Gwyneth Paltrow has reached the stage of parenthood where she has to go beyond talking about the birds and the bees with her teenage children.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the Oscar-winner opened up about how she broaches the subjects of healthy relationships and safe sex with 17-year-old Apple and 15-year-old Moses, whom she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin.
“I try always to be neutral on the topic,” Paltrow, 49, explained, adding that opinions about sex have softened since her parents sat her down for “the talk.”
“I think my generation, we got a lot of messages around sex that made us feel bad about it,” she reflected. “I try to just be curious, and teenagers are never going to want to talk to their parents about sex, ever. I sort of follow their lead and luckily, in middle school they had a very thorough sex education, so the school handled the kind of birds and the bees parts. Then I am there for any questions, but the questions are pretty minimal.”
Paltrow said the advice she stresses to her children is to “stay close to your own truth” and not feel pressured into doing something that makes them uncomfortable.
“When you are in a relationship and you are not being your full self, you are sublimating things or you are white knuckling through something, and I think it can be pretty damaging to how you feel about yourself,” Paltrow explained. “I will always just encourage my children to really listen to themselves, listen to their instincts, listen if something feels right, and to act from that place.”
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.