Sexuality Explained: a Guide for Parents & Children / Louise Kirk

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Sexuality Explained: a guide for parents and children underpins parents in their role as first educators of their children. It draws on the latest knowledge of the human body to show how mind, heart and body interplay in our sexual makeup, and how the life-giving and love-making aspects of the sexual act are each designed for permanence.

 The Guide works at many levels. By drawing the reader into a succession of conversations between a mother and her daughter, her father and her brother, a full picture of the biology of reproduction is created in a friendly way. The stories give parents ideas on how they might converse with their own children. The text is necessarily comprehensive, to answer possible questions, and to make sure that the parents know more than what is now taught in school biology, which can be checked for accuracy.

 Children vary enormously in their maturity, which is one reason why it is best that they are taught about sex and sexuality individually, and, if possible, by members of their own family who know and love them.

 The Guide is principally designed for parents, but it can also be read by young people on their own, and later chapters might be used by teachers and youth leaders for student workshops. There is no religious teaching, but the Guide starts from the premise that all human life is of equal dignity and worthy of respect.

 “Ralph Waldo Emerson said that 'to see the miraculous within the ordinary is the mark of highest wisdom.' This remarkable guide encapsulates that spirit of adventure that should be the hallmark of dialogue between parents and children concerning love and responsibility. Sexuality Explained: a guide for parents and children will I hope make a significant contribution to the growing need for sound ideas and resources craved for by both parents and teachers to offset the damaging effect of so much of the usual sex education material. Any parent with a passionate heart for investing in their child's present and future morality will draw from it empowering insights and sensible ideas to help form the hearts minds and bodies of their sons and daughters with a new sense of vision purpose and hope. I applaud the author for making such a valid contribution to building a society crying out for an adequate anthropology" Edmund P Adamus, Director, Department for Pastoral Affairs, Archdiocese of Westminster

 “Louise Kirk has done a favour to all parents in presenting Sexuality Explained as an aid to introducing our children to the more intimate details of where love and human procreation meet. And she has done this with the scientific exactitude of the latest knowledge as well as admirable good taste. It is equally good as a guide for those special moments for mothers and fathers to supply this vital information or as a stand-alone book a child can read. This is quite a feat.” Christine de Marcellus Vollmer, President ALAFA –Latin American Alliance for the Family

 “This work has already become invaluable to me in teaching my teenagers about puberty, human sexuality and its power. Louise has drawn from multiple sources – I have scoured shelves for such a guide before but never found so much in one book! The biological diagrams and explanations give a clear understanding of fertility, usually missing in school-based sex education but so necessary in later life. She inserts interesting little facts and she uses the latest revelations of brain-scan technology to explain chemical bonding and the effect of pornography on relationship building. Through this work Louise shows the knowledge of an expert, the explanatory power of a teacher and the light and gentle touch of a mother. A truly great achievement!” Jocelyn Owens (mother of 9 children)

“This book is both outstanding and unique. I know no other such book or teaching resource which brings together the whole person so effectively: sexual, emotional, physical, intellectual, psychological, moral and behavioural. As well as teaching children in a truly holistic, child-centred way, parents and teachers are almost guaranteed to learn new things from this guide, and to enjoy the discussion topics which arise naturally from it. I wholeheartedly recommend it to parents and teachers alike.” Mark Howitt (father of 3 children)

Louise Kirk is the UK Co-ordinator for Alive to the World, the international character education programme that can be used at home or at school, presenting Personal, Social and Health Education for young people in full accord with the Teaching of the Catholic Church.