201: How to create a culture of consent in our families

Hi, I'm Adrian in suburban Chicago land. And this is Your Parenting Mojo with Jen Lumanlan. Jen is working on a series of episodes based on the challenges you are having with your child. From toothbrushing to sibling fighting, to the endless resistance to whatever you ask, Jen will look across all the evidence from thousands of scientific papers across a whole range of topics related to parenting and child development to help you see solutions to the issue you're facing that hadn't seen possible before. If you'd like a personalized answer to your challenge, just make a video if possible, or an audio clip that's not, that's less than one minute long that describes what's happening and email it to support@yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Before we get started, I just want to offer a warning right here at the beginning. We're going to discuss some topics you might not want your young children to hear in this episode. And if you've ever been through any kind of sexual assault, then if you choose to listen to this episode, please make sure that you're feeling resourced and able to cope with hearing about it. Please take care of yourselves.

Have you ever forced your child to do something they didn't want to do, and that you knew they didn't want to do? I know I have. I remember one time especially well, when Carys was about three and she had some sort of infection. I took her to the doctor and we got a prescription for antibiotics, which meant schlepping from the parking garage to the doctor's office, and then from there to the pharmacy in a different building. And the pharmacy didn't have any flavor she liked so they recommended we go to the main hospital pharmacy, which we did. And she didn't love any of the flavor options there either. But she picked one. We waited 20 minutes, then we went back to the car drove half an hour home. And by the time we got home, it was well after lunchtime. We were both pretty hungry. I wanted to get the first dose of medicine in her so she'd start to feel better sooner, and she just refused to take it. So we're in the bathroom, and I'm reasoning with her empathizing with her and she just wasn't having it. She refused to take it. And I'm not proud to say that I basically forced the dropper into her mouth and I squirted the medicine in. And I think she spat almost all of it out. And she cried a lot. And I was really annoyed. And so I gave up and we just went and had lunch.

My husband Alvin came home later that evening, and he sat with her in the bathroom for well over an hour. And his overall message was that we were willing to do pretty much whatever it took to make the medicine bearable. But the the two of them were not going to leave the bathroom until they figured it out. And remarkably, he remained incredibly calm. And Carys eventually decided, she wanted to take small sips of medicine alternated with water. And she did that and she took the whole dose. And then she took the rest of the doses without complaint as well. And I have to say I was just a teeny tiny bit frustrated when we got to the end of the 10-day course and she expressed some disappointment at not being able to take more of it because she liked it. And then suddenly, I saw this was not about the taste of the medicine. This was about her autonomy. She wanted to have a say over things that happened to her body.

We all want to have a say over things that happen to our bodies. In principle, I think most listeners would agree with this. But we often get in trouble with the actual practical implementation. Because when our children are resisting us, and it seems like the thing we're trying to get them to do has to happen like Carys taking the medicine, we tend to override their consent in the name of their health and safety, or because things need to get done.

So in this episode, I want to take a look at how consent shows up in our relationships with our children at a variety of different ages through the lens of what our culture says about consent, and offer some suggestions you can use to move toward meeting your child's need for autonomy, which is really at the heart of consent, if you'd like to do that. This episode is a bit on the longer side, but we have music and videos and all kinds of fun lined up. So I hope you stick with me and find it useful.

I do want to acknowledge we're going to take a very cisgender heterosexual look at relationships in this episode. And I do that primarily because that's where the research focuses. And also because the cultural practices we'll look at are grounded in a view that says that sex is the most important or even only kind that really counts as sex. I do look at some research on queer couples as a way to expand our view of what's possible in relationships if they weren't so guided by these cultural scripts. I also want to acknowledge the intersectionality of these issues which mean that transgender women and women of color and perhaps especially transgender women of color, are disproportionately targeted for violence by men and especially by White men. And I use that language very intentionally. I don't think that talking about victims of rape is going to help us stop the raping as much as it will to focus on the people who are doing the raping. I know all of this talk about sexual violence can hopefully seem a bit far off from where the parents of infants and toddlers and preschoolers and elementary schoolers, but this episode really extends from my book Parenting Beyond Power, and says that we will either perpetuate, or we will work to heal from these broader cultural forces in our homes. That's what makes the topic of consent with young children so important. So let's start there.

How young is some of the children you talk to?

We work from children from three years old. We work with parents from birth.

The camera stays on Deanne here but it was on the interviewer for a moment when Deanne said "three years old" and you can see the interviewer shock in her eyes and her facial expression. And of course, you heard it in her voice when she said from birth. So here's the rest of the clip from birth.

From birth?

Yeah, yep. Just about how to set up a culture of consent in their home. So I'm going to change your nappy now. Is that okay? Of course a baby's not going to respond, "Yes, ma'am. That's awesome. I'd love to have my nappy changed." But if you leave a space and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you're letting that child know that their response matters.

And commentators really pounced on this. Here's Ben Shapiro on The Ben Shapiro Show:

Now, listen, I don't want to I don't want to stereotype. This woman Deanne Carson, I don't know if she has kids. I don't know who does her hair. But this is dumb. Okay, this is incredibly dumb. And it's amazing what constitutes expertise.

Here's one from a YouTuber called Banter Dragon who has 16 subscribers. He first shows a clip from the Today Show in Australia where the original conversation with Deanne Carson was being discussed. And then Banter Dragon reacts to the clip:

And not surprisingly, it's caused quite a stir some slime and the concept is left lunacy, because it probably is.

