Do You Think Nigerian Parents Talk To Their Children About Sex?
As usual, there’s always a trending topic that’s guaranteed to catch your fancy on Twitter or Instagram, TwitterNG chose to draw our attention to SEX today.
Recently, I was scrolling through my Twitter page and stumbled on a poll. The question was:
How old were you when your parents first talked to you about sex?
I honestly would have loved to say “I was shocked when 76% voted NEVER”, but sadly, I wasn’t. The final vote was alarming but very much expected.
1,738 Twitter users voted and 76% of them have never had a conversation about sex with their parents. This poll was also posted on Instagram and almost all the commentary showed that they would have voted “Never” if they were involved.
Let’s face fact, the word “sex” is somewhat forbidden in almost every Nigerian home. For some reason, most parents think it’s not appropriate to talk to their children about sex and at the same time, they don’t want their kids to engage in the act or talk about it anywhere else.
How’s this even possible?
Naturally, humans are drawn to negativity and it only takes conscious efforts for us to do the right thing. We are naturally curious beings and it’s the exact thing you warn us against, we want to go after. This definitely includes sex.
Up until this moment, some youths can still not mention sex or even watch sex scenes with their folks. It’s a taboo!
Maybe it’s a natural gift, Nigerian parents have a default look they give their children. It’s the same look you get when they want you to turn down a gift or food from anyone.
Once you get this look, its either you respect your ancestors by refusing the gift or just pack yourself to the room when a sex scene shows up on TV. This is one major reason we see social media as an escape route.
According to ThinkDigitalFirst.com, 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35 and I am 1M% sure that you can only find 1% of Nigerian parents on Twitter.
Let’s view it this way: we started out with Facebook (minus 2go, Eskimi & others) but our parents caught up with us and started joining too. Facebook started to feel like “home” because parents now monitor our every move just like they do in the house.
“What the heck! We can’t be tied at home and still feel chained on Facebook too!”
So, we decided to shift focus to Instagram.
Now, the problem some of us have with Instagram is the fact that it promotes pictures mostly and some of us love to write, as opposed to sharing pictures to over 1b strange people.
On top of this, some parents started joining Instagram and yet again, our freedom was getting chocked. So we asked ourselves, what’s the way out? TWITTER!
On Twitter, you can say absolutely anything and for some reason, our parents are not interested in the application. If not for international news, they wouldn’t know you can now purchase a creepy sex doll for 800k.
Adding to this, Twitter could be a bit confusing even for youths, so they just don’t bother their pretty heads and we’ve never been more glad.
Freedom At last!
The other day, someone asked a question on Twitter:
What would you be Tweeting if your parents are active users?
If you use Twitter often, I’m sure you’d be laughing by now.
A lot of youths tweet total nonsense and erotic rubbish which is so wrong. But then, who knows? They just “might” have been better if their parents engaged them in a sex talk early enough.
Honestly, if our parents run active Twitter accounts, most of us would only be tweeting about choir practice and imaginary study groups that only exist when they are in the picture.
However, some of us were buried in sex bibles while we were growing up but just as Apostle Paul said, “the good that I would I do not” and vice versa.
It’s even worse for females, they can’t be seen with the opposite sex but must get married early. How on earth is that supposed to happen when you’re not allowed to use “sex” in a sentence talk less of mention “teenage dating”. If you do, you’d be met halfway with some pregnancy fallacy like this one I found online.
The only time you are allowed to mention “boyfriend” when you’re 17 is if you’re ready to be crucified on the cross of “koboko” (whip). If not, just respect yourself and act Nigerian.
For a good number of us, we love our parents with every fault they have and we deeply appreciate everything they have done and are still doing. We are grateful for everything they taught us and also for topics they omitted like “sex”, we have still learned one way or the other though.
Let’s not forget, some of us don’t need that lecture anymore but for the teenagers, it would be nice to pass the right information to them.
They use social media too, so we can make them better adults by optimizing Twitter & Instagram for positive purposes.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think Nigerian parents talk to their children about sex? Kindly express your thoughts in the comment section.
Meanwhile, January is gone, June will be here soon and Christmas is just around the corner again. Ensure you make this year count and most of all, Enjoy Your Weekend!
