In the United States, the conversations we have with our children about sex are often awkward, limited, and brimming with euphemism. At school, if kids are lucky enough to live in a state that allows it, they’ll get something like 10 total hours of sex education.1 If they’re less lucky, they’ll instead experience the curious phenomenon of abstinence-only education, in which the goal is to avoid transmitting any information at all. In addition to being counterproductive—potentially leading to higher rates of teen pregnancy2 and sexually transmitted illnesses3—this practice is strange. Compare it to the practices of many small-scale societies, where children first learn about sex by observing their parents! [...]
Throughout my years of fieldwork with the Shuar, I’ve witnessed a catalog of behaviors that would shock Western1 parents. I’ve imagined how they would stare in alarm at the sight of children setting fire to fields, walking barefoot past tarantulas, or mowing grass with knives. But as the years have gone on, I’ve found myself less surprised by the culture of the Shuar, and more surprised by our own. Why don’t we allow children access to the world as we know it, a world that involves death and sex and, yes, sometimes even machetes? After all, there’s good reason to think that small-scale societies like the Shuar, though not perfect mirrors into the past, are living in ways that closely resemble the lifestyles of our predecessors. Maybe they’ve held onto something we’ve recently lost. [...]
It wasn’t always like this. Just as breastfeeding was once more prevalent in our culture prior to the 1970s, there was a time when death was welcome in our living rooms. In the Victorian era, the funeral parlor was the parlor of your home; the body of loved ones would often rest on an ice board, and embalming might take place in the kitchen. Friends and families would gather together to have tea, to chat, all the while saying goodbye to the body on display. It’s likely that this practice helped the bereaved deal with the reality of death.11
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