It always astounds me the fuss that is caused whenever anything to do with sex education is mentioned in the press. I refer to this morning’s BBC news article “Sex Education for Six-Year-Olds” and, in particular, the comments made by Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern.

Here are a few of them:

1) "It is up to parents and carers to teach sex education to children."

Well, wouldn’t that be nice? Of course, if parents and carers want to and feel comfortable with it, of course the ideal is for them to teach sex education to children. But not everyone is – and many children don’t have both parents at home half (or any) of the time to be able to talk to them about any concerns or issues.

2) "This is all part of an exercise to break down children's inhibitions and natural sense of modesty.”

Sorry, what inhibitions and natural sense of modesty are these? The