Resources for Parents: Sexual Literacy and Sexual Ethics

As parents, we hope that our children will build meaningful, mutually respectful, and honest relationships as adults. At the same time, many of us find it challenging to talk openly about topics like intimacy, sexuality, and consent. 

How can we open the lines of communication on these essential topics? How can we share our values with our children, rather than allowing them to be intentionally or unintentionally educated by friends, pop culture, and media?

We have resources to help!

Why (and When) Should We Talk to Our Kids About Sex?
Research shows that children and teenagers who have regular conversations with their parents about intimate relationships and sex are more likely to make safe and healthy choices. 

While parents and teachers traditionally begin sex education during puberty, today pediatricians recommend that parents start having healthy, honest, and age-appropriate conversations about body basics, bodily autonomy, and consent starting at 5 years old. 

Opening the lines of communication in kindergarten and elementary school lays the groundwork for more detailed discussions about intimacy, relationships, and sex during middle school. The key is to scaffold the conversations in age-appropriate ways, bolstered by your values as a family. (Scroll down for more resources on how to start the conversation, if you haven’t already!

What Can I Expect My Child to Learn at School?
At Marin Waldorf School, we aim to educate children to become responsible, informed, respectful, and open-minded adults. While topics like consent and bodily autonomy come up in early grades, sex education is explicitly introduced in middle school, as part of our social ethics curriculum, as well as in the study of physiology and the human reproductive system.

Social ethics is a discussion-based class that covers a range of areas, from racism and anti-bias education to personal health and digital citizenship. We also cover topics like puberty, sex, sexual orientation, gender and gender roles, consent, and how to be a responsible friend and partner.

In social ethics, sex education is presented in an open, age-appropriate way, and within the context of relationships, health, personal responsibility, and society. The goal is to empower middle-schoolers to think deeply and share their opinions with the class in a supportive, teacher-led setting. 

Educating Ourselves to Educate Our Children
For most of us, sex education was awkward, outdated, or uninformative—certainly not a model for how we’d like our children to learn about this important aspect of life and society. So how can we get started? One of the first steps is defining our values and expectations, and sharing those values and expectations with our children. 

Author, activist, teacher, and nonprofit founder Natasha Singh is a frequent speaker at Marin Waldorf School. During her lively and thought-provoking presentations, Natasha emphasizes the importance of understanding our own view of sex and sexual ethics. With provocative questions, she quickly reveals that we all have deeply held values around sex and relationships—some we might not even be aware of!

Natasha’s roadmap to sexual literacy includes discussing your values directly with children, starting in the early years, in addition to having age-appropriate conversations about topics like bodily autonomy, body parts, consent, and relationships in elementary school. Through these conversations, we lay the groundwork for topics puberty, sex, and relationships in middle school and high school.

Want to learn more about Natasha’s approach? Following her talk in March, Natasha provided a document with Tips & Resources for Waldorf Parents to talk about sex, consent, bodily autonomy, and other key issues. We are delighted to share them with you! 

Resources: Talking About Sex With Children 

  • If you missed her presentation in March, you can get a taste of Natasha's approach in this podcast from Parent Footprint with Dr. Dan. 

Julie Meade