I began to wonder if maybe a little mystery wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe it was my job to take their minds off the sex that society seemed intent on inflicting upon them. Even their toys were sexy: Lucie and (by extension) Joe had acquired a fatal attraction to a posse of Bratz dolls, which wore heavy makeup and dressed like miniature hookers. My kids' other constant companions were a herd of coquettish-looking My Little Pony horses, which oozed sex appeal with their long eyelashes, come-hither looks, and voluptuous behinds. The mares' names—Party Cake? Morning Dawn Delight? Crystal Cutie Princess?—more suited porn stars than kids' toys. What had happened to Cabbage Patch dolls, Weebles, and Raggedy Andy, the uncorrupted and uncomplicated dolls of my youth?

(Lucie, a pretty girl of 7, holds her fingers in a peace sign.)
Lucie: Does this mean "Turn around and get sexy with me?"
Me: No. It's a peace sign.
Lucie: How do you tell someone to turn around and get sexy with you?
Me: I guess you'd just say it. There's really no sign for it. (Pause.) What do you think it means to "get sexy"?
Lucie: Sally said that Barney sexed Big Bird and that made Baby Bop. (Her rudimentary grasp is begging for more.)
Me: You know, sex is something very, very special, something to be enjoyed with someone you love very, very much. (With emphasis.) When you're a lot older.
Lucie: Can I do it when I'm 14?
Me: (alarmed) No. Absolutely not.
Lucie: (whining) When, then?
Me: (freaking out) I don't know. After college. When you're married. It's something you do with your husband.

What can I tell you? I panicked. All this straight talk was killing me. I needed a plan B or I wasn't going to make it to adolescence.

A few weeks later, we took the kids to a screening of a friend's film. Before the film, the producer explained that the movie we were about to see was a departure for the company-there would be no curse words or sordid sex. "But I want curse words and sordid sex," Lucie blurted out. I slunk low in my seat and tried to pretend she wasn't my kid. Maybe my sexual candor was creating a little too much interest in the subject. I decided to hold back for a while, to try simply observing without comment.

(Lucie and Joe are taking a bath. The tub is filling, and Lucie reclines so her vagina is directly under the faucet.)
Lucie: (turning to Joe) This feels good. (Joe stares at Lucie, confused.) C'mon, try it. You'll like it.
Joe: (his poor little penis flopping around, at the faucet's mercy) I don't like it. It hurts. Mom, how come Lucie likes it?
Me: (suppressing my natural inclination to say more) Different people like different things.

The timing of my new approach should have been perfect. Fortified by an unavoidable barrage of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Gossip Girl, my kids had more questions than ever. It was relentless. Yet somehow I didn't feel right avoiding their questions or changing the subject until I came across a weighty tome, How to Talk to Your Child About Sex, by Linda and Richard Eyre, that seemed to applaud my revised plan of action. The Eyres believe that children should not be told about the intricacies of sex until the age of 8. Before that, specifics should be avoided at all costs. They advise telling pesky younger children that sex "happens in a really wonderful, awesome way, and when you turn eight, we'll tell you about it." Then you should quickly change the subject. So it was all my fault. I had told them way too much, way too early. I had truncated their childhoods, led them down a road to sexual addiction, teen pregnancy, and pornography.

It was shortly after this depressing epiphany that I found my way into a cocktail-party conversation with what I presumed to be a liberal couple with two girls. To my surprise, both husband and wife were appalled at the very idea of entertaining questions about sex. They felt that engaging in a dialogue was tantamount to giving tacit permission to be promiscuous. By keeping sex mysterious, they hoped to discourage any burgeoning interest. As a result, they claimed, their 8- and 10-year-old weren't the least bit curious about sex. In fact, the subject had yet to come up. How was this possible? When I confessed my kids' incessant interest in the subject, the mom said, "I'm glad my kids don't go to your school [an "artsy" one]. Too many fast kids. Claire and her friends don't talk about boys." Claire went to a nice Quaker school. So my kids were freaks. Their friends were freaks. Perhaps I was the biggest freak of all.

There were too many voices in my head. Was I giving my kids too much information or too little? Was I encouraging them to have sex too young, or giving them the confidence to wait? Was I opening up the lines of communication, or shutting them down with all my neuroses?

As if this weren't enough to contemplate, my nanny decided to weigh in on the subject. "Joe's been kissing Luke," she declared as I entered the house after work. I would have happily done nothing, but I felt her gaze boring into me as I started dinner. "Don't you think you should talk to him?" she asked. I liked my nanny's approval, so I headed upstairs to chat with Joe.

Me: (gingerly) I heard you and Luke were doing some kissing.
Joe: I wasn't kissing Luke. We were smooching. I kiss Sophie.
Me: What's the difference?
Joe: (rolling his eyes) Smooching is with an open mouth. Kissing is closed-mouth.

Since that made about as much sense as everything else Joe said, I left him without further comment and went back downstairs, to find my nanny waiting with furrowed brow. "Don't worry, a little experimentation is completely normal," I reassured her.

"Do you believe in premarital sex for your kids?" she asked. Weren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves?

"Uh, yes, I do," I said—while no longer sure of much else, I was sure of this. "They need to sow their wild oats."

And then she threw me a curveball. "I don't believe in sex before marriage," my nanny volunteered. Whoa. Huge news flash. My nanny was 30 years old, recently engaged, and, okay, deeply Christian. Beyond that, we hadn't discussed her personal life. Until this point, all I'd needed to know was that she was a genius with my kids. Now, with her (and my mother's) conservative viewpoints looming large over my kids' lives, I needed to make sure that if someone was going to be screwing them up about sex, it was going to be me.

The idea that Lucie "save" herself for marriage and then risk marrying someone who sucked in bed scared me more than teen pregnancy. My nanny found me extreme. She had never met anyone who advocated premarital sex for their kids (when they're ready, I stressed). She knew people who had had sex before marriage, but all of them regretted it, while I only knew people who regretted not having more sex before marriage.

Since then, I've reaffirmed my commitment to openness and honesty. With a topic so huge, it seemed irresponsible to issue a gag order. We needed to talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. It might mean years of uncomfortable conversations, resisting an inherited predisposition to scare my kids into abstinence, constantly second-guessing myself, and accepting the hard truth that my kids will want to have sex well before I want them to. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be lucky enough to create an environment in which my kids feel comfortable enough to ask me questions—at least, until they stop speaking to me.