Sex Education from the Cradle

by Loh Ling Ming

A horrific incident once gripped the US: a nine-year-old boy was caught having sex with a six-year old girl next door, and his seven-year-old younger brother was on the phone getting instructions how to go about it!

"Ah, good old Malaysia! Things like that do not happen here," I thought. But the last decade has been an eye-opener as to what is happening undercover in our land. Reports of the high divorce rate, Malaysians of different ages and social standing caught cohabiting and engaging in prostitution and homosexual practices, sexual violence and abuse, rape and incest, parents and children watching blue movies together, the crackdown on syndicates distributing blue movies and pornographic materials, have all too often splashed our local news with their scarlet colours. Our television, in spite of its stringent censorship along religious lines, often indiscriminately air movies loaded with ideas of immorality, homosexuality and promiscuity.

What we are witnessing is just the tip of the iceberg. Our children are living in a very different world compared to ours 30 years ago! Theirs is a confused generation where sexual roles are blurred and sexual identities merged. How are we to prepare and teach our children to live in such times? What is sex education and what should be the goal? Who should be responsible for our children’s sex education? When and how should we do this in light of this present moral decay?

What is sex education?

There are some who think that if we just inform our children about the sex act, reproduction and abstinence, we have accomplished our task in educating our kids about sex. Sex education is broader than that. It is not limited to just the teaching of the male and female anatomy, wet dreams, menstruation, secondary sex characteristics, sexual intercourse and the physiology of reproduction. Sex education includes a clear teaching on God’s purpose for sexuality and sexual development, God’s design for sex in marriage, God’s standard of sexual morality and God’s call to accountability for responsibility in sex. The whole process of sex education must be handled from God’s perspective.

What is the goal of sex education?

It is not only about abstinence. Many parents think their job is done when they have finished explaining the ABCs of the sex act or stressed that virginity is reserved for marriage.

Sex education is more than that! The goal of sex education is to provide an accurate picture of human sexuality, sex and related issues from God’s perspective. In fact you cannot do sex education apart from character building! Developing the child’s character plus respect for authority is the main menu. We are to form in our children a godly character that respects authority, human or divine.

God in His Word talks about the absolute necessity to train a child to know his Creator and to be identified totally with Christ in His death and resurrection. The Bible stresses that to develop godly character is to help our child live an effective and productive life. "For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive (2 Peter 1:8). God is like that control tower that guides the planes in the sky. A child who is a respecter of God and man can navigate safely through the turbulence in his life. He will effectively steer clear of immoral vices and not be swept along by the permissive and powerful cultural undercurrents.

Developing the child’s character forms the major part of the parenting process. However, we cannot just focus on character building and ignore the whole area of his sexual identity and how as a sexual being he is to righteously handle his sexuality and his relationships with the opposite sex. Though sex education makes up just a small part of that process, it is nonetheless a vital area and we are to diligently help our child learn how to handle his sex drive, his relationships with the opposite sex and the sexual temptations that are ahead. So our job is not done when we just teach our children to abstain from sex. Otherwise he would be like a ship in the wild seas without her communication set to connect with the command center to warn him of dangers around or inform him of help available!

Who should be responsible for our children’s sex education?

The parents are. It is not the school’s job. It is not just the mother’s job. Both parents are responsible for the sexual development of their children. They alone can provide this lifetime training up close and personal. We cannot wait for the schools or the churches to do our job. The school can teach the content but are not totally free to attach God or character to it. Churches are in the position to teach sex education but they lack trained workers.

So the ball rolls back to parents. Most parents still have the most of their children’s time and they can learn to handle the instructional process and adapt his sex educational plan to suit their child’s particular growth curve and oversee his overall character development.

In fact, in the marriage relationship, God particularly holds the man, who is the leader of the family, ultimately responsible for his family members as seen in the case of Eli (1 Samuel 2, 4:17). God did not give the warning to Mrs. Eli concerning the misconduct of her sons. This is a bit difficult to swallow as many fathers in our homes have comfortably taken the backseat when it comes to formally teaching our children. It is a great challenge for men to jump in and communicate clearly to the children what the family standards are in sexual morality but that is what he is called to do being the leader of the family. Children listen up when Dad backs Mom up!

However, most parents are more comfortable talking about IQ, EQ or whatever Q development. When it comes to talking about SQ--Sex Quotient--they are silent! What essentially is the essence of our manhood or womanhood is a subject least broached. So where are our children getting their sex education? Their peers and the mass media, that’s where! But what they get is often a perverted or at best, an inaccurate picture of what human sexuality is all about. We have to identify our personal barriers to talking about SQ and smash them down!

In comparison, God is not silent on sex. Sex was His idea. He designed sex for marriage. Therefore, are parents who know His Word not the best resource to talk about sex? We must challenge ourselves and get comfortable talking about sex from God’s perspective. The husband-wife team has to work together and get involved. You are both needed to develop in your child a healthy view of his own gender and how to relate respectfully to the opposite gender.

When should we do this?

It has to start right from the cradle and is to continue into early adulthood because a child’s sexual identity begins right there in the cradle. He is not asexual till puberty hits him! Right from the cradle, equipped with a sexual nature, he is forming his sexual attitudes.

Isn’t it a bit too early? On the other hand, why delay? Some delayed because of personal discomfort or a lack of role models in his own upbringing. The fact is the best time to lay a biblical perspective on life and relationships (with God as well as with others) is right at the start of childhood. Why? Children readily learn whatever they are taught.

How should we do this?

Parents are to role model for their children their proper sexual roles. From the cradle, the child observes how his father lovingly leads, protects and provides for his mother. His father also respects, appreciates and affirms his own manhood and his wife’s womanhood. The child intuitively learns what it means to be a boy, a girl, a man, or a woman and how he or she is to express his masculinity or her femininity. His own sexual identity thus becomes clearer to himself as he grows up. He learns to appreciate himself as a boy when he sees his masculinity being affirmed. Similarly, a daughter will not be glad that she’s a girl if she sees her father not cherishing but responding negatively to her mother or other women, or if she has a mother who does not respect her own gender. Not equipped with the ability of reasoning yet, she would then want to be a boy, which she concludes as being the better and more powerful gender.

Parents are to formally teach their older children about sex. As the child develops speech, it is important that we grasp those teachable moments and begin to talk to our children about his sexuality from His perspective in the privacy of the home. Developing a warm relationship with our children right from the start will keep that window open to us for future discussions. Trust and love are essential ingredients in building that relationship with your child. Many parents discover too late that the window to talk about sex starts closing in the adolescent years.

In fact, the openness evaporates at the onset of puberty as a result of reduced reception when the activation of hormones begin to cloud the mind and peer pressures jam out His teachings. But if a loving relationship has been established earlier, most teens will give their parents a second chance. If a relationship is missing, then it will be much harder to broach this subject with our teens. Right there in the home, God’s intention is for godly parents to be the natural role models and educators for their children.

In conclusion, since the window of opportunity to educate our children is open for just so long, we must grab every opportunity right from the time our children are still in their cradles. We are to maximize the first 12 years of their life when they are most receptive to learning and teachings. We are to get most of the formal part of sex education completed by the preadolescent stage. We do not have a whole lot of time with them. Yet in spite of the lessening of time spent together we are to interact with them intimately so as to influence and impact our children at the core of their being.

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Ling Ming is a consultant with both the FamilyLife and Leadership Development ministries of Malaysia Campus Crusade for Christ. She is married and has 2 children.