These days, the relationship between age and sex has become more blurred. In our current media landscape, we see images of sex portrayed in commercials, music videos, and television shows increasingly geared toward younger audiences. Even the way we talk about sex seems to have changed. Why is it that sex is no longer as taboo a subject? And is this change a good thing? Diane Levin, a children’s author, just wrote “So Sex, So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood” in which she talks about ways parents can protect their children from the dangers that seem to be all around us. Limiting the negative information that children can find in a web search has become a popular pastime for worrying parents, while simultaneously more websites for teens abound that give all kinds of information about sex, some helpful and others less so. Teens used to get their information only from parents, schools, or by word-of-mouth. Now they seem to be able to access it from anywhere, and more than that, it is readily provided to them. A battle seems to exist between advertisers, who see a new and profitable market in children, and the parents and loved ones that are involved in these children’s lives.

With the landscape changing dramatically and undeniably for newer generations, we now see stronger opposition from the same proponents that have been waging the abstinence-only fight for years, with much support coming from religious institutions. Just recently, the National Abstinence Education Association began the Parents for Truth campaign aimed at enlisting over 1 million adults in a lobbying effort against comprehensive sex education in public schools. At the same time, health care providers at Planned Parenthood, an organization that supports reproductive freedom, cite studies that show teaching abstinence in schools does nothing to curb sexual behavior for teenagers in the long run. Many say that if things are changing, the way we talk to kids needs to change. The general assumption is that there is more honesty and less sugarcoating of information for our kids, and we could benefit from filtering and articulating the barrage of information about sex so that children can still learn the facts and what is morally sound from their parents. This might mean more pressure on parents to have the “sex talk” at earlier ages.

Is there a problem in having the wrong information versus having no information? What do the competing viewpoints of the media, churches, and parents suggest about how our culture is changing and the ways we think about sex? Why do you think there so much controversy? And what about the bigger issue of sex education and its place in schools, the main source of information for our children: is there a right or wrong way to teach or learn about it?