OK, men, we’re about to make the best argument for eating your greens. We’ve already discussed the benefits of a veggie diet on the fun factor of sex (taste and smell) but now it seems there’s a whole new argument for getting the sperm count up. 

                       

Researchers at the University of California (Eskenazi et al.) have been counting sperm (don’t laugh, its really tricky, especially if you keep losing count) and they’ve found that men who eat leafy green vegetables and other folate-rich foods, or alternatively, who pop folic acid pills, have healthier sperm. More specifically, men with high folate consumption had fewer sperm with chromosomal abnormalities.

This is a great equalizer because it is one of the first studies to begin looking at the effects of a man’s diet not only on fertility, but on the health of the fetus. Women are given folic acid before and during pregnancy to reduce birth defects. Now this is called sharing the load.

If sitting your kid down for “The Big Talk” about the facts of life seems like a fate worse than death, you can definitely be sure that the experience isn’t too much fun for them either. In fact, if that is the atmosphere at the outset, chances are they won’t remember anything of the conversation except for your discomfort with the subject. 

                                            

Research findings just published by the Rand Corporation in Southern California (Martino et al.) points out that you had better start getting comfortable with it, because good parenting means you need to be Big Talking again and again and again.

Don’t let the fact that the kids seem to be squirming in pain let you off the hook. When the researchers asked young adolescents about their experience of conversations about sex with their parents, they found that the children actually wanted to talk about things, and not only the more biological or impersonal parts. They actually want to hear an honest opinion about how sex feels or how masturbation fits in to. These aren’t subjects that can be dealt with once; the opportunity to discuss them needs to be raised repeatedly or they may never surface. The research found that mothers were doing a better job of it than fathers, by virtue of covering a wider range of topics.

Why is all this so important? Children can get sex education outside of the home and most of them do anyway. But good sex ed communication with parents is associated with delaying the start of intercourse, better contraceptive use and fewer partners.

So now it seems the education has to move over to the parents (as opposed to the kids). They are the ones who need to learn to communicate information and accessibility and not be scared that their child is going to be quizzing them on the details of their sex life. There is a lot of material to cover about your personal attitudes and feelings, without getting into the details of your bedroom endeavours. Trust me, your kid doesn’t want to go there as much as you don’t.