Puberty Conversations With My Son and Daughter: Why One Was Harder

My daughter is fourteen now, in S2. My son is eleven, in P6. I have had, at this point, versions of the puberty conversation with both of them. And if I'm honest — which is the only way I know how to write this — the conversation with my daughter was easier. Substantially. And I've been sitting with that fact trying to understand why.

Because it's not supposed to be easier. Mothers and daughters supposedly have their own fraught complications, their own complicated histories. But the conversation with my son was harder, more awkward, more truncated than it should have been. He got less from me than my daughter did, and he needed just as much. That is a problem.

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With my daughter, I started early. I talked about her body changing in ways that felt natural — I have a body too, my body went through similar things, here is what to expect and here is what it means. When she was ten I explained what a period was, how often it happens, what to do when it starts, that it might hurt and that was normal and she could always tell me. When she was eleven I filled in more of the picture: pubic hair, breast development, the emotional turbulence that comes with the hormonal shifts. I used clinical words — "menstruation," "ovulation," "vagina" — because giving things their real names is how you establish that these things are normal and not shameful.

I had some help from having been through it myself. I knew what was coming. I could say "this happened to me too" in a way that was true and grounding. I felt, not confident exactly, but capable. The conversation felt like something I could navigate.

With my son, I kept waiting for someone else to do it. I waited for my husband to take the lead. My husband, bless him, also waited. We waited past the point of waiting being reasonable and then I realised we had arrived at P6 and had barely started.

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What I eventually covered with my son, once I stopped deferring:

Puberty in the male body — penis and testicles growing, voice changing, body hair, increased sweating, skin changes including acne. I used the correct anatomical terms. He looked at the middle distance the entire time.

Erections and the fact that they happen involuntarily, especially at inconvenient moments, and this is normal and not something to be ashamed of.

Ejaculation and masturbation. I will not pretend this was comfortable. I told him that masturbation was normal and private, that it was nothing to be ashamed of, and that he should have privacy for it. I said this in approximately twelve words and moved on. He said nothing. I took that as acknowledgment.

Wet dreams — that these happen and are normal and if he woke up and found his sheets needed changing that was not a catastrophe.

I also talked about the emotional side — that he might feel more intensely, that he might find himself attracted to people in a new way, that this was all expected.

I gave him a book — the same kind of illustrated puberty guide I'd given his sister, the one targeted at boys. I told him to read it and that if anything was wrong or confusing he could come to me.

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Now here is the part I want to examine.

The conversation with my son was shorter. Less warm. More rushed. I was uncomfortable in a way I wasn't with my daughter — not more uncomfortable, which I might have expected, but differently uncomfortable, and in a way that led to me doing less.

I think several things were happening.

First: I had experiential common ground with my daughter that I didn't have with my son. I know what female puberty feels like from the inside. I didn't know what to say about erections and ejaculation from a place of personal understanding — only intellectual. That gap made me less confident, more clinical, more brief.

Second: there is a cultural assumption in Hong Kong — in Chinese families broadly — that fathers handle sons in this area. That puberty conversations about male bodies are dad's territory. My husband was raised with this assumption. I was raised with this assumption. It is mostly wrong and largely results in boys getting nothing or almost nothing from either parent, because fathers are as uncomfortable as mothers and frequently even less equipped.

Third: and this is the one that bothers me most — I think I held some unconscious assumption that boys were more robust about this, that they'd figure it out, that it mattered slightly less if my son got a less thorough conversation than my daughter. I don't believe that consciously. But my behaviour reflected it.

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Boys in Hong Kong are underserved by their parents' embarrassment. This is what I have concluded. Girls are also underserved — our collective discomfort about sex and bodies affects all children. But there is a specific gap for boys. They are assumed to be fine. They are assumed to find out somehow. They are assumed to need less emotional care around these topics.

The results of this are visible in how boys grow up to treat their own bodies, their own emotional lives, and eventually the people they're intimate with. Boys who received no framework for understanding their sexuality, no language for their own emotional experience, no guidance about what healthy relationships look like — those boys become young men who are lost in ways they often can't name and won't seek help for.

My husband did eventually have a more extended conversation with our son, after I told him this needed to happen. It was stilted and slightly bizarre by his own account. But he did it. He told our son that if anything was confusing or embarrassing he could ask either of us. He said he understood it was awkward. He said awkward was okay.

That seems like the bare minimum. But in this city, for this generation of parents, it is not nothing.

I am still working out how to do this better. I don't have it figured out. What I have is the commitment to keep trying, to keep filling the gaps as I find them, and to give both my children — not just the one who's easier to talk to — what they need.