If you don’t welcome teens to sex, it could have unwelcome outcomes

I’m sure you’ve heard that some people aren’t happy about Welcome to Sex, a new book that provides a colourful and cartoony overview of the ins, outs and roundabouts of genital anatomy, sexual options and all the emotions that can be part of growing up.

I’ve read the book and think it’s great. It’s everything this mother-of-teens would want a sex-ed resource to be: engaging and informative without being prescriptive. And it’s highly appropriate for the teen group it’s marketed to. There’s no doubt it’s detailed; I confess I learned a thing or two and definitely would have benefitted from reading it during my teen years.

Reading Welcome to Sex as a parent reminds me that I have a long-held complaint about our reluctance to discuss even the basic anatomy that allows us to have sex. You see, by age seven, my kids could name all the major bones and most of the body’s organs, yet the books and apps they were learning from completely neglected the reproductive system.

That’s odd because all kids have genitals and many are hugely curious about them from a very young age. So let’s teach children the names for their bits – both formal names and nicknames. I’m shocked that many adults – including families on Nine’s Parental Guidance – either don’t know what a vulva is or use the word vagina instead. Sure, the two are connected but the difference is very significant when it comes to talking to a medical professional and learning about sex.

I advocate for all “human body” books to include the names and anatomical details of vulvas, vaginas and penises as well as hearts, femurs and lungs.

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In addition to learning language so we can think, and talk about, our genitals and sex, another key concept behind any age-appropriate sex education is that knowledge equals power. Not power over others but, far more importantly, the power to understand yourself and therefore make informed decisions. I worry about what power those objecting to Welcome to Sex are trying to hold on to, and therefore deny others.

I suspect the furore over this new book, co-written by former Dolly Doctor Melissa Kang and all-round commentator Yumi Stynes, is smaller than our social-media outrage-driven world would like us to believe. However, it’s resulted in enough face-to-face abuse that Big W withdrew the book from sale in-store. I would like to say the furore is old-fashioned but, sadly, a return to 1950s-era gender norms and repression seems to be the aim of some sections of our society.

It’s not as if sex-ed books are new. My daughter has a copy of Kaz Cooke’s excellent Girl Talk which covers similar content (as well as puberty and other teen issues) in an equally up-front way. I grew up in the era of Where Did I Come From, a book from 1974 that’s aimed at primary school-aged children.