Davis parents encouraged to talk with their children about sex

PHOTO: Peggy Orienstien speaks at the Davis Parent University lecture on Feb.10.

By Katrina Haws,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

For most families, topics of sex and intimacy are not considered regular dinner table conversation. On Feb. 10, Davis parents were encouraged to talk more candidly with their children about sex and intimacy. 

Davis Parent University (DPU) held a virtual lecture event featuring keynote speaker Peggy Orienstien. Orienstien, a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker on gender issues, recently published Boys and Sex, a book centered around hook ups, love, porn, consent and navigating the new masculinity.

DPU is a grassroots committee with past lectures ranging from topics centered around understanding the social lives of children to modern parenting. The organization focuses on providing the Davis community with high-caliber lectures and programming for parents, caregivers, teachers and administrators in an attempt to advocate for the well-being of every child.

DPU Co-chairs, Abby Koenig and Jenny Canfield, were eager to welcome Orienstien and her expertise to the DPU stage.

“[Discussing sex and intimacy] was new territory for us because of the sensitive topic, but I’m so glad that we took the leap because her talk was fantastic, energetic and needed,” Canfield said.

“I’m really eager to talk to my daughters, especially my 14 year old […] and just to be really honest and vulnerable and brave as a parent in talking about all of this,” Canfield said.

“The tools DPU speakers have given me have really meant the world. I can hear speakers’ voices in my head sometimes when I’m at that point as a parent where I think I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know how to handle this. So that’s meant the world and I think that’s been the experience for a lot of people,” Koenig said.

“As much as many parents, myself included, would like to ignore the whole world of porn, it’s not a privilege that we have. It’s a reality that our kids are going to be exposed. It seems like it behooves us to find tools to mitigate the distorting effects of porn and provide a healthier framework for discussing sex and intimate hard topics,” Koenig said.

“It’s incredibly moving to me to hear somebody like Peggy issue that call to all of us to pay attention early on to the way we talk about emotion or don’t talk about emotion with boys and the ways that we might neglect boys’ interior lives and the opportunity we have to find a different way, to find a better way… this is a time where we’re struggling with a lot of anger and rage and to me the work that parents can do in providing the tools that children will need to navigate the world in safe ways emotionally to me that is not an insignificant step towards addressing some of the really entrenched divisions in our country and in our world,” Koenig said.

“I’ve been wanting to find language for how to encourage my boys to prioritize emotional connection before physical intimacy and she just gave a lot of wonderful phraseology around that often thorny conversation so I really appreciated how she emphasized the desire of so many teens for true emotional connection and yes this kind of cultural quandary they’re found in that often times seems to glorify a kind of detached intimacy,” Koenig said.