The outcome can be no less than positive and its experience rewarding. He and I still plan to marry. The chances of another pregnancy is now eliminated by the use of birth control pills. We have now discovered more to our relationship, a deeper meaning. And I have come to understand myself, appreciate myself individually.
I had never seen Daddy cry before. We had always been very close,
and it hurt me terribly to have caused him and Mom the shame and
distrust that they now had for me. Even as hurt as he was, Dad
accepted my boyfriend. He told Mom that 'when I hear what he had
done to our daughter, I felt I had to kill him, but no matter how I
try, I just can't help loving that damn kid.'
Outcomes of Adolescent Sexual Encounters with Parents
As has been made apparent earlier, teenagers commonly feel that the sex
education received from parents has been lacking, inadequate, or inaccurate. The
minority feel that the sex education received from parents was adequate.
I don't feel that my parents cheated me in this respect, because
between the "locker room" type of sex education I received (some of
it leading to false ideas), and the sex education that the church was
to give me later on, I was adequately prepared for later life. It is my
belief, however, that all parents should give their children liberal
sex education early enough in life so that they don't fall prey to
many false ideas.
I feel that by not being provided with the basic sexual knowledge
everyone has a right to, I was cheated, and I cheated myself out of
what could have been some wonderful relationships.
If I had known earlier what I now know about sex, many fears
would have been overcome much earlier. Many fretful and anxious
hours avoided.
Unlike my closest girlfriends' parents, my parents set a definite
time when they expected me home from various evening activities
during my high school career. Actually now I am grateful for their
concern and realize how liberal they really were, but at that time I
thought I was really abused-the only girl out of the nine girls in
my class who had "hours."
I felt that I could not communicate with my parents about dating,
and ask their advice. I think if they would have opened up more
and given me some sex education and dating advice, I would have
been better off. This is where I think parents really fail their
children. We just couldn't communicate on this issue.
Perhaps the reason for my repression is my mother's exceptionally
uptight attitudes towards sex-"Don't look, don't touch," which I
still have a great deal of difficulty coping with.
The following case is the reaction of a young adolescent to the sex education she
had received through her church and home.
Thus by age thirteen, I was a cold, unemotional adolescent who
valued virginity above all else. However, my inability to relate to
boys was a constant source of frustration.
In the following pages, we tabulate the adolescent reactions to the various
sexual-erotic experiences. The reactions here tabulated reflect some of the joys and
sorrows in the sex lives of adolescents. Since they are not drawn from a representative
sample of adolescents, they are to be treated as illustrative and suggestive rather
than as proving a point. Of the 185 separate reactions tabulated, only slightly more
than a third (36 percent) are positive, and nearly two thirds (64 percent) are negative.
The author's case files contain the date of entry for all but nine of the 152 cases. Date
of entry varies from 1959 to 1971, a range of thirteen years.5
Adolescent Reactions to Sexual-Erotic Encounters
Positive Negative
Sexual Awakening
The hardest part was accepting myself.(1968).
Embarrassed. (1967).
Ashamed of my feelings; rebuking myself. (1963).
Dirty. (1967).