Parenting lessons to learn from Made In Heaven: How can parents teach children about sex under pressure and risks of sharing nudes?

The abusive use of cellphones, sex under pressure, and the value of consent among youngsters are highlighted in Season 2 of Made in Heaven. The character of Bulbul Johari played with excellence by Mona Singh highlights the need of schooling the boys about consent and moral responsibilities more than girls. The dangers of sharing naughty or sexually explicit images of oneself or one's friends should be emphasized, along with the risks of bullying and sexting.

For adolescent children, where peer pressured sexual interactions, cyberbullying, sexting, and purposeful or unintentional exposure to pornography are all quite common, sex education needs to continue. It's crucial to debunk the myths around porn, present sexuality in a positive light, and establish partnerships based on mutual respect, consent, physical safety, and online safety. It offers children the genuine power they need to grow into healthy adults.

Dr. Vaishali Joshi, a senior Obstetrician & Gynaecologist at Kokilaben Ambani Hospital says, “Social media, digital platforms are ruling our lives nowadays right from the early formative years due to schools being more digital. The boundaries of childhood, adolescent and adulthood are getting blurred and children are getting precocious puberty at age before biological or natural transformations.
They get bombarded with uncensored information about sex and pornography. They have not acquired mental and emotional maturity to make correct informed decisions about consensual sexual relationships. They can have something of FOMO (Fear of missing out) and can get pressurised into sexual acts.

The psychosexual curiosity of body image, acknowledgement of physical differences in a boy and girl starts very early childhood, even before primary school. At this early stage of the development, it’s important to be honest, open and give factual information to young children.
According to Dr. Joshi, “This helps kids to create a healthy communication channel or discussion with their parents, carers. This gives them confidence and understanding of gender equality and their sexuality. So ideally one can introduce sex education to kids at any age. An early beginning of conversation about sexuality and continuing that conversation as the child grows is important.”

“The concept of sexual attraction, the act of physical sex should be discussed openly in the family, school or socially in a non-judgemental, natural fashion. This will prevent feeling of guilt or secretiveness around sex. Culturally, Indian society being male dominated, consent of women has always been taken granted from any matter like choosing life partner to careers,” says Dr. Joshi.

It’s important for society to wake up and have feminist view right from the birth of a girl child, empowering them at an early start and creating awareness in men for valuing her opinion, right and consent. That will change grass root mentality in the objectifying women.