Squamish’s Dr. Daniele Doucet is a certified clinical sexologist and sex therapist in the corridor. The Squamish Chief sat down with Doucet for a chat about everything from sex as new parents to sex as seniors. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Q: There are plenty of babies and young children in Squamish. What should parents expect from their sex life when they have just had a baby?
A: You should expect your sex life to be very hard. There’s sleep deprivation and there needs to be a real awareness that male sexuality is different than female sexuality. Often men can be tired, but that doesn’t impact their sex drive, whereas for women when they are tired and their pelvic floor isn’t as strong as it was pre-pregnancy there’s going to be pain, discomfort and certainly not a whole lot of desire in the first few years of being a parent.
That can create a lot of relational challenges and tension. One of the things I try to educate parents on is how they can be sexual and sexual with each other in a way that takes into consideration the fact that they are exhausted. So, this is figuring out what feels pleasurable for them that isn’t going to take a lot of their energy.
Q: When and how should parents talk to their kids about sex?
A: The first few years are really about helping kids learn to identify their body parts. What we often see is people call the genitals “pee-pees” and “flowers” – words that don’t identify what that body part is. When that happens we are giving an indirect message that this is a body part name that is so big, bad and ugly that we have to find cutsie-wootsie names and that can contribute to shame. In early development, from one to four years old, you should teach kids how to identify their genitals and their body parts with the actual words.
As they start to develop a bit more, teach about how their bodies are their own and teach about boundaries.
Q: How can parents raise their kids in a way that doesn’t create shame or fear about possibly being LGBTQ+?
A: Ultimately, I think it boils down to adults getting appropriate sex education. We put all the emphasis on sex education in the schools when the majority of adults right now didn’t have adequate sex education themselves. So their kids often know a lot more than the parents do and so you create this generation gap, where the parents don’t know how to support teenagers through these really challenging pieces of sexual and gender identity.
I think the solution is for parents to get adequate sex education that is more factual than morally based.
Q: Why is there still fear for some parents around gender identity and homosexuality?
A: There’s so much history and socio-cultural influences wrapped up in that. Historically, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] we had homosexuality as a mental disorder.
That would create fear around sexual orientation that, even though sexual orientation and homosexuality is no longer considered a mental disorder, we are still catching up from the influence of that time period.
But gender dysphoria [when
psychological identity as male or female is opposite to one’s biological sex] is still in the most recent DSM. So that is part of the fear, “Oh my God, if my kid doesn’t fit within this binary it means he’s mentally ill.”
That is scary for parents.
Q: Moving on to teens, pornography seems to be everywhere on their computers and phones. I think we can agree most porn is not offering great examples of sex. Can you address this issue?
A: I think the influence is huge. Porn often doesn’t teach them how to relate in a healthy way because it is only focused on sexual acts. What kids are seeing in porn is very patriarchal; A lot of the focus is on male pleasure. They are also picking up messages about what it means to have sex.
Porn can be useful for some adults, but for teens, I am going to speculate, that the research is going to come down the pipe to show that people of this generation are going to have struggles with their sexual functioning because they don’t get adequate representation of how the body works with pornography.
It is just boom, sex.
So parents should assume that their kids are seeing it, especially boys, and parents should educate themselves and talk to their children about it.
Q: Throughout life people’s bodies change – as teens, after pregnancy, middle age, in senior years. How should people deal with that in terms of their sex life.
A: That is a huge issue. We have socio-cultural messages about what it means to be sexy. What we associate with sexy in North America is young, thin and hard bodies. If what we associate with sexy is you have to have this type of body, it can create quite a lot of insecurity around how sexual you feel. So what do people do about that? It is critical reflection. Are only people who have a certain type of body entitled to sexual pleasure? Is sex only reserved for people who fit that stereotypical image of sexy? I would argue no. Sexual pleasure is for everybody. It is learning that my sexiness, my sex appeal, isn’t all tied up in what my body looks like.
Q: What are some issues for seniors and sex?
A: Seniors are not represented in the mass culture. Sexuality for seniors isn’t talked about and it is not written about a whole lot. We kind of have these “heeby-jeeby” reactions to the ideas of older adults having sex, but older adults are having sex. And there’s a high rate of sexually transmitted infections among them.
I would say that is partially because when they were younger the socio-cultural task at the time was: you get married young, you have kids young and you are monogamous and you aren’t worried about STIs. Now, here we are in 2016 and people are having a lot more sex than they were back when you were supposed to refrain until marriage. Attitudes have changed. It is about learning how to protect your sexual health.
