I knew that I had reached a new point in my career as a historian when I got the email from my son’s first-grade teacher. She wanted to check in with me, she wrote, because my seven-year-old had announced—during a class discussion on careers—that his “mommy teaches sex!” After I stopped laughing, I wrote her back to let her know that he wasn’t just being silly: I am a historian of reproductive health, and I currently teach a course on the history of American sex education. Although his phrasing might have been a bit off, my son was essentially correct.
Whenever I tell any other parent about my historical field, one of two things happens: either they nod and then slowly drift away to talk to another (presumably less problematic) parent, or they say something like “That’s such an important topic but talking about it all day must be so difficult!”
This is the major connection I see between being a parent and being a historian. We study the things we do because we believe them to be important, even if they are tough to stomach. As parents, we also have difficult conversations with our children because we know our kids need to understand the world around them. Like most parents, I want to protect my son from the ugliness of the world for as long as possible. I want him to play with his friends without worrying about the very real challenges that await them in the future. At the same time, though, I refuse to deprive him of the knowledge that he needs to survive and make good decisions.
Parenting is a humbling reminder that knowledge does not just magically appear; it is accumulated over a lifetime, in formal and informal ways. It is our responsibility, as parents and historians, to transmit our knowledge. Moreover, it is vital to do so in ways that both acknowledge and avoid the biases of the past. For me, this means speaking honestly and appropriately about sex education topics, but it is present in every aspect of our historical scholarship. Like every other historian, I have a responsibility to my son and to the public to talk honestly about topics like slavery, racism, discrimination, and the like without sugar-coating them.
I certainly struggle with deciding when is the right time to speak with my son about some of these historical questions and how to do so in an age-appropriate way. I often find myself wanting to dodge the question in some way, perhaps with the well-worn parenting line “I’ll tell you when you’re older”. However, I remind myself that our duty as historians (and parents) is to have these difficult conversations with our children—because if we don’t, someone else will. In our current educational environment, when entire states are passing “Don’t Say Gay” laws and attempting to teach that slavery was a benefit to African Americans, it is more important than ever that we step up to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future.