Talking to Your Boys About Sex

Most parents still think of “the sex talk” as a one and done event. One conversation, ideally short, and over before anyone makes eye contact. 

Pornography has become the default sex education for a generation of boys, often starting well before high school.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner found that 40 percent of boys saw it for the first time before they turned 13 and once exposure starts, nearly two in three see it monthly or more.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies found that: One in five young men aged 15 to 19 watch porn daily or most days, and higher exposure was linked to greater acceptance of non-consensual sex and higher rates of sexually coercive behaviour.

Sexual consent advocate Chanel Contos, Founder and CEO of Teach Us Consent, argues that porn’s influence as the main sex education for young people is victimising both boys and girls. It’s handing limiting scripts about sexual aggression and violence to boys, and teaching girls to be submissive and that their pleasure or comfort is irrelevant.

One of the clearest examples is choking. As Chanel Contos has put it, young people are “learning and mimicking scripts” from porn, and choking is a practice that was traditionally on the fringes of kink culture but has now made its way into the mainstream.

The peer-reviewed research backs this up: strangulation during sex was, until recently, confined to BDSM and kink communities. It has since moved into mainstream sexual activity among young people, and researchers point to the same driver Contos does.

A study completed through University of Melbourne in 2024 found 56% of undergraduates reported being strangled during sex. Porn has normalised it, packaged it as adventurous rather than dangerous, and rarely showed anyone discussing it, consenting to it, or getting hurt by it.

Boys are learning a physically risky act from a source that strips out the consent and the real chance of harm. Then they’re trying it on partners who never agreed to it and may not know how to say no.

That’s why a single conversation isn’t enough. He isn’t absorbing information about sex from one source, once.

He’s absorbing it constantly, from an algorithm with no interest in teaching him about consent or what a partner might actually want. A single conversation, however good, won’t outcompete that. An ongoing one might.

Here’s where to start:

Prepare for the awkwardness, don’t wait it out

There’s no version of this that isn’t strange the first time. It does get easier though, and that’s what you’re actually after. Each conversation makes the next one less of an event, until it’s just something the two of you talk about. That takes repetition rather than one perfect attempt.

Name the awkwardness. Something like “This is going to be a bit uncomfortable for both of us, and we’re doing it anyway” works better than trying to sound casual and missing. Saying it out loud tells him the conversation is safe, even when it’s clumsy.

You don’t need all the answers, and you don’t need a polished script either. What you need is patience with the silence. Ask the question, then let it sit. He’ll probably take longer to answer than feels comfortable, and jumping in to fill the gap is the thing that ends the conversation.

Expect him to go quiet, crack a joke, or ask if you’re done yet. None of that means the conversation is failing, it means a fourteen-year-old is managing his own discomfort. Stay in the room.

Nobody does the talk once and gets it right. You’re picking this up over years, in bits, most of it lasting a couple of minutes.

A few ways that plays out:

Use what’s already in front of you. Something in a show you’re both watching, a headline, something one of his mates said. These come up more often than a sit-down “talk” does, and they carry a lot less pressure if you’re paying attention for them.

Come back to it as he gets older.An eleven-year-old and a sixteen-year-old need to hear different things. What you covered at twelve doesn’t hold at sixteen.

Answer the question he actually asked. A boy asking about sex is usually after one specific piece of information, not the full talk you’ve been bracing for. Give him that, then stop.

Be deliberate about two things: the words you use, and what porn has already taught him in your absence.

Use the real words. Not “down there.” Not “being active.” The actual words.

A euphemism teaches him the real word is too embarrassing to say. That catches up with him the first time he needs to say it clearly, to a partner, a doctor, or to you.

Say what consent looks like in practice. If it’s only ever been a word in a classroom, and every sex scene he’s watched skips it, porn fills the gap by default. So be specific: checking in, reading a no that isn’t said out loud, stopping the first time.

Name what porn leaves out. Negotiation, aftercare, any sign of discomfort, most scenes cut all of it. That’s a production choice, not proof that those things don’t matter.

Teach him what good looks like, not just what to avoid. The Man Cave CEO Ben Vasiliou talks to his own kids about sex, pleasure and consent as one topic, not three separate ones. “I’m living this conversation right now with two teenage kids.

Consent needs to be a much bigger conversation than ‘did they say no?’ I want my kids to understand that sex isn’t about trying to pass some legal or technical test. It’s about asking: Is this person comfortable? Do they actually want this? Am I treating them like a human being? Is there mutuality here?

That also means understanding their own boundaries. They can say no. They don’t owe anyone sex, affection, images or sexual performance, and their desire never creates an obligation for somebody else. If we only teach young people what not to do, we haven’t finished the conversation. We need to help them understand what healthy, respectful and mutually wanted sex and intimacy actually look like.”

The beauty in connection and intimacy belongs in these conversations too. If you only ever talk to your son about what can go wrong, he learns that sex is a hazard to be managed rather than something that should be good for both people involved, including his partner.

The goal isn’t to scare him off sex or off porn. It’s to make sure he has all the right information, including the parts porn leaves out. Particularly that a partner’s silence isn’t consent and that risk exists even in acts that look casual on screen.

Pleasure belongs here for the same reason risk does: if you only ever talk to your son about what can go wrong, he learns that sex is a hazard to be managed rather than something that should be good for both people involved, including his partner.

The goal isn’t to scare him off sex. It’s to make sure he has a source of information that includes the parts porn leaves out, particularly that a partner’s silence isn’t consent and that risk exists even in acts that look casual on screen.