Ask a hundred different people how their parents handled "the sex talk," and you'll get a hundred different answers. There's no one right way to broach the subject. But according to a new interview in the magazine People, Goldie Hawn talked about it early and often with her daughter Kate Hudson.
“"What did you teach me about sex? There are so many things," Hudson said to her mother in the interview. "We talk a lot about sex. Surprisingly." Hawn responded,"I said, ‘I want you to understand something about Mommy. I’m not a prude. I love sex.'"
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Later in the interview, Hudson recalled this interaction: "You were trying to engage and asking like what was going on with me sexually. I was like, ‘Mom, let’s just say that I’m kind of a sexually-oriented type of personality.’ And she goes, ‘Please, I have known that since you were two years old.’ I was like, ‘Mom!‘"
That kind of openness is healthy, says Carlin Ross, sex educator and president of the Betty Dodson Foundation. "Talking to our children about their sexuality is vital to their health and well-being. We don't want pornography to be their sex education since it's so male-centered and unreal," explains Ross. "Having sex conversations within a relationship based on unconditional love is the best case scenario. There's no agenda."
Hudson also remembered her mother saying, "Sex is so much fun. But it’s better when it’s with one person," calling that "a good lesson." Of course, while that might be true for people who choose to be monogamous, everyone has a different experience of what makes sex better, whether that's having one partner, multiple partners, or doing it with yourself.
"Sexual experimentation is a healthy way to realize what we desire before we commit to a partner. Then if we focus on one partner at a time, the likelihood that we can communicate our needs and understand each other's bodies is much greater," says Ross.
People who practice forms of non-monogamy like polyamory have a different experience than that. "The research shows that there is no difference in the levels of relationship satisfaction between consensually non-monogamous and monogamous couples, which means that having sex with one or multiple people are both workable relationship structures," says explains Pam Costa, sex and relationship coach.
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In the interview, Hudson talked about chasing Hawn down for these mother-daughter talks. "I was always like, ‘Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. Mom! Mom,'" she described. "You know, she was just constantly moving. I’d sit and that’s when I could really talk to Mom, when she was working out. Once we had a whole conversation about men. And I sat there like, ‘Wow, that’s my mom.'"
We understand Hudson's desire to corner Hawn. As Ross says, "Having a mother like Goldie Hawn, who navigated Hollywood in the pre-Me-Too era, talk to you honestly about sex must would be the ultimate for any teen girl."