Books About Sex For Tweens

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Now, I will be very honest about this book. Your teen will learn about masturbation and how to do it, read about the pull-out method, and some of the reviewers thought it was more appropriate for older teens.

This is FRESH AIR. I am Terry Gross. Our guest, Cory Silverberg, is a sex educator who's the child of a children's librarian and a sex therapist and identifies as queer. Silverberg's books focus on sex education for kids. Their latest book is geared toward young people hitting puberty and their parents and caregivers. Silverberg spoke with our guest interviewer Tonya Mosley, host of the podcast Truth Be Told. Here's Tonya with more.

TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE: How do you talk to kids about sex? Better yet, how do you talk to yourself about it? Cory Silverberg has spent much of their adult life exploring what they call the complexity and beauty of sex, bodies and gender. Silverberg's latest book, "You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, And Other Things," is part of a trilogy, which includes "What Makes A Baby" and "Sex Is A Funny Word." These books are described as some of the first of their kind to not only teach children about the basics of sex, but also those stickier topics like how one's identity as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or gender-nonconforming factors into our sexuality.

OK, so before we get started, a note to everyone, especially those listening with children - in this conversation, we will not be describing anything explicit, but we will be talking about sex. And with that, Cory Silverberg, welcome to FRESH AIR.

MOSLEY: Yes, thank you for being here. One reviewer of your book says that your book is, quote, "bucking decades of conventional wisdom on how to teach kids about intimacy and sex." You're a sex educator, and you know a lot about the history of sex ed. What theories were there before?

SILVERBERG: (Laughter) I love that question because the answer is not very many. So actually, like, sex education is very undertheorized. So I'm sort of talking in a more kind of academic way or pedagogically. There is not a lot of theory about sex and sex education, period. There still isn't. You know, there's theories of development, but those theories were not written in the context of sexual development. So a lot of us have just been flying by the seat of our pants and doing our best. And, you know, and I'm lucky that there were these educators who would write these books. And, you know, the bucking the tradition or the trends, part of that is also who you center, right? So a lot of sex education centers either the adult expert and what they think young people as a population need to know, or it centers parents and their fears and concerns. Our books center young people.

SILVERBERG: Every chapter, every topic, we start - when I'm writing, it's about, like, how - what's the experience of this from a young person? So, you know, so the body autonomy section, we talk a lot about, like - you know, there's examples of, like, kids having to get, you know, shots. It's interesting 'cause I started writing this before COVID, but - so they were like the - you know, the tetanus shots and stuff like that. Now, it's a different thing - because that's a young person's experience of body autonomy.

Adults want to go right to kind of a sexual conversation 'cause they are concerned about sexual violence, which is fine. They should be. But I actually think that it's - that pedagogically, it's a better learning experience if you meet people where they're at. So I'm interested in - you know, in talking to young people and letting young people see their own lives on the page. And then we start with the information.

SILVERBERG: Well, so, you know, the first thing I want kids to know is that sex is a word - right? - because we think of it as this objective thing that exists. And for young people, they often think about it as this thing that they don't know about, that they're not supposed to know about, and then therefore, they're usually a little bit curious about. And I really want to kind of undo that manufactured sort of titillation. And so we start by saying sex is a word. And we say it's a funny word 'cause it's short, but it means many things.

And the three things we start with are, first of all, that sex is a word we use to define bodies - right? - to describe bodies. So humans have come up with this idea of male and female as categories. And we just say very quickly, there's more than those two categories. So there's that. Sex is also something people do to feel good in their bodies. So for the younger children, that's all we say. Sex is something people do - well, I think I say, it's something people do to feel good in their bodies and to feel connected to other people. So that's sort of the second definition. And so for adults, of course, we would talk about that as having sex. And then the third definition that we talk about when we talk about sex is that it's one way we can make babies. So it's one way that humans reproduce.

