I have received a lot of feedback for my diary entries about sex education. Of course, there were also some voices telling me that I should consider morals and morality of our youth today. In India a very common idea about sex education is that it will spoil our children and let them forget all moral values. Parents say, they themselves never had sex education and know enough about sex nevertheless. They don’t want their children to have sex before marriage for example and they believe sex education would encourage them to ‘try it out’. We should rather have more moral education and also yoga education in school, that would keep children from getting spoilt.
Dear parents, please look around you and open your eyes. Is the reality, your surroundings, really the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago, when you grew up? Do your children grow up in the same world that you grew up in? I for myself can say that the world around me has changed tremendously. Our society has changed. Open your eyes and realize that this change is natural and that we, too, have to change. Otherwise we cheat ourselves and can actually harm our offspring.
The reality is that young people today do all those things which are usually considered a taboo in Indian society. Look at statistics and figures, if you don’t see it yourself. You say that in your culture and religion sex before marriage is not allowed. But can you say that this is reality? Do you really still think young people don’t have sex before their marriage? I know many of you may now think of your neighbours’ children and that you are sure that they don’t have any moral values left, that your child however would never do that. It is a natural feeling to think that the own son or daughter is good while others are bad. You have another feeling towards your own child and so you close your eyes. Open them. See that your child, out of respect for you and knowing that you would not like it, hides his or her actions from you. You think the neighbours’ children are spoilt but your child is their best friend, they do everything together and that includes actions that you find immoral.
Many young people even accept today that they have sex. Maybe they would not say it in front of older people due to their respect. I can tell you however they will not have this hesitation in ten or twenty years anymore. Time and society is changing and you have to change along.
If you think that in India, moral education is enough, you are wrong! You have seen how much your country, culture and surroundings have changed in the last 20 years, can you imagine how much more it will change in the next 25 year? You have to prepare yourself and your children for that! You have to show them the world as it is, not describe them a fantasy of how you would like the world to be. It is our responsibility to educate our young generation. They are anyway doing it and if they have sex without knowing anything about it, they can create a problem for themselves, get horrible diseases and more. Can you imagine how many HIV positive people are living in India and how many of them have been infected because they did not know better? And then look at how the west has controlled and reduced figures through education! You call them immoral but they save their children from infection.
Maybe you are not aware of it that in western countries, those which you regard as very immoral, they had the same moral values some 70 years ago or maybe a bit more. They believed the same things: a young girl should not be too much in company of young boys, girls should dress decently and should not flirt. There were no romances allowed and young people should only have sex after marriage. No relationships before that, no kissing, hugging or close-by dancing in public. They didn’t want to accept the change either! This is why there were some ‘explosions’ and extreme situations in which young people had to ‘break free’ from their parents and their old-fashioned views. Shouldn’t we learn from the history of the other side of the world and give our children a possibility to live in this modern world without hiding from us? Shouldn’t we prepare our offspring?
Again I have to say that they anyway do everything. Young people go to school and college, get to know others there, watch TV and movies and see a modern world displayed. The media is showing them this world anyway. They see it in the movie scenes and hear it in those dialogues. That however is made to entertain, not to inform and so they are out there without completely understanding what they saw. So why should we not give them the right education? You can teach them the reality, tell them what is true and what is fiction.
Why do you think, sex education is immoral? It is not at all! Sex education can be combined with moral education and education according to yoga and yogic principles. If you provide them with information, it does not mean that they forget all that you taught them about respect for others but also themselves. They won’t want to sleep with everybody they see, just because you told them about sex. Sex education will not lead them astray. It will support their moral values. If you hide sex from them, it will be much more interesting and you will lose the possibility of having a good influence in this area.
So please open your eyes, see reality and realize that you do yourself and your children a favour by supporting sex education in schools and at home.
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It is short-sighted to believe sex education can be separated from moral education. Many people even say that your behaviour in bed is a mirror of you moral standards ;)But seriously, you cannot separate that completely. Whatever you teach your children in terms of morals has a direct effect on their sexual behaviour, too. If a father teaches his son to respect women and teaches and the son will respect women in sexual relations, too. And if he tells his son about sexual facts, he will show this same respect and instill it in his son. That is what we need.
If you just tell your son to make his own experiences, you cannot have even the slightest influence on how those experiences will look like.
From what I have seen on my trip to Mumbai last year, there have been a lot of Indian girls dressing just like western girls, walking hand in hand with their boyfriends, who wore the same clothes as my boys do at home. It looked just like in the west and I wonder still whether their families have a western mind-set already or whether it is only the younger generation that is so open with each other.I would be happy if India could welcome this openness. They don’t have to accept every bad factor along with it. They are free to choose and pick only the positive parts of the development in the west1
Yes Marge, in many ways there are already western ideas in India. People wear western clothing, young people have more the idea that girls should work, too and much more. There are however still many many old-fashioned Indian traditions and ideas which are very deep-rooted and not easy to change.
Of course not all of those have to change either and not all western ideas should be taken over there, either, just as you said! We need a mix of all the good facts of both cultures.
Nice to read of you here Irene.Yes, your children will be a mirror of your actions. What you do will be what they will do. So you have to be respectful, loving and give them enough information surrounding that.
And if you treat them with love, they will trust you and won’t be alone when they need someone.
It is true! Parents always see their own kids great but they do all those bad things that they don’t want them to do!
I could not have said it any better myself, Swami Ji. This post is so passionate and true! And thank you for saying this. It just occurred to me that religions and societies always reserve sex for adulthood… after marriage, at a certain age… But children become sexually curious way before this. In ancient cultures, puberty marked the time when sex became an appropriate practice– it the time when the possibility to reproduce is actualized. So how can we draw this line of when it is appropriate to experience sex? Our bodies are ready but our society tells us our minds are not. I know it’s frightening for adults to think of young people having sex… but they are curious anyway. It’s best to inform them and educate them so that they can have a healthy and aware sexual experience.
A basic sex education can avoid a lot of problems. And nowadays it is regarded as something normal, talking about that isn’t something bad. Sure, in some cultures you can’t talk in public about sex. But is it a wrongdoing to teach his kids in a trusworthily atmosphere at home about effects and risks of sex?