133: How the Things We Learned About Sex Impact Our Children

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

Today we build on episodes that we've done in the past on talking with children about the basics of sex (so when you listen to this episode we're assuming you've got the basics covered - things like using anatomically correct names for body parts and taking basic steps to prevent sexual abuse).

This is the first in a mini-series of episodes that digs deeper into topics related to sex. Here we talk with Charlotte Rose, co-host of the Speaking of Sex podcast by the Pleasure Mechanics, about what and how we adults learned about sex.

We talk about the shame that pretty much all of us learned to associate with sex (and how to overcome that), and what we can do to improve the chances of having sex with our partner - even if we're feeling so tired that this currently seems out of the question.

We're setting the stage here to approach sex from a less pressured, more fun perspective - which will help us in an upcoming episode to figure out what we want to discuss with our children about sex, sexuality, and pleasure.

Jump to highlights:

• (01:00) Today's topic and Parenting Membership reopening announcement
• (02:20) Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop announcement
• (03:55) Chris and Charlotte Rose the Pleasure Mechanics
• (05:16) The primary focus of today's episode
• (06:09) Sex isn't what it used to be before we became parents
• (08:39) Responsive desire and spontaneous desire
• (09:17) Erotic simulation and how there is nothing wrong with your sexual relationship
• (11:54) Creating a culture of pleasure within your relationship
• (14:42) Continual consent - it doesn't always need to lead to sex
• (15:34) Sex is adults at play
• (17:37) Sex educations centered around abstinence, secrecy, and shame and how we move forward from that
• (20:39) A parenting opportunity to create a different culture for our children, so that they have to unlearn so much less with regards to sex
• (22:35) How does shame show up in parents' sexual relationship?
• (25:21) So much judgment about sexuality and how it gets in the way of our connection with our partner
• (29:04) A culture of community care to have these conversations
• (29:49) Initiation and refusal/rejection
• (34:36) Mindful sex: How to enjoy sex more
• (39:27) Finding that balance when having the sex conversation with our children
• (42:23) Giving kids the building blocks so that they can have an experience to healthy sexuality when it is time for them
• (45:39) Experiencing self massage in a non sexual way
• (50:16) Body neutrality
• (51:36) Wrapping up

Here are the resources we discussed on the show:

Pleasure Mechanics Resources

• Charlotte & Chris' free online course The Erotic Essentials
• Conversation starters about sex
• Podcast episode on spontaneous vs. responsive desire
• Podcast episode on mindful sex (making sex better through focusing on the present)
• Podcast episode on body image

Other Resources

• AASECT therapist referral directory
• Peer-reviewed article on the 237 reasons people have sex
• Guy Winch's TED Talk on How to Practice Emotional First Aid, as well as more explicit resources on why rejection hurts so much - and in peer-reviewed form too
• Research on mindful sex
• Outspoken Sex Ed

Made for you by Jen:

• The Parenting Membership
• FREE Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I’m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of Respectful Parenting. if you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen to You, and What to Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Jen 01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a bit of a different episode lined up for you today, and if you usually listen to the show with your children around, you might want to reconsider that one today because we're going to be talking about S-E-X. And now we have thousands of little kids around the world asking, "What's S-E-X?" So before we get started with this awesome conversation, I wanted to let you know about a couple things happening in the Your Parenting Mojo world. Firstly, open enrollment for the Parenting Membership is coming up starting on May 2. The membership helps families to take information from the podcast and provides the guidance and the support that you need to help you implement these ideas in your own home with your own family. So whether you're struggling with parenting at the moment and wondering how much longer can things keep going like this, or if you're seeing the vaccine-related light at the end of the tunnel and thinking it's not going to be like this forever, and you're looking for tools to support you through that transition, as well as the normal day to day challenges that will still keep coming up as we all get back to real life, the Parenting membership provides the support that you need to not just survive, but thrive in your parenting journey. I’ll share more in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, you can go to YourParentingMojo.com/ParentingMembership to learn more about the membership. And while you're there, you can join the waitlist if you'd like to be the first to be notified when it reopens. Jen 02:20 For those of you who might be interested in the membership but would like to dip a toe in the water first or if you can't wait and you need help ASAP then I have some news for you there too. i've just reopened registration for my Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop. Normally this is available to pay for and work through at your own pace, but starting Monday, April 26, I will walk you through the whole thing in a series of exercise to help you see limits in an entirely different way. You'll have a little bit of reading and a short exercise to do each day for five days and a supportive community that isn't on Facebook to ask questions and get answers in the community as well as through a masterclass call, where you'll get the chance to ask me questions directly. if you find yourself setting a lot of limits on your children's behavior and they aren't listening to you or they're actively defying you. in the workshop, you'll learn how to cut the number of limits you set by at least half while also not becoming the dreaded permissive parent whose child walks all over them. Parents who go through the workshop report that the tone of the interactions they have in their family makes a huge shift after they learn these tools. And suddenly their children who used to resist every single little thing, are now willing to do amazing things like cooperate, and collaborate, and compromise. So if you could use some more of these things in your life, then head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/SettingLimits to register for the FREE Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop. Registrations open now and the workshop get started on Monday, April 26. I’ll see you there. Jen 03:55 So we were supposed to have two guests today, Chris and Charlotte Rose, who are a couple and who are known as the Pleasure Mechanics, and they are also the host of the podcast Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. And unfortunately Chris is in some gastrointestinal distress and is unable to join us today, but Charlotte has gamely agreed to appear with us, and we're hoping that Chris will be available on a future date to continue the conversation. So I found Chris and Charlotte in a really random way because I was exploring a blog post that therapists Dr. Esther Perel had written called the 7 Verbs That Shaped the Way You Love., and we were looking at that in the Parenting Membership Community because one of the important ways that we've learned about these verbs is through our relationships with our children. And we learned about these through our interactions with our parents. And so the most interesting and useful analysis that I found that super short blog post was in a podcast hosted by our new friends Chris and Charlotte and when I started digging into their work, I realized that I wanted to explore so much more about the ways that our children learn about being in relationships as well as about sex from us. And so I’m not just talking about the anatomically correct terminology and how to spot sexual abuse because we have done episodes on both of those things but how to help children understand boundaries and communication and pleasure in their intimate relationships. Jen 05:16 And so today we're going to focus primarily on the parents angle at this and then we will have more guests, hopefully Chris and some other guests as well in the future, looking at how our children learn about this and what our children are learning and what we want to be teaching them about this. So to formally introduce them, Chris who wishes she were here and Charlotte who is here have very similar bios. Reading through their bios, they both studied Sociology as undergrads, then Sexological Bodywork and then Somatic Sexology and then erotic massage and they've been creating online resources on erotic education since 2006. The internet was a thing in 2006. And they're also parents of a six-year-old so welcome Charlotte today and welcome in spirit to Chris as well. Charlotte Rose 06:04 Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here and yes... Charlotte Rose 06:06 Chris is so sorry not to be here but hopefully you will chat another moment. Yeah. Jen 06:06 Yeah. Jen 06:09 Yeah I hope so too. Awesome! Well we are really glad to have you here and we're wondering if maybe we can kind of ease into this topic with something that I’m guessing affects a lot of parents and maybe you're not immune from this either despite all of your training and that is that sex probably isn't what it used to be before we became parents. And we actually use the term kind of broadly in our lives B.C. to mean Before Carys which is our daughter's name and so we might say something like "Oh, we used to do X like mountain biking Before Carys - B.C. - and of course sex is one of those things that can fit into that framework as well. And so I’m curious with all the people that you work with I’m sure many of them are parents, how common is this in among the people that you work with? Charlotte Rose 06:52 It is so common and I really want people to know that that it is so normal and it makes so much sense that it is harder to prioritize sex in these early years of having kids especially some experts say that up to kind of when your youngest kid is four or five that your life just is so different in this area and it makes sense like our focus of attention is so on this little being all of a sudden and that changes the relational dynamics entirely in your family, in your relationship. We just don't have enough time to take care of ourselves to rest to sleep. Our hormones have changed our experience of our body has changed. Even for non-carrying parents which is also interesting to think about like the oxytocin levels we're getting from looking at our baby is nourishing in a way and we sometimes don't need it as much from our partner and somebody can feel left out because of that. There are just hundreds of dynamics going on depending on your specific family but the similarities are that it is extremely hard to create time and have the energy to be able to really cultivate this part of our life. And we really like to remember that there are seasons of sexuality in our lifetime and that this one is a harder one and partly if we can go at it knowing that that's normal and that we want to stay connected as much as possible so when we get to the other side of that we still want to be having sex with this person and that we feel connected and supported enough that we are interested and want to keep our sexual relationship going. I also want to tell people that like I cannot tell you how many like late 50s, 60s, 70-year-olds report they're having the best sex of our lives. So also just want to know that there is hope ahead because I found that really like surprising and interesting when I first kept hearing this message. Charlotte Rose 08:39 But one of the important things I want people to know to be able to shift this slowly and to try and increase the amount of connection and intimate connection we can be having is to really know about this idea of responsive desire versus spontaneous desire because this is something that has been studied and it's so important to know. So we have this cultural idea that we experience desire first and then arousal. And often that is how men experience arousal but that's not even always true. But in reality there is this whole... so it's sort of like a lightning bolt hits you... Jen 09:14 Yeah like how it happens in the movies. Charlotte Rose 09:17 That's how we think of right like what happens in Hollywood films so we've been trained like that is what sex is and anyone who deviates from that is broken or not normal and there's something wrong with you. But in reality there's this whole other way of being with our desire and arousal where we're not that