Preparing our daughters

Christian moms know the drill: Keep your girls pure until marriage at all costs. We read the books on modesty, on courtship, on saving ourselves for the marriage bed, and we share the facts of life at the right time, maybe even have a special day set aside to talk about becoming a woman and how babies are made.

Yet in and around this talk is another thread, perhaps not verbalized, but definitely present: abject terror.

Although there is certainly valid reason for feeling this way during "the talk," what ends up actually being communicated to your girls is the fear part. Despite what mom verbalizes, the signal she sends out is that sex is B-A-D. Somehow what girls end up learning is that sex is dirty and wrong and scary. Which serves the mother's purpose perfectly because if a daughter is scared of sex or thinks it's disgusting, she is less likely to do it until she is married.

But fast-forward these girls a decade. They are now married, perhaps even with children. They want to enjoy sex but can't because of the childhood associations that oftentimes and quite innocently their mothers put in their heads. So sex is tolerated. Sex is obligatory. Sex is just for the man.

All of which leads to sexual trouble for the woman. She either doesn't like it or doesn't understand it, or both. If she's been pure, she might wonder, even years into marriage, if she's doing it "right" or how exactly it's supposed to go. Her innocence seems to backfire and she's insecure and/or riddled with vestiges of guilt, despite the fact she has a God-given license to imbibe freely and with full enjoyment.

Maybe I didn't get the memo and there's a book out there that talks about this; I don't know. What I do know is that I don't plan on raising my daughters this way. Girls eventually need to know what to expect and when. They need to feel comfortable in their own skin and not made to feel that the flesh is inherently evil. They need to know that, in the right context, sex is natural and good and pleasurable. They need to know that a man's needs do not make him a monster. And when the time is right, they may need facts, frank discussion, and book suggestions.

But what they don't need is a mother riddled with fear, passing on to her daughter the suggestion that sex is something to be merely endured, that it's just for making babies, or that it's dirty. It's a balancing act for sure, but if we can instill in our girls a healthy view of sex, my guess is that both they and our future sons-in-law will fall down and call us blessed.