoy anything, like you don’t want to stick around—or just feel crappy in general, I want you to tell me right away so we can get you the support that you deserve. Sound fair?”
“I was thinking about what you said the other day—how you think you don’t ‘feel’ as much as other people, and they don’t seem to like it. I’m not positive that I’m interpreting what you meant correctly, but it sounds to me like you’re saying that other folks get really big emotions, and they express them a lot, and you don’t really do that. And they think that means you don’t care, even when you do. Are you worried about your feelings, or are you worried about how people perceive you? Either way, you are not broken or wrong simply because you experience and react to the world differently. Emotional skills are something all people have to learn and work on—no one comes out of the womb knowing that stuff!”
I remember being a teenager and watching the way television and movies talked about teen boys. Entirely too often, the underlying message was that all they wanted to do was “get some.” I can think of a laundry list of stories where being sexually active very early and very often was a driving plot point for the male characters. I also remember that characters who expressed their emotions or who were vocal about their feelings were treated as “soft” or “girly”—that in order to solidify their place in the high school pecking order, they had to abandon their emotional inner self in favor of being a tough, sexually active, popular guy. I also remember making the conscious decision to raise my own children very differently. I never wanted my child to feel like they had to determine where they fit in the hierarchy of high school popularity by compromising their own feelings or values.
“You do not have to change who you are or what you want for your own body just to fit in. People who are bragging about their sexual conquests are jerks who do not respect their partners and are quite possibly lying. You do what you feel ready for, and you don’t go broadcasting what you do choose to do for clout. Got it?”
Big Kids Still Want to Play
Something we forget is that when children, particularly male-identified children, grow up, they still want to participate in play. The hard part, I think, for kids who are going through puberty in the United States is the more recent cultural expectation that they shift from play to organized sport. Encouraging and facilitating non-sports play is one way to foster their social and emotional development as they enter puberty. Try yard games like bean bags, bocce, or spikeball; field games; or unstructured physical activity like tag, (boundaried) roughhousing/wrestling, even pool noodle sword fights. Be creative!
If Something Might Be Wrong
“Hey, kiddo—I just wanted to remind you that if you ever have problems with any of your parts—if something is sore, or itchy, or just feels ‘off’—you can come to me and we’ll find you appropriate help, okay? Even if you think it’s happening because of something you did or a mistake you made—all I care about is that you are safe and healthy. Please come to me if you need help.”
CHAPTER 7: IN BRIEF
Changing bodies can be incredibly confusing, disorienting, and sometimes downright scary. For people with a penis, changes (like erections) sometimes occur with an element of surprise that can add a layer of shame and embarrassment to the process. Children who have been informed of the scientific facts about these changes, and who have been given accurate information and space to ask questions, may feel more empowered to navigate the changes and potentially feel less stress than if they had been left to figure things out on their own via trial and error.
Key Takeaways
Erections occur when the brain sends messages to the body instructing it to fill the penis with blood. Erections are not necessarily indicative of sexual attraction—they can be, but they can also occur spontaneously.
Body changes for people with a penis are not dissimilar from the changes that occur for people with a uterus—they include changes in height, voice, musculature, body hair, body odor, and more.
Additionally, children may experience an additional drive for self-stimulating behaviors, and should be provided with safe, healthy, sanitary options for managing these behaviors.
One such option is encouraging condom use while self-stimulating, which theoretically could lead to increased ease of use, and may lead to more consistent use of condoms in future sexual relationships.
CHAPTER 8 Where Do Babies Come From? !
This is it. This is the chapter I know most of you are reading this book for. You might’ve picked this book up off the shelf and flipped directly to this chapter because you want to just get it over with—you want to prepare yourself for the conversation you’ve been dreading. But first, take a deep breath and remember that this is the chapter where a lot of us are going to have to go back and do the internal work of processing the trauma and embarrassment we internalized when we were given the “birds and the bees” talk.
The “you’re going to have sex, get pregnant, or get a disease and die” talks.
The “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free” talks.
The “no one likes a used piece of gum,” “no one wants a pre-licked lollipop,” and “no husband/wife wants damaged goods” talks.
Purity culture, fearmongering and misunderstanding around sexually transmitted diseases, and the specter of a life-altering unplanned pregnancy too often guide discussions around sex and intimacy as children are growing up. Regardless of where your morals are regarding when sex should happen, we can all agree that if people are going to have sex, they should have it in the safest way possible. A lot of us parents now know that we must be willing to have more nuanced, open, honest conversations with our kids if we want to both keep them safe and help them feel empowered to have the best relationships they can. That is why, if you did flip directly to this chapter, I encourage you to go back and read the first section of this book, “Foundations” (page 14). It will help set you up for predominantly positive outcomes from these tough conversations by solidifying the safe, loving groundwork you’ve laid with your child. Two of these Foundations, Curiosity and Consent for Knowledge, guided me through explaining my first nephew to my own child.
“There’s a BABY in there!” I pointed enthusiastically at my sister’s growing belly, letting my child in on the most exciting news I’d heard in a while. “In a few months there’s going to be a new baby coming!”
My kid’s response was to be expected—he was eighteen months old, so this was all very abstract—so he mirrored my excitement by clapping and giving me a “yay!”
A couple of years later, as my first round of friends started having children, my child got a little bit more invested in this “baby in the tummy” business. The fact that the baby was in there was taken for granted—he knew that was where babies grew—but the questions were getting a bit more existential.
“Mom, where do babies COME from?” he asked me one sunny winter afternoon shortly after his fourth birthday.
“They come from inside a person’s uterus!” I replied.
“Ohhhhhh, okay.” Satisfied at now knowing the name of the organ where a baby grew, my kid went back to playing. That didn’t last long, though.
“How does a uterus make a baby?” was the next question I had to field, just a few weeks later.
“Well, it’s super cool! There are two cells—one is called a sperm, and one is called an egg—and they each have half of the instructions needed to make a baby! You know, like your building sets—the instructions say which pieces go where, but each cell only has half! So the cells get together and share instructions with each other, and then the cells multiply and click together like the building pieces and make a baby!”
This. Was. MIND-BLOWING. My child chewed on this information, rehashing it over and over again, for months. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I finally got the question I’d been gearing up to answer.
