How can a parent best ensure their child doesn’t fall prey to peer pressure to be sexually active?

THERE is a need to normalise our experiences about sexual behaviour, sexual identity and sexual development — to rescue it from the bombardment of glossy magazines; the lure of easy come, easy go, merry go round sexual behaviour of TV world; and the occasionally informative but often utterly bizarre world of internet sex.

Sexual development (and all its associated concepts like gender, identity, and orientation) is just another part of our journey through life. It is normal, natural and fundamentally important to whom we feel we are.

That is not to say there is only one way to experience this. Psychological research shows the actual experience of sexual development is as unique as the individual themselves. Society’s long held fascination with sex and all its trappings is evidence of how embedded it is in who we are, how normal it is to be curious about it and how we are still struggling to learn how to be comfortable with a fundamental part of the human experience.