MOTHERING

Sex and the Generation Gap

by Fern Kupfer

It's a beautiful spring day and in the university town where I live thestudents are out in full force: Girls smelling of coconut oil aretanning themselves on sorority lawns while Frisbees fly overhead; rockmusic beats from boom boxes, from car stereos. I am walking with my14-year-old stepdaughter through the campus town; we are both wearingjean shorts, T-shirts, sandals, feeling the sun on our bare skin,finally, after the long, hard winter. It's spring - when hormonesquicken pulses and there is lust in the air.

A carful of boys drives by, slowing down to a crawl. We hear along, low wolf whistle. Then, as Katie and I turn, one boy hangs out ofthe window and yells: "Hey, girls - show us your breasts!" A roar oflaughter follows as the car peels down the block.

Well, it's that kind of moment; you stand there, stunned for abit, mouth agape. "I hate when boys do that," Katie says after a fewmoments. "I should have yelled back," she adds. "Except, what do you sayto something like that?" I offer a suggestion: "How about, show us yourbrains?"

Katie loves this. "Yeah, show us your brains," she repeats. "I'mgoing to say that next time." "Only thing is," I tell her, "it's notlikely boys will yell that same thing again at us."

Katie stops for a moment on the busy street. "Us?" she says,looking oddly at me. Then, shaking her head: "Fern," she says, breakingit to me gently, sort of the way I tell a student that she is failing mycourse. "Really, I don't think those boys were yelling out to you."

Suddenly, I feel sensible and middle-aged. I am June Cleaver in ahousedress and proper pearls. "You don't think so, huh?" I ask. "I don'tthink so," Katie says. It does not seem to occur to her that I couldever be the recipient of this attention.

This brings me to the question of how children see parents. Whichis, on good days, as helpful guides into the tricky grownup world, asuseful people who know how to do algebra, make lasagna and write outchecks. On not-so-good days, children see us as impediments to theirhappiness, issuing impossible demands of hygiene, safety and socialorder.

They also see us - on most days, good and bad - as stuck inhopeless nerdom, in the dark about what to wear, what to listen to,about anything hip or happening or sexy. Especially sexy. Childrensimply do not see their parents as sexual beings or as objects of sexualattention. Often not even as the object of our partner's sexualattention. What's the first thing that kids think when they find out thefacts of life? "My parents actually did that?" (Later, to mollifythemselves, they think, "Well, maybe they did it a couple of times -just to have us kids - but they sure don't do it regularly.")

In the university where I teach creative writing, I once gave anassignment to "use your parents as characters in a short story,portraying them as a young couple dating, falling in love." The studentswere taken aback: My parents falling in love? Most of the writers hadfun with the assignment. They did some research for their stories,calling home, asking: "Where did you and dad first meet?" They wentthrough family albums, seeing their parents, perhaps for the first time,as people who had kissed goodnight, whose daydreams were of touch andlonging.

Still, for many of the students, looking at their parents in thisway is unsettling. In the self-evaluation of their own work, one youngman wrote: "Even the thought of my parents as lovers, gives me theheebie-jeebies!"

That parents are not sexy, should not be sexy, seems to be agiven. This given is more complicated in the step-parenting realm. Herethe kids are witness to your courtship. They are there, looking steelyand disapproving if you sneak a kiss, hold hands under the table at arestaurant.

Once, before I was married to their father, I spent the weekend athis house while the girls were with their mother. They were dropped offearlier than we expected and came in to find me, still in my robe,reading the Sunday paper in bed. While the scene was homey rather thanX-rated, the girls were uneasy. Clearly, I had spent the night withtheir father. And possibly, if I had spent the night, I had done thatwith him as well. I remember the girls standing at the doorway to thebedroom. I tried to chat casually, but somehow felt as if I were caughtin the backseat of a car in the ray of a police flashlight.

Now that their father and I have been married a number of years,the girls comfortably come into our bedroom, plop themselves down on ourbed to share their day. Tonight Katie is looking at a catalog of newspring clothes, of models in skimpy shorts and cute crop-tops. "Are youglad you're married? So you don't have to think of what to wear andpeople looking at you anymore?" Katie asks, happy to see me in thatsafe, sexless world where parents are supposed to be.

Fern Kupfer is a novelist and writing professor at Iowa State University. She is a frequent contributor to Working Moms' Internet Refuge.

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