Growing up in a religious and Asian household, I had very little sex education, if any, it was mainly about purity culture. And it has only been in the past two years that I’ve actually delved into demolishing such sex-negativity. Last month, I ran a webinar on sex-positive parenting with Melissa Pintor Carnagey and I got to check off some of the toxic ideas of purity culture and reframe them with what I’ve learned from Melissa and other wonderful sex educators. And so today, I wanted to share it with our wider podcast audience. It’s so important that we’re opening up these conversations about sex with our kids to help them make informed choices. 

Melissa is the founder of Sex-Positive Families, which provides resources to give children holistic, comprehensive, and shame-free sexuality education so they can live informed, empowered, and safer lives. She is an expert in sexual health education and a mother of three. She currently runs a fantastic online course called Growing Into You which provides gender-inclusive puberty education for kids ages 8-12. 

Show Highlights:

• Deciding for yourself what sex means and giving other people the agency to decide for themselves  
• Early ongoing sexual health education provides more context as kids grow
• Virginity as a construct is self-negative.
• Reframing the language suggesting self-negative ideas
• Self-pleasure as a human right and being able to reclaim your own body
• Reframing fear-based narratives around pornography
• Redefining porn and having a more nuanced conversation about porn
• Discerning how porn affects us
• Seeking age-congruent and age-relevant resources
• Sexuality is not synonymous with sex
• Co-parenting with a sex-negative parent
• Recognizing boundaries and safer ways to learn about sex
• How to talk to kids about sex when they’re not interested
• How to help teens decide when to have sex
• A mindset shift from preventing things we can’t control to preparing our young people for safer and more satisfying experiences

Links (affiliates included):

Growing Into You (Gender-Inclusive Puberty Education for Ages 8-12) – https://sex-positive-families.mykajabi.com/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fsex-positive-families.mykajabi.com%2Fa%2F2147492303%2F27YazHpV 

Parenting After Religious Trauma Membership – https://cindy-brandt.mykajabi.com/partmembership 

Help keep the podcast going by joining the Parenting Forward Patreon Team – https://www.patreon.com/cindywangbrandt

Parenting Forward, the Book – https://amzn.to/3g0LJPn 

You Are Revolutionary – https://www.beamingbooks.com/store/product/9781506478302/You-Are-Revolutionary