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AS we
pursue the goal of protecting our children from some of
our more boneheaded and/or high-risk antics, we face one
of the essential dilemmas of parenting: What do children
need to know about their parents’ pasts, and when do
they need to know it?
Maybe
there has been a definitive study saying tell your
teenagers everything, or definitely tell them nothing,
or definitely always lie. Maybe there was a brochure
with guidelines. I was curious to know whether teenagers
view their parents as role models; and, if so, do they
model their behavior on their parents’
present—paycheck-earning, soccer-driving,
homework-supervising—or their less exemplary pasts? I
also wanted to know whether children are capable of
understanding who their mothers and fathers are, or
whether they would even want to.
What a
coincidence, marveled Rosemary, a genial woman who
answered the phone at the Yale Child Study Center. She’d
just been out for cocktails with friends who had debated
exactly that issue. These were women with older
teenagers, and among the queries they had already
received were: “When did you first have sex?” and “Mom,
did you smoke pot?” and the dreaded catchall, “What kind
of things did you do?” Some of the mothers had answered
honestly; some had not. She offered to put me in touch
with one of the center’s staff counselors, who called
back and said, apologetically, “There isn’t any
one-size-fits-all response to your question.”
And that
is what I found. Asking experts and parents with more
experience than I have, it emerged that there is no road
map, perhaps because this was not something mothers of
past generations had to deal with, or not quite so
acutely. While youthful misbehavior was by no means born
with the baby boomers, it seems safe to say that women
growing up before the 1960s had fewer temptations
available to them, and usually married before they had a
chance to engage in much illicit behavior. And those
mothers who did have dark secrets—like Lady Dedlock in
Bleak House denying her illegitimate daughter—knew
they’d darn well better keep them hidden. Only lately
has it become thinkable that a woman might acknowledge
having a less-than-perfect past, though even now you
wonder if mothers might be judged more harshly than
fathers for youthful indiscretions.
So,
should you admit to your child what you’ve done? If you
do, how will it affect your ability to keep your son or
daughter from engaging in the ever-lengthening list of
things we want children to avoid in this age of Just Say
No? Drugs, drinking, drinking and driving, drugging and
driving, driving too fast, texting while driving,
downloading porn from the Internet, chatting online with
strangers, too-early sex, oral sex, unprotected sex,
drug-or-alcohol-induced sex, sex with jerks, sex with a
girl who aspires to have a baby...the list of anxieties
is never-ending. If you cop to something, anything, will
this give your children tacit permission to try it all?
Remarkably few—if any—researchers have explored this
topic.
“What I
could find on this specific conversation is basically
nothing,” reported Jennifer Manlove, a senior research
associate at Child Trends, a reliable source of data on
children and adolescents.
Which is
surprising, when you consider that one truth universally
recognized nowadays is that it’s crucially important to
talk to your kids, early and often, about all of the
above-mentioned topics. This represents a departure from
what many of us experienced growing up. Thirty years
ago, parents laid down the law in a general way, sternly
warning us to behave ourselves, and left it at that.
Teachers were not much more helpful. In all my years of
school, I never received an educational session on
contraception, whereas my own children have been
subjected to “Family Life Education” curricula so often
that the word “penis” actually bores them. Growing up, I
do remember one junior-high assembly where an antivice
type warned us against drug abuse, offering as an
example an addict who allegedly put her baby in the oven
and cooked it. We did not take these stories seriously
and, because the few people talking to us were not
talking in reasonable terms, we stopped listening.
All that
has changed. “Millions of little interchanges” is how
Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent
Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, described the regular
conversations parents are advised to have with children
about sex, and drugs, and drinking, and driving.
“Consistently, the teens have always said...that parents
have the greatest influence on their sexual decisions,”
said Brown, though parents do not always appreciate
their own influence.
“Specific conversations about risky behavior are
important with kids,” seconded Manlove, making it less
likely they will “have sex at an early age, or [become]
involved in some sort of substance abuse, or [bad]
academic outcomes or delinquencies or problem
behaviors.”
So it’s
odd, really, that there is no consensus on what to do
when one of the million little interchanges involves the
question of whether the parent is—oh, say—familiar with
the taste of strawberry-flavored rolling paper. Experts,
exploring their own gut instincts, differ.
“I never
felt I had to reveal much,” said Brenda Rhodes Miller,
executive director of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy. “As teenagers, my kids would ask me, what did
you do...I never wanted to lie to them about things, but
I didn’t think my sexual history—what I might or might
not have done as a teenager—was useful to them in
developing their own decision-making skills.”
Brown,
somewhat in contrast, posited that teenagers find it
powerful when parents look back and reflect on their own
mistakes. “An honest answer—particularly if it’s, here’s
what I did, I had sex for the first time at 16, and...on
reflection I would not have done it, and I think you
should not do it and here’s why—that’s a very honest
answer that adolescents find deeply credible and
meaningful.”
“Err on
the side of sharing less,” advised Daniel Buccino, a
director of the Baltimore Psychotherapy Institute and an
assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical
Center.
“Especially with teens, it is helpful for parents to
remain authoritative without being authoritarian, and it
is hard to be authoritative if there has been too much
self-disclosure.”
And that
is the rub. Research does show that it’s important for
parents to establish clear household values. “If you
don’t want your kid to have unprotected sex, or you
don’t want them having sex when very young, or doing
drugs, it’s very important to show very strong
disapproval of that,” Manlove stressed. In other words,
you risk sending a mixed message if you broke any of
those rules and then ask your child not to break them.
One
thing the experts agree on is: Be prepared to face this
quandary. A question will be lobbed at you, probably
from the back seat, probably when you are navigating a
highway interchange. “I think it’s important to reflect
on one’s own adolescence and think about how to answer
those questions,” said Brown. “They come up in most
families.” |