SILVERBERG: Well, because we don't, right? So - because so much sex education starts with reproduction. And the fact is that most of the sex that happens on the planet is not for reproduction. Sex is everywhere, right? It's in the media. It's in the books we read. It's in the news. And all of that stuff is not about reproduction. So for me, it was fundamental to start by separating these out because that's our experience. And, again, I would distinguish, you know, I'm not a scientist, and I'm not giving a science lesson. And a science lesson is important, and there's lots of books that do that. This is a different book. This is a book that's talking about - that really looks at sex and gender as a relational. So when we think about these things as a relationship, it's actually important to start with the relationship.

And so I really wanted to - you need to start by kind of breaking it down because it does feel - for a lot of us, and this is not just true for young people - it feels like a monolith, right? It feels like this terrifying thing that we don't know enough about, that we probably aren't doing right. And the first thing I wanted to do is - like, it's sort of just, like, asking everyone to take a deep breath - right? - just like, let's just relax and acknowledge that this is a thing in our world and that we can explore it in ways that feel safe and comfortable, you know, and respect each other's boundaries.

MOSLEY: ...Looking to materials to be able to put language to these things. But in addition to reproduction, most books on sex education also start out with the premise that sex is great and that eventually...

SILVERBERG: Because it's true, right? Like, this is this weird thing about - it's not just sex education, but the way that we talk about sex in our world is it doesn't actually reflect people's experience. So, you know, you mentioned that one of my older jobs was - I had actually worked in kind of a queer, feminist sex store. So for many years, I talked to people about their sex lives, adults, in these brief interactions. And so I've talked to thousands of people. And it was very clear to me that, like, everybody's experience of this is not what we ever see on TV and movies or in educational books.

So I don't want to set kids up for this idea that there's a future - I mean, let me also share this, that, like, part of my work as a queer person is to really be thinking about futures because when I was young, I didn't know that I had one. And that's actually what put me at the greatest risk. And part of the problem - I mean, I'm a parent, too, and it's very hard for us parents not to - of course, we want to imagine our kids' futures. That is fine and it makes sense and I do it. The problem is, is that we can't, right? We can never know what our kids' futures are going to be like. And when we tell them, this is your future, when we give them picture books and educational books and say, you're going to get married or you're going to get this kind of job or you're going to find happiness in this way, when they don't, it becomes a real problem.

MOSLEY: Well, let's talk a little bit about the parent and caregiver's role in being able to articulate and help children work through these books because these books are actually meant to be used along with guided conversations between a caregiver and a child. That is a tall ask. What are the biggest hang-ups you've encountered that you find might be a roadblock in parents being able to have these frank conversations with their children?

SILVERBERG: I mean, I would - I'm going to reframe it as not a hang-up but sort of barrier, which is to say trauma, right? So the reality is that many of us live with trauma around sex. So many of us, unfortunately, have experienced violence or harassment or bullying or some combination. And then we find our ways to kind of - we survive it. We don't necessarily get the opportunity to really unpack it. And then we have a kid, and then we realize we need to have these conversations. So for many of us, it's because we don't know how to have these - we don't know how to put up our own boundaries and feel safe in having these conversations. So honestly, that's not the thing that gets mentioned a lot, right? We do a lot of - as parents, we do a lot of giggling about like, oh, it's embarrassing. But our own experiences of violence and trauma are one of the biggest barriers. So then in addition to that, also the way we treat sex - right? - that we talk about it, we treat it like it's this titillating thing, that it's both this thing that's beautiful and amazing and also kind of evil and shouldn't be done. And so the outcome of that is, is that we don't - it's not a daily conversation.

One of the best gifts I got in my family growing up, it's not specifically, like, how good my father or my mother were talking about these subjects, but because of what they did for a living, they were daily topics, right? So sex was always on the table as something to talk about. And if your job is working in retail or in a bank, you may not have the - it may be a little bit strange to bring - it may feel strange to talk about sex with your kids. And then, of course, the fact that we now live with the internet and social media mean that our kids are exposed to so much more information earlier. 2b1af7f3a8