The 411

So I watched the Katie Couric special tonight about the 411 concerning teens & sex. I was surprised to see that they were quite honest in saying that all the hype was just "BS" and there is not some rampant wave of sex hungry teens having oral sex in the bathroom between classes at every high school in America. It is out there but not to the point which has caused mass hysteria amongst their generations' parents.
What got me thinking was listening to the teens conversations with openess and clarity and thinking it could have been taped between me and my friends 15 years ago. The "experts" were saying that parents have to be comfortable having the conversations with each other before they can have those talks with their teens.
So I wonder what is going to happen when my kids are teens? I have always been able to have very frank, open talks with pretty much anyone in the right situation. I wonder if that is rare or more common in my generation? I know I may be a little idealistic here, but I think that my generation may be one of the first to finally be able to shed the taboo topics of the past and get down to the nitty gritty with our kids.
Every generation seems to get "IT" sooner. The "life is worth more than all the little stuff" realization. But again... am I fooling myself? I am sure my parents thought that they were going to be able to raise their kids better than they were raised...but here is the big realization... I don't... or rather I don't want to. I love the way that I was raised. I love the way that my firends were raised. I have more women in my life that I want to mirror my parenting skills after than I have negative examples I want to learn from. But even the negative examples are open to telling me about their mistakes rather than pretend they did nothing wrong and it was all their kids' fault. May be that is the big difference. For so many generations, parents thought that there was no way what they did could possibly be wrong and it was their children's fault they turned out bad. Now people are more open to having conversations that begin with, "I am not going to tell you what is right and what is wrong, but I hope you can take something from my experience."
Am I full of it?