This month’s guest post is written by Heather Cate from Proven Ministries. Grateful she’s here to give us some helpful hints on having the sex talk.
Do you remember your first “sex talk”?
I vaguely remember mine. My father showed me a picture book for kids with drawings and basic descriptions of our reproductive systems.
While I’m sure I grasped the concept of how babies get made, as much as one can grasp at the age of 8, what interested me more was sexuality.
Even though the memory of my “sex talk” is blurry, I distinctly remember being very curious about our anatomical features — how boys were different from me, a girl. And I remember being captivated by love stories. I loved romance. And as I grew into adolescence, I was captivated by romance and sex.
I kept these curiosities close. Similar to the experience of many of my peers, sex was a taboo subject. I think my parents were just embarrassed to talk about it, which is something they inherited from their parents.
I’m now in my late 20’s and I wonder — what would have happened if I had expressed my curiosity? What would have happened if I asked questions about sexuality? Would my parents have been able to respond in a matter-of-fact manner?
As a millennial evangelical, I grew up with purity culture. While my parents did not make me kiss dating goodbye, thankfully, my mom did hand me several purity books.
I devoured the purity books. Why? Because they were about not having sex and how bad that would be before marriage. And I loved romance and was curious about sex. I couldn’t wait to get married!
This environment, which was a blend of hush hush around the topic of sex and also the purity culture warnings of all the bad things that would happen if you had sex before marriage, has led to a number of issues for me and for my peers.
While I was never exposed, a number of my friends encountered internet pornography at a young age. Since sex was taboo and looking at porn was bad, these peers felt they couldn’t talk to their parents without getting in trouble. Instead, they sunk deeper and deeper.
Those of us, especially women, who stayed “pure” in accordance with the standards of purity culture often discovered on their wedding nights that they knew nothing practical about sex. They had expected it to be a night of magic, a scene from a fairy tale or a Nicholas Sparks movie, and instead had discovered that consummating the union can be hard, awkward, and far from perfect.
I personally have no hard feelings toward my parents! They were not equipped! Our world became increasingly sexualized as my generation grew up and most churches left the topic to youth group leaders teaching purity culture. Which, to be fair, wasn’t all bad. The main problem with purity culture is that it ramped up the shame around our bodies, our curiosities, our desires, and our accidental stumbling upon pornographic content on the internet.
We needed guidance, openness, and honesty. We needed sex to be taken off the pedestal, put in its place alongside the rest of married family life. At the same time, we needed to be encouraged to wait until marriage because sex is a very good gift from God.
I’m sure that you, parents, who are reading this account, want far more for your children. You want to give that biblical and unashamed guidance. Rather than simply telling your kids not to do it until marriage, you want to inspire them with a vision of the beauty of sex
And that is where the Proven Ministries video course, TheSexTalk.com, comes in.
I first started working at Proven Ministries as an office manager in July 2021. When I took the job, I knew that we were a ministry equipping churches, families, and individuals with resources to foster sexual integrity. What I didn’t know is that we were in the process of developing an incredibly exciting resource for parents.
This wasn’t a video course for parents to sit their kids down in front of and walk away, leaving the rest of it to us.
No, TheSexTalk.com is designed to equip parents to start having “the sex talk” early and often. And that’s the thing: it’s not a one-time deal. “The Sex Talk” is an ongoing conversation that will take place over the course of your child’s life. In fact, if you keep the conversation open and honest, you may even have the privilege of talking with your child about their adult sexual experiences!
Why does this matter?
Scripture instructs us to raise up our children in the way they should go.
We believe the way children should go is — at home in their bodies, unashamed in their understanding of how their bodies were made to experience pleasure, and living in integrity and chastity until, Lord-willing, they enter a holy marital union.
At the same time, we have all fallen short. Not one of us is perfect. So sexual purity is not something we are born with; rather, we receive purity in Jesus Christ and we continue to pursue it even in the context of marriage.
Your children will fail and sin sexually. This will look different for each of them. But as a parent, you want your child to be able to talk with you about this. The path to healing and sanctification requires confessing our sins and bringing them into the light.
TheSexTalk.com will help you do this. In an early video in the course, Josh Glasser lays out a framework for addressing your own sexual sin and appropriately sharing that with your child. In a later video, Matt Fradd offers a script for you to use in the instance of discovering that your child has seen pornography. In this script, you, as the parent, apologize for failing to keep your son or daughter safe from the harms of pornography exposure.
The experts in this video course are warm and approachable. Watching our videos is like sitting in a room with Curt Thompson and Dan Allender. They’ve been in your shoes. They have children of their own. And they will give you some of the most invaluable wisdom and instruction on how to start having conversations with your children about sex.
It’s no wonder that I was curious as a child. Sex is a beautiful gift God gave his children to enjoy in marriage. When spouses practice intimacy, they bring God glory.
The world wants to destroy this specific instance of God’s glory and goes after your children from a young age. Don’t let your child discover the details of their bodies and their desires from sources that want to damage and destroy them.
Raise up your children in the way they should go. Sign up for TheSexTalk.com today to get equipped to start raising your child in the way they should go with their bodies, their curiosities, their desires, and their relationships.
We at Hopeful Mom are excited to tell you about this resource! We have partnered with them as an affiliate so your access to this course will equally bless our ministry and our efforts to support parents in an online world. This course will be a game changer for you as you set out to equip and protect your children to thrive is our sex-saturated world. To check out the course click here. Use promo code hopefulmom10 for 10% off.
Subscribe for Hopeful Mom updates and connect on Facebook and Instagram.
About the author
Heather Cate
Heather is originally from Annapolis, Maryland, where she grew up in a Christian household with kind, godly, and committed parents and one younger brother, whom she adores.
Heather graduated from The King’s College in NYC in 2015 with a B.A. in Media, Culture, & the Arts and a minor in Literature.
While at King’s, she encountered Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which birthed in her a hopeful and holistic understanding of sexual integrity. However, it would take many years for Heather’s head knowledge to permeate her heart and transform the way she viewed and interacted with her brothers in Christ.
Heather is passionate about helping women both acknowledge and embrace their bodies and natural desires while also submitting themselves to God’s desire for their sexuality.
One Reply to “The Sex Talk”