Don’t just keep mum …

By Ben Bentley

It’s a question to scare the pants off many parents: “Mummy, daddy – what is sex?”

The birds and the bees used to be explained by bumbling, red-faced dads desperately attempting to evade the question by saying “ask your mum”, or worse, by a biology teacher with dodgy diagram and a bowl of frogspawn.

As a consequence, the real facts of life were frequently learned in an awkward embrace behind the bicycle sheds and, as bad luck would have it, nine months later ignorance gave birth to a darling baby boy.

But this is changing. This week, The Scout Association announced plans to add sex education to its “be prepared” programme, while parents are going back to the classroom to learn how to tell their kids about the birds and the bees as part of an education drive by Shropshire County Council to cut unwanted teen pregnancies.

“We are trying actively to reduce the teenage pregnancy conception rate by 50 per cent by 2010,” said Kay Smallbone, teenage pregnancy co-ordinator for the county council.

“The rate in Shropshire is good. 

“The latest data available, 2006, shows a conception rate of  32.4 per 1,000 under-18s. The national average is 40.4. We need to go down to 17 per 1,000 by 2010.”

The empowering eight-week Speakeasy sex education course is funded by the county council and sessions are nothing if not fun and lively.

By week five when the ‘contraception kit’ comes out, they even resemble a cross between an Ann Summers party and the Krypton Factor, as across Shropshire fumbling parents try to put a condom onto a blue plastic you-know-what.

Week two is ‘name the body parts’ and involves a bit of drawing and sharing all the slang names we know for our vital bits.

“It’s really interesting to do,” said trainer Kay. “There might be 40 words for penis – but for a child, how confusing is that? The definitive word is the one we struggle to use, it’s the most embarrassing.”

And in week six, mums, dads and carers are invited to play a game of cards, a bit like sex education Top Trumps, to reveal how ignorant they might be about what their children learn or don’t learn about the facts of life at school.

I join parents and take part myself – and ask for homework. Only to realise that I could do with brushing up on a few birds and several bees.

Parents get artistic and cut and stick graphic images from teen magazines to create a montage of rippling torsos, coy kisses by the latest cover stars of Chat mag, and advertisements for Durex. Teen mags are a reality, freely available to young children and covering the type of racy topics that could send your nan’s hair curlier than a set of Carmen rollers ever have.

“Some have very mixed messages – you turn one page and you have very explicit stories about pop stars and celebrities but then you turn to another page and there’s some useful information,” said Kay.

The Speakeasy modules are supplemented with illustrated books and guides, everything from The Amazing Sperm Trip to read with younger children to guides called Below The Belt 4 Boys and Below The Bra 4 Girls, which parents can study with their children going through or curious about, puberty and changes in their bodies.

Questions in class are welcome. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty: hands up if you know when to tell your kids about the birds and the bees?

Answer: whenever they ask. “Be led by a situation,” said Kay. “If you are walking down the road with your child and you see a pregnant woman, you talk to them about it. ‘There’s a baby in that woman’s tummy,’ tell them. Use that as an opportunity to take it a bit further.

“Or you might have one daughter in a family of three boys and they’ve obviously got different body parts. Your daughter, who might only be 18 months or two years old, could ask ‘why haven’t I got one of those’ and ‘why can’t I stand up to have a wee’.”

Opportunity knocks. Time to put your new-found course knowledge to the test.

And lessons outside the classroom can continue in the field – literally. “You might see two cows on top of each other. Animals are great for an opportunity to talk. Ask them ‘what do you think that cow was doing?’ And that can be used to start talking about what needs to happen to create a baby.”

An episode of Emmerdale holds untold opportunities.

Kay said: “You switch on the television and you sit there watching Emmerdale while you cook the tea. But the programme deals with some really gritty issues, like homosexuality and teenage pregnancy. Our young children sit there in front of that without their parents very often and pick up bits of ideas and get wrong messages.

“If parents are not around to put that into context, all sorts of things go on in their heads. The programme could be an opportunity to talk about things.”

Historically British parents have been deeply uncomfortable about talking about sex, but gone are the days when we can afford to be embarrassed about a vaguely saucy episode of On The Buses. Under-age sex and unwanted teen pregnancy is a reality; children get on with it whether they are told not to or otherwise, and without the birds and the bees not one of us would be here today.

Those are the facts of life. 

It’s the end of the course and parents seem pleased with what they have learned.

“I really enjoyed learning all about sex and relationships, contraception, sexually transmitted infections and keeping safe,” says one mum. “I never realised how much I didn’t know about this stuff.”

She speaks for many of us.