So I think there are two main things that these commentators were getting their knickers in a twist about as it were. So the first of these was the idea that we might ask a baby anything and expect a reply. And I think Miss Carson spoke to that pretty effectively. We aren't expecting them to reply with words. We're looking for things like eye contact. And I've seen both YouTube videos and a peer reviewed article that I'm having a hard time finding right now, indicating that somewhere between the age of three to six months, an infant will stiffen their neck in anticipation of being picked up when the parent says, "I'm going to pick you up now." And how is it possible for an infant that's three to six months old to respond that way? Well, that infant has been told "I'm going to pick you up now" enough times before they were old enough to respond that by age three to six months, they now know what's coming and can respond with nonverbal communication. It starts with treating them with respect before they're old enough to fully understand it. So as soon as they do understand it, you're already right there with them. But I think the more difficult part is what we're supposed to do if the child indicates that they don't consent. So here's a clip from a YouTube show called Revolt. And the show is description is "unapologetically hip hop." I couldn't find the name of the person who's speaking because it doesn't seem to be one of the show's regular hosts. Anyway, this person has nominated Deanne Carson as Donkey of the Day, and is discussing the same TV clip that we've already heard:

Now, Mariah Mendez, a PhD And licensed psychotherapist says babies really can understand the concept of consent. Duh? She goes on to say consent requires being able to understand the cause-and-effect relationship that comes with cognitive development. And she says consent is even a little bag for children between the ages of one and two. But by the time children are two years old, they can better process what they do and don't like when they say 'no.' You can absolutely trust they mean it. My response to that is so okay, my youngest daughter is two right now. And if I say to her, come on, let's go change a diaper. You know, she says to me most of the time, 'no.' But guess what? She don't know any better. So I'm supposed to let the urine and feces pile up simply because her cognitive development skills haven't fully developed yet.

And so here I think Miss Carson would have been on safer ground if she'd said that you can say to the infant, I'm going to change your nappy now, since the infant really cannot respond to say 'yes' or 'no.' So we aren't really giving them a choice, we're going to change their diaper. But well, before they get to age two, which is where this host daughter is, we have a lot of options that we don't have when they're infants. We can try to understand why the child is saying 'no' instead of effectively saying, "I don't care why you're saying no to me. You're going to do it now. because I say so. And I know what's best for you."

I'm not arguing that we should let our children sit and urine and feces all day. I'm advocating for a middle ground where we work WITH our children to find out WHY they don't want to change their diaper, and uncover what need they are trying to meet, and then work with them to meet that need. So maybe they're feeling cold, and we can change them in front of the heater. Maybe they don't want to stop playing with a fun toy, and they could bring it with them. Or we could do a standing change if they're old enough. When we know what a child's need is we can find a way to help them meet their need, AND meet our needs for peace and calm and ease and for their safety as well.

I was curious to see what Miss Carson is up to now. And I see that a colleague in her organization, Jane Gilmore, has written a book called Teaching Consent. There's a short story in it that's so heart wrenching, I'm going to read it to you in its entirety. The story doesn't describe a particular situation but rather is a composite of many of the author's experiences as a sex educator.

Okay, this is chapter two. It's called Why Do We Need To Teach Consent? A few months ago, I delivered a workshop on consent for a group of 15 and 16 year old students in Melbourne. I waited around for a bit after the class because there's always someone who needs to know more. A waifish girl all knees and elbows crept up to whisper her question, "If something happened and I didn't say 'no' because I was too scared. It's my fault, right?" Eyes full of tears and doubt stared at me as I tried to convince her that of course it was not her fault. She didn't believe me. Not really. I wanted to burn the world to the ground. Her distraught teacher told me afterwards that everyone in the school knew about the incident. The boy in question was in waifish girls class they used to be friends. Now he hates her and refuses to even look at her. Distraught teacher told me she talked to the boy about what happened. He was bewildered when she asked him about what he called his sex life. He believed at the time and still does, but it was consensual. "She never said no, not once," he said distraught teacher said he was genuinely confused when she told him waifish girl was too scared to say no. His parents were furious and threatened to sue everyone. His mates made memes about rapey dude, sometimes they sent them to waifish girl who stayed home from school so often. The distraught teacher was worried she might not finish year 10. All their classmates knew about the incident and too many of them reacted as if the problem was not that it had happened, but the too many people knew it had happened. "She should have just kept it to herself," declared one so-called friend of waifish girl. Distraught teacher was beside herself crying, and she told me that she didn't know what to do to help any of them. This is what happens when people don't understand consent. And it is happening at every high school in Australia. The standard conversation about consent in school is that 'no' means no'. And children get the legal definition of sexual assault and rape, which in the United States is "the penetration no matter how slight of the vagina or anus with any body part or object or a penetration by a sex organ of the other person without the consent of the victim."

And I certainly remember the 'no means no' message from my own high school sex ed classes in England. And to some extent that message is absolutely right. No does mean no. But what I've learned much more recently is that the absence of no doesn't mean consent. If a girl is passed out drunk, she can't say no, but she also hasn't and can't positively consent. Real consent looks like continually verbally and nonverbally asking, "Is this okay? Is this still okay? Is it still okay?" And we're looking for verbal or nonverbal yeses to every single one of those questions. Then we're not in the conversation where we're trying to see what is the maximum we can get away with and still have it be legal, but we're trying to understand what's right and fair for everyone.

We live in what is known as a rape culture. Rape culture doesn't mean that everyone gets raped. It means that prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing and trivializing sexual assault and abuse. One out of every six women in the United States has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. And for women attending college, that number is 1 in 5. But because we live in a rape culture, we focus on the so-called victims. We tell them not to dress provocatively, not to leave their drinks unattended in a bar so they won't get spiked, and to say 'no' forcefully. But we know next to nothing about the boys and men who are doing the raping. We don't have big ad campaigns telling men not to spike drinks and not to have sex with someone when either person's too drunk to know what's happening. Most rapes aren't reported and many women who understand and endorse the legal definition of rape, say that an assault that happened to them wasn't rape even though it meets the legal definition. We violently harass women who ruin men's lives by making rape allegations. We worry about someone jumping out of the bushes to attack us, but 39% of sexual violence is committed by someone the victim knows, and 33% of it is committed by a former intimate partner on college campuses. 85 to 90% of sexual assaults reported by college women are perpetrated by someone known to the victim, and about half occur on a date. Only 19.5% of sexual violence is committed by a stranger, we should be concerned with the people our children are spending time with. Because once that nice, respectful, clean cut partner gets behind closed doors, all bets are off. And those statistics don't count the times when the person isn't really sure if they were right. I once dated a guy who lived in Arizona while I was still living in Berkeley, and we saw each other about every three weeks. And as soon as we got together each time, the first thing he would want to do was have sex. And one time he was already well into it. And I really was not in the mood. And I don't think I said no. But he did get the idea. And he stopped and he hugged me for a while. And I must have said something like "I don't always want to have sex the moment I see you." And I cried for a bit. And eventually I was calm again. And he said something like, so we're gonna finish now, right? And I just paid for a flight and we were supposed to spend a nice weekend together and did I really want to ruin it? So I laid on my back with tears running out of the corners of my eyes. And I remember how itchy they felt as they pulled in my ears. And afterwards I showered and we spent the rest of the weekend together. So was I raped? I didn't say 'no.' But I also didn't say 'yes, yes, yes.'

As I was preparing this episode, I did some reading on the ways that queer people negotiate consent. For cis het people sex in our culture follows a certain script. As Dr. Milena Popova says in her book sexual consent, the script goes like this: a cisgender nondisabled man and a cisgender nondisabled woman kiss and touch and undress and a penis goes in a vagina. And the whole thing is over when the cisgender man ejaculates. If we vary from the script by not having the right capabilities or not having the right body parts or if we don't enjoy you're uncomfortable with the standard script, or if we're turned on by things that aren't in the standard script, there's not much space to explore that. Cis-het men who are charged with rape often plead ignorance-- they didn't know that the woman didn't consent. Dr. Melanie Beres at the University of Otago in New Zealand, interviewed 34 queer adults on how they negotiate their sexual relationships, because understanding how queer people do this can help us to see what's outside of the cis-het script that's embedded in rape culture. While verbalizing consent was considered important by most participants, what struck me was the way that participants listened to both verbal and nonverbal messages, and made sure they matched up. Several people describe 'tuning in' to their partner, which was a feeling that both partners were present mentally and emotionally. And using that in addition to verbal communication, to understand the full picture of their partners consent, here's how one participant Riley put it: "So I've had two experiences with tuning out one where it was me that didn't say anything, but there was absolutely no sign of me enjoying myself or nothing. And he kept going. And I was just lying there, just accepting that I had no other choice. So that was the first experience. And the other experience was with another partner, a similar thing happened where she wasn't there anymore. She was physically there. She was just lying there. But when we were making out she just wasn't there anymore. And immediately I saw that. You can you can see when someone isn't present. And so I stopped and I asked her if she was okay, and clearly she wasn't. And so instead of carrying on making out with her, I comforted her and just cuddled her. And it was at that point, I realized that he [meaning the partner in the first example], was way out of line and that he should have known a lot better."

So Riley indicates that their first partner didn't acknowledge Riley's disconnection, ostensibly because he didn't know that Riley was no longer fully consenting. But with Riley's second partner Riley sensed the partner tuning out and asked for verbal confirmation and adjusted their approach accordingly. Duduzane Gupta wrote on Twitter several years ago: "if you've ever tried to put your finger up or straight guys ass during sex, you'll know that they actually understand ongoing consent, withdrawal of consent, and sexual boundaries very well. They act confused when it's our bodies." So while what Arizona guy did to me does not fit with the legal definition of rape, I have a hard time imagining that he saw those tears rolling down my face and thought that I was sending nonverbal messages of consent. And he was someone who was generally perceived as being a 'nice guy.'

On the flipside of that was a time with a different guy where I had already gone first and he said to me, we can stop now if you want to. I think that is one of the sexiest things that anyone has ever said to me. And it stands out because it's so uncommon. Even when I've been in relationships where I very much wanted to participate in sex, there was very often the dynamic of the man being the pursuer, and me being the pursued, and that he was trying to see how far he could get. That too is part of the rape culture script. Our culture rewards men who pursue women and women who are demure, and who put off men.

And I really don't think my experience with Arizona guy is very unique in cisgender heterosexual relationships. I recently read two books that are sort of random in terms of how they intersect with this topic. The first is I happen to find out the singer and activist Ani DiFranco wrote a memoir, and I've been a fan of her work for years. As a side note, I went into the book with high hopes because I think she's an amazing lyricist. But unfortunately, the skill didn't seem to translate to prose because I found the book to be a bit dry. It was nice to see how her life events fit with some of the songs that she sings, but that was a small part of the book. And most of it was kind of a recitation of events. So if you're an Ani fan, go and listen to your favorite song instead. If you aren't an Ani fan, I'd suggest starting with the double live album Living in Clip, which is amazing. But I digress. So at one point in the book, she's telling a story about when she was on the road in England, and someone she met had a friend who was going out of town, and she's forgotten the name of the guy going out of town, so she calls him the Redheaded one. The new person she met suggested the Redheaded one let Ani use his room while he was away. And so I'll let her take it from here: She says, "the first night he rolled over and gave me half of his bed to sleep on but by the second night, reprehensible as it seemed, he insisted I use my body to pay him rent. A little send off. It is hard to know sometimes what constitutes rape. Rape is a black dot in the center of a dark smudge in the center of a very big gray cloud that dissipates and pales at the edges. I found myself in various gradations of powerlessness around that dark center and never quite known what is the name for where I am. I imagine most women have looked down at some point in their life and not been able to see their own hands in the fog. Where am I? Am I here or here?"

And then I realized that her song Gratitude from her second album was about exactly this incident. Here's a portion of it:

Thank you for letting me stay. Thank you for taking me in. Thank you for the beer and the food. Thank you for loaning me bus fare. Thank you for showing me around. That was a very kind thing to do. And thank you for the use of that clean towel. Thank you for half of your bed. We can sleep here like brother and sister you said. But you change the rules in an hour or two. I don't know what you and your sisters do. Please don't. Pls stop. This is not my obligation. What does my body have to do with my gratitude.

The second relevant book was the next one I happen to read. I'm planning a module for the Parenting Membership on the topic of anger. And when I did the Gottman Method training recently, they mentioned a book called Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion by Carol Tarvis. And in it there's a chapter called A Rage for Justice. The author quotes a woman named Wendy who learned about feminism as a child, but mixed it up in her mind with her mother's anger at her father and she blamed her mother when her parents got divorced, and came to hate feminism and feminists. Wendy described how she came to understand feminist ideas for herself, rather than because her mom was telling her about it. She said: "It's interesting. All the stories I'd heard from my mother and her friends about losing jobs or not getting tenure didn't mean much to me. But when it happens to you personally, the message hits home. I realized one day for instance, that I've only one friend who's never been raped or had an experience with unwanted sex." Now obviously this isn't data. We have no idea how many friends Wendy has, and therefore how common unwanted sex is among the people in her life. But my guess would be it's pretty common because we teach children that no means no. And we also teach them that girls should say no at first and then it's the boys job to get them to a yes. And that yes always includes penetrative sex. Dr. Milena Popova says that an important rape culture myth is that women are always going to put up token resistance to sex, but in reality they want it. And this works with the myth that unless a woman screamed, kicked fought, tried to run away and sustained other physical injuries in the process, that she consented. Together these myths imply that women's expressions of consent and nonconsent are ambiguous and untrustworthy. And that rapists can ignore multiple 'no's to keep pushing and violating boundaries until they get what they want.

So this is where we are as adults. But what does it mean for how we interact with children? What does it mean for how we talk with them about sex and consent, and even more importantly, in my view, how we interact with them on a daily basis, which teaches them more than our words alone will? So let's start taking a look at that.

Sex educator Dr. Laura McGuire says in her book Creating Cultures of Consent that she often asks parents of college-aged children, what they have told their children about sexual misconduct and affirmative consent. The most common replies are that they put the fear of God into their sons not to get in trouble, that they told their daughters not to be alone with a boy, and that for both genders to avoid sex during college. This has been the standard sex education package for a few decades now. So why do we still have so many rapes happening on college campuses? Why is the incidence of rape higher on college campuses than in the world more broadly? Is it possible that putting the fear of God into children isn't working? This approach is basically saying that unless you put the fear of God into boys, they won't treat girls with respect. And why is this? Is it possible that it's because they live in an entire culture that doesn't treat girls with respect, and that sets girls up to be the gatekeeper to sex that the boys want to have while denying that girls are sexual beings too. By telling girls not to be alone with boys, we are essentially giving them the message that they should expect some sort of trouble if they're alone with a boy. The girl can control whether or not she's alone with him, but he might not be able to control himself if it does happen. And if he can't control himself, then nobody is going to believe her.

And where does all of this start? Well, I think it starts when we're changing diapers (or nappies). Dr. McGuire says in her book: "One of the biggest mistakes we see within consent and sexual misconduct prevention education, is that it tends to focus too strongly on consent within sexual situations, or only in the bedroom. This leads people to falsely believe that you should only talk about consent when you're ready to talk about sex. Thus, students only hear of the very concept of consent once if they're in high school (if they're very lucky), or college during a training on Title 9, (which for those of you outside the US is a law that prevents sex based discrimination).

Dr. McGuire goes on to say that: "These beliefs are also why many parents and administrators fear discussing consent in school, especially in primary school settings. When parents are asked if they talk to their kids about consent, many will say "no, not yet. They are too young." Or parents will come and ask when they should start talking about consent with their child. When we reply around 18 months, they are often taken aback. Consent is absolutely vital to sex. Consent is the line in the sand that separate sex from rape. But consent begins long before sex is ever present, and can be completely nonsexual. Consent is above all respect for the dignity, personhood and well-being of every living thing. It means not simply asking for, or receiving permission, but holistically seeing each person that you interact with and wanting them to enthusiastically and wholeheartedly choose whether to interact with you or not." And then Dr. Popova adds another relevant point: "When we move away from looking at consent as something that happens between individuals in a specific situation, and start looking at it as something enmeshed in social structures, cultural practices, and complex operations of power, the radical potential of the idea of consent becomes really clear." And that brings us right back to Deanna Carson, and asking babies for consent before changing their diaper, or at the very least making eye contact and letting them know that you're going to do it before you do it, and continues into their childhood.

When we teach all children that there are really big differences between boys And girls, and all the things we reward children for doing like bravery and independence and leadership, our masculine qualities, and all the things we look down on children for doing like nurturing and intuiting and surrendering our feminine qualities. And when we teach even very little boys to man up and not be scared, and we teach girls to keep everyone else happy and be pretty and not too assertive, and when we make them hug grandma who they only see once a year and who seems counter scary, when we teach children that we're going to do what we want them to do and when and how we want them to do it, and that they have to brush their teeth and get in the bath and pee before they leave the house whether or not they actually need to, we are propping up rape culture.

It's all around us in music as well. And I'm not talking about the songs that actively advocate for rape of which there are many. Does this one ring a bell?

Every breath you take you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take I'll be watching you.

That sounds like a stalker to me. And then there's this one.

When I get my hands on you wanna make you marry me Now, you know, everywhere on Earth, you go, you're gonna have me as your man.

The ones that really get me are the ones that are song in such a romantic way, but when you listen closely, they're about forcing a woman into being with you and then marrying her so she can't get away. Here's an old classics that's on a lot of playlists around the holidays, which is when I wrote this episode:

It looks well. I ought to say no, no. Ninety five more. I'm gonna say that I'd try. What's the sense of hurting, might cry. I really can't say. Oh baby don't hold out. Baby it's cold outside. I simply go. Baby, it's cold outside. The answer is no. But baby it's cold outside.

That storm. At least you will be. Your lips look delicious. My brother will be there. Waves upon a tropical shore. Never mind. Because your lips are...

Social conventions require that he keep pressing his point. And she keeps saying no because a good clean woman would say no. And because everyone else in her family will make sure she stays a good clean woman by spreading rumors about how she isn't a good clean woman if she says yes. It all sounds very quaint in the song but slut-shaming is still very real today when girls and women denigrate each other for sending nude photos, for doing sexual things that seem weird to us, or by thinking that a woman who wears revealing clothes is asking for trouble. So the woman/mouse in the song is in a double bind--she has to be pleasing to the man/wolf because that's her role as a woman, but not too overtly sexual. She's supposed to say no at first to make her partner wait, but not too long.

How can you do this thing to me? There's going to be talk tomorrow. Think of my lifelong sorrow. At least there will be plenty and...

What do you mean? Oh, oh When you nod your head yes, but you wanna say no What do you mean? Hey, yeah When you don't want me to move, but you tell me to go. What do you mean? Oh, what do you mean?

Apparently, Justin explained to Ryan Seacrest what the song was about when it was released, he said: "Well, girls are often just flip-floppy. They say something and they mean something else. So what do you mean? I don't really know. That's why I'm asking." If you're watching this episode on YouTube, you'll see that in the video for the song Justin is not waiting to make sure he has consent before he has sex with his female counterpart. He's asking what do you mean at the same time as he's having sex with her. Unless we wonder if anyone listens to Justin Bieber anymore as I did, apparently, he gets 30 billion streams a month on Spotify and is the eighth most listened to musician in the world even today.

Men are socialized to say yes to sex at all times. Justin only wonders what the girl means because he wants it to be a yes. Men are expected to always be ready for penetrative sex to be grateful for whatever sex they can get, and to never be on the submissive or receiving end. A man who doesn't want sex, who wants to be penetrated, or for being sexually stimulated against his will, is essentially fulfilling the female role in a cisgender heterosexual relationship, which is of course the only valid kind of relationship in these kinds of songs. In a patriarchal society, there's nothing worse than being a girl or being associated with femininity. So doing the opposite of what girls and women do is a way to prove your masculinity, which must be defended at all costs.

I think the Justin Bieber song neatly illustrates what philosopher Dr. Daniel Loick describes as five problems with the concept of consent. These are: 1. Temporality. Sometimes we initially agree to something only to realize later, we were uncomfortable with it, or that a boundary was crossed. And to this I personally would add that I said yes at the beginning, and then I changed my mind And I withdrew consent. 2. Inconsistency. Sometimes we want different or contradictory things at once, and thus have to suppress parts have our own subjectivity, in order to represent one single unified will. 3. Opacity. Sometimes we don't have access to our desires or don't know what we do and don't want. 4. Asymmetry. So agreements take place under unequal conditions where one party might accept a proposal out of admiration, pressure, or fear of negative consequences. 5. Partiality. Agreement often means accepting a given yes or no option without being able to shape or co-determine the larger context of the interaction.

Obviously, I'm not arguing that a man has to be responsible for all of these issues. But working back up this list in reverse order, I do think that the less we're in situations where the only option we have is a yes-no, which inherently assumes an asymmetry in power, as one person wants to guess, and the other person is expected to deliver it, the better off we're going to be. On the issue of opacity. I think children actually have a very good idea of what their needs are, which is what Dr. Lloyd calls desires. They aren't perfect, they get it wrong. Sometimes, we see this when they insist they AREN'T tired as they dissolve into a meltdown in which you clearly know is driven by their tiredness. But more often than not, they do know their needs and desires. And we did too, when we were little, until we were trained by our parents that our needs weren't important, and that we should suppress them in service of their needs. That's why virtually every parent I work with has a hard time understanding their needs, because they've learned and been rewarded for denying their needs for so long, starting in the very early years with their parents. After all, if a man wants to have sex with you, and you don't know that you have a need for autonomy and choice, and for your sexual needs to be met in a particular way, then so much the better for him. If he doesn't actually want sex either, and he's following the narrative of all men wanting sex all the time, there's going to be less of a conflict if the woman doesn't resist. If we don't know our needs, we can't articulate them or advocate for them. And in rape culture, the other person assumes that we don't even have needs.

On the inconsistency issue-- I think this links very well with the therapy modality called Internal Family Systems, which holds the view that we don't have a single individual self, but we actually have lots of parts inside us. And we can even communicate with them. So maybe when a man asks for or offer sex, there might be a desiring part of us that really wants to participate, and also ashamed part of us that remembers being punished for appearing too interested in sex, and being a sexual being, and an autonomous part that wants more of a say in when and where and how it happens, and also a submissive part that enjoys it when someone else takes over. All of these parts might be fighting to be heard inside us as we decide whether to participate in the act or not. And once again, the more time we have to figure that out, both internally and with our partner, which means there isn't an asymmetry of power, and we aren't in a situation where yes or no are the only possible responses, and we've been raised to understand and be able to articulate our needs, and we can see our different parts and support the parts that are feeling hurt so we can do the thing that we most want to do, whether that ends up involving sex or not, the less we're going to find we're in situations that we look at after the fact and realize we regret.

So we've talked a lot about sex so far, and how being and consent-based relationships from childhood is the best path that I see to moving beyond the rape culture that we're in right now. And while 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetime is far too great, 5 in 6 women will not be sexually assaulted, and yet still lives in a rape culture. Probably a decent proportion of those 5 exist in Ani DiFranco's dark smudge in the center of a big gray cloud that dissipates at the edges. And for those who are fortunate to have never been in the black.or, the dark smudge or the gray cloud, we are still affected by rape culture. If you're a man, you're still affected by rape culture. Maybe you're one of the people who have created the gray cloud or even if you've been 100% certain you had consent before and during every single encounter you've ever had, maybe you didn't even want some of those encounters yourself, but didn't think you could say no without losing face. Rape Culture rests on patriarchal ideas, where violence and dominance are linked with masculinity, and where vulnerability and weakness are linked with femininity. Violence and dominance does not have to look like actual rape and actual hitting. Dr. Popova argues that: "Bodily autonomy is the idea that you get to decide what you do with your body, what happens to it, who else has access to it? How that access is obtained and exercised? And you should be able to make those decisions without external pressure, coercion, or others wielding power over you." Forcing children to hug granny even when they don't want to is violence. Forcing children to brush their teeth is dominance. Our homes are the training grounds for rape culture. Or they are the place where we begin to interrupt that cycle. Dr. Popova adds that: "When we move away from looking at consent as something that happens between individuals in a specific situation, and start looking at it as something enmeshed in social structures, cultural practices, and complex operations of power, the radical potential of the idea of consent becomes really clear."

I want to create a world where all people can thrive, where people go into sexual relationships fully embracing all forms of consent, where men don't just ask for consent to protect themselves from sexual abuse allegations, but because they really care about it, and where we don't see consent is automatically assumed in an established relationship or in a marriage, and that everyone involved has the right to consent or not consent at any time, and nobody gets offended or ridicules the idea that consent is important, and without the ideas about what makes a female body beautiful, and a male body strong, and where if pornography has a role at all, it's ethically made, and represents the kinds of bodies and sex that real people have, and where non standard sex isn't just something that queer people and disabled people do, because they don't have access to the sound standard sexual script, but everyone sees the huge variety of activities that are enjoyable, even if they don't involve any kind of penetration, and where women especially, but really, all parents have the support they need to raise a family including access to low cost or free childcare, and where women are allowed to have big, bold, disruptive ideas and not be punished for them, and where men are allowed to have nurturing intimate relationships with other men and not be punished for them, and where everyone gets to be an express their whole selves.

To me, consent is the foundation on which all of the rest of that vision sits. And we know that young people are not going to learn about consent in school and into that vacuum steps, the media and friends. And if we really want our children to learn about consent, they are going to have to learn it from us.

But consent is one of those sticky subjects. It's hard to teach in a conversation. Often parents will say to me, "I want my child to be able to use mindfulness techniques to calm down whenever they're angry. But whenever I tell them about it, they refuse to do it. How can I get them to do it?" And I asked, "Well, how's your mindfulness practice? Do you use mindfulness techniques when you are dysregulated?" And the answer to that is usually 'no.' And the child usually does not go on to develop a mindfulness practice. And the same goes for consent, you can tell your child about consent, but it's probably not really going to stick. The best way to teach children about consent is to practice it with them every day, in every interaction you have with them.

So how do we do that practically? In Parenting Beyond Power, I suggest that when we're trying to get our child to do something, which is where issues related to consent often come up, that we ask ourselves two questions. The first is: What is it that I want my child to do? And the second is: What do I want their reason to be for doing it? There are a few potential options for why a person might say yes to something they don't really want to do. Firstly, they fear that I will feel hurt if they say no, and so they say yes, out of guilt. Secondly, they might fear that I will reject them if they say no, so they buy my love by saying yes. Thirdly, they might fear being perceived as bad or selfish or the like that there's something wrong with them for saying no so they say yes so they don't have to feel that shame. Fourthly, they're afraid of being punished if they say no, so they say yes, out of fear. None of these are good options. None of these create a relationship with our child where they want to come to us when things are hard. All of them override the issue of consent, because we don't see consent is important in relationships with children, and we operate somewhere in Ani DiFranco's grade cloud. The fifth reason someone might say yes to our request, is because they see how their life will be enriched by saying yes, and they want to do it willingly, or at the very least, they see that their ability to meet their own need will not be blocked by saying yes to us. That is where I want to be in my relationship with my child. Finding ways to make that happen, while also meeting your own needs is basically the entire point of the book. And as a reminder, the book is available on a gift economy basis on my website, at YourParentingMojo.com/book.

I also want to acknowledge why this is so hard for us parents. Nobody modeled consent for us when we were little. It's always easier, especially in times of stress to fall back on what we learned in our own childhood. That can create enormous cognitive dissonance for parents who don't want to use coercive tools with their children, but who don't know what else to do, and who also hear screaming in their own head saying "I would have been punished for doing that." Managing the difference between the way we want to parent and our default method based on how we were raised is an almost impossible task when you're under time pressure, and trying to get out the door in the morning or get in the car to go home or get your child to brush their teeth. When I first started working with parents, they don't usually like hearing about a child wanting to work with them willingly to do a task. Because for a child to be able to choose yes, I'm willing to do it, there has to be an equivalent option to say no. A yes can only be chosen if there's also the possibility of No. And it seems like many parents do not love this idea. Some of them outright tell me, I don't want to be in a place where no is an option, because then my child will take it. And that may happen. But I also think back to listener Cori's experience in the Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop last year, which is now available for you to take any time if you'd like at your own pace. And you can do it with my support in April as well. Cory originally posted in our community because her son was not quite two years old and already had some tooth decay apparently due to breathing through his mouth. Cori had been physically forcing her son to let her brush his teeth, even though he hated it, and she hated it too. She tried asking him when he would be ready and the answer was never letting him brush his own teeth and her teeth and his toys' teeth and she said, "but without fail, he acts as if I'm torturing him when I go to brush his." And so she wanted to know where to go with this.

Very often parents have the most success when they're working on less emotionally charged issues when they're starting out so Cori started working on other things. She used to ask her son if she could wipe his face after a meal and he would say no, and instead she tried putting a wet napkin by him and asked if he would be willing to wipe his own face. And he did. Badly. She started to give her son a lot more autonomy over their day. He got to choose whether they ate breakfast inside or outside. She let him have a chocolate covered fig snack that he asked for while she made breakfast and she did a set daily playtime with him where he got to choose what they did together. When it came time for tooth brushing and Cori told him that she knew this had been challenging, she was hoping they could try some different things until they could figure out a solution that worked for them both. He'd only just started talking, right? He's not quite to, so there wasn't really an opportunity for real conversation. She offered him for toothbrushes and the one he chose surprised her, and a choice of toothpaste which he regretted, so they went back to his usual option, and a different location for brushing, which he changed twice. He brushed his own teeth for a while, but he refused to allow her to do a final brush. And after trying to see if there was any area, he'd be willing to give a little in, they fell back into the same pattern of Cori doing a force brush. But at the end, she told him she wanted to continue working on this and was dedicated to exploring different possibilities.

In the same period, Cori was also struggling because their son would dump out any open container of liquid she gave him. She started giving him only closed cups but of course, we don't always have them handy. And suddenly, in going through the workshop modules, she realized she could redirect this behavior instead of trying to stop it and then being disappointed in both of them when it inevitably happened. So I'll read what she wrote about what happened next: I had a plan. Sure enough, he dumped his cup of water. I told him, he can dump water outside if he likes or even in the bathtub. He was thrilled. His eyes lit up. We went outside and he poured his tiny cup of water several times intensely and excitedly. How was this so easy. I'd spent so much time and energy trying to prevent or manage this behavior. Later in the evening, he got a hold of my cup with a little water in it. I saw him start to pour. And as my arm reached out, instinctively, he stopped himself and he asked me, "Outside?" I could have cried. He actually stopped himself. I brought a pitcher of water out and let him fill up his cup and pour it out again and again. He asked me to join him and I did so it offered him not only play but also connection.

When it was getting towards the end of the picture, I told him we would go and brush teeth after this and get ready for bed. He asked for more water when the pitcher was out. And I told him we were all done with the water for now. He ran inside and I put the picture up. I went to find him assuming he was hiding to prolong bedtime, and he was already in the bathroom, with the lights out in the same area he chose to brush his teeth in waiting. I turned the lights on and he said, "Teeth." He still doesn't want me to brush for him. But this feels like incredible progress for one day. I've been using the tools from this workshop for about a week, so maybe it's a culmination, but it feels like a lot came together today."

And then three days later, Cori wrote again to say she'd been realizing why it's so hard for her to attune to her needs. Her mom was visiting and the TV was on loud and Cori expressed that she couldn't hear or focus on anyone and asked if anyone else was listening to it or it was contributing to their time together or if they could turn it off. Her mom agreed to turn it off but said, "Okay, Cori enough. We get it." Cori's needs require was met, but our need for understanding was not. Later on her son was eating an ear of corn that didn't have any corn left on the side. He was chewing on corn. His mom told him he was doing it wrong, physically took it from him turned it around to where there was more corn. And Cori tried to respectfully and non-judgmentally say that she thought problem solving is a great skill for kids to learn. And her mom responded, "Yeah, well, sometimes you just have to do it for them. Come on." Cori wondered whether her son might have been exploring different textures in his mouth or simply playing in some other way. And her mom replied, "Of course, he's trying to eat the corn. Don't be ridiculous. Stop making such a big deal."

Cori is a fully grown adult. So we can perhaps imagine how her mom might have interacted with her when Cori was just a small child. It's not a stretch to see how Cori has dissociated from our own needs, because she's repeatedly told that her needs and ideas aren't important, and aren't a valid interpretation of what's happening. Cori has since told me she has a hard time choosing what flavor of ice cream to have, if there's anyone else in the room expressing an opinion about what flavor they would like to have.

But just a week after we started working together, and without ever having a proper problem solving conversation with her not really verbal child, and yet continuing to remind them both that they will keep working on it together, and with her seeing him sense that she's willing to try to meet him someplace new in this and to make reasonable accommodations that take him into consideration. They were getting ready to brush teeth in the kitchen, which he had chosen. And he opened his mouth, and he let her brush for the first time in a year. For the first time in half of his life, he would resist a bit and they would take a break and they would do some more. And then she thinks she ended up hitting a sensitive area. And then it was over. She said, "I brushed about 80% of his teeth with no struggle. I'm just in awe of this."

The key question that Cori was circling around was: WHY does my child not want to do what I'm asking him to do? And that really is how we get from a place where we're forcing our child to do something against their will and finding a way to understand what their real need is and what our real need is and find a way to meet both of our needs. Cori had to do some guessing because our son couldn't tell her directly. Even though he was clearly non verbally communicating that autonomy and joy and play and connection were important to him. Cori is setting the stage now so that in another 6 months to a year, he is going to be able to respond and tell her what some of his needs are, which will make the process a lot easier. And because Cori is no longer communicating to her son that a bigger stronger person can make a smaller, weaker person do what the bigger person wants, but instead that her son's needs are equally important as her own, not more and not less, and because she's showing him how to communicate his needs verbally and hearing his nonverbal communications, she is raising a child who inherently understands consent. They will still talk about how it relates to new relationships and new situations a the years to come. But it won't be a massive U- turn from "I force you against your will to you'd better respect other people." Being in consent-based relationships with other people will just be an extension of his relationship with his mom.

I'm introducing a new element to the conclusion of our episodes, which is to give you something to try if you want to put the ideas in the episode into practice. And I'm also going to use the same format that we use in the Setting Limits workshop of suggesting the mild, medium and spicy options. So you might choose the mild option if the ideas and the episodes seem a little bit far out to you, and you just want to get your toes wet. Or if you're not alone confirming what you're already doing, then the spicy option may be more up your alley, so you get to choose and if you choose mild this time, you can always choose spicy in the next episode, if that's a better fit, or vice versa. There won't be an exact science to how I choose the practices or how I divide them up so feel free to modify them if you'd like or do more than one or do all three.

So I've already given you the mild option, which is to look at a situation where you're seeing some resistance from your child and ask yourself: Why is my child resisting doing what I'm asking? What need are they trying to meet? And if I understand my real need, which remember is different from the strategy that you're using to meet your need, can we find a way to meet both of our needs? Now I'm calling this the mild option because we've talked about these ideas a number of times on the show. If you need a deeper dive on this, check out my book Parenting Beyond Power. It's available in bookstores, and from a ginormous company named after a river, and also as a free e-book download at YourParentingMojo.com/book.

The medium option is seemingly simple, but actually quite difficult, because it's so ingrained in how we speak to our children, and that is to try to eradicate phrases like "I need to...," and "we need to...," and "it's time to..." from our lexicon. So this is things like "I need to make dinner," "we need to go" and "it's time to brush your teeth." "I need to" is a way of saying "You want things you want to play, but I NEED to make dinner. My need is more important than yours," when actually we have a need for food. And there are multiple ways to meet that need. Some of which involve making dinner and others might involve takeout or delivery or eating cereal for dinner. "We need to" is similar, but it's including your child and meeting your need. It's a way of saying "it's really important to me to do this thing, and I can't make it happen without your collaboration." So we could say that. "We need to leave" is one parents use all the time, and I used it for a long time as well. But what it actually means is something like: "I have a call, it's important to me at 9am. And I won't have time to drive to work and make the call if we don't leave now. Are you ready to get in the car or head out for the bus?" And of course hopefully, if the situation is happening, often we're thinking about it outside of the stressful moment as well. So we can find ways to create more peace and ease in the mornings and also connection. If your child is looking for that and meet your need for responsibility to your colleagues, "it's time to brush your teeth" does a similar thing. But it implies there's no decision maker at all. It's the clock that's telling us to brush our teeth, because we hope our child will resist less if we aren't telling them directly. But really, we still are telling them. So the less we use this kind of language, the more we'll have to use language that articulates our real needs, and maybe even consider what needs they are trying to meet by not doing the thing as well.

The spicy option is to make sure you have both verbal and nonverbal consent from your child whenever you ask them to do something. I have a short story about how that played out for us a couple of years ago, I was finishing dinner and Carys was done already and I asked her to take a shower. She showers every other day because if she doesn't, then certain parts of her anatomy get irritated and sore. And she said, "Okay," and she turned away from me and she had her head down and she had her shoulders slumped. And I could have just let her go because she was going to do the thing I'd asked, but I called her back. I invited her to sit on my lap, and I said something like, I asked you to take a shower and you said Okay, but your body was telling me you didn't really want to do it what was happening? And she said she wanted me to help her wash her hair but that I wouldn't be willing to do that while I was eating dinner. And we quickly agreed that I would help her after I was finished. And I reiterated that it was really important to me that she's fully willing to do the things I asked. And that if she's not, then we work together to find a way to meet both of our needs. So try looking out for that verbal And nonverbal consent to match. And you can even let your child know you're doing this so they get into the habit of doing it too. And that's where they're going to be able to take this skill out into the world and really make a difference. I'm gonna let Ani DiFranco have the last word in this episode, because I think she's earned it and because I love her work. Here's a part of the song Not a Pretty Girl from the album of the same name.

I am not an angry girl But it seems like I've got everyone fooled Every time I say something they find hard to hear They chalk it up to my anger And never to their own fear Imagine you're a girl Just trying to finally come clean Knowing full well they'd prefer you were dirty And smiling And I am sorry But I am not a maiden fair And I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere

If you'd like Jen to address the challenge you're having in parenting, just email your one minute video or audio clip to support at YourParentingMojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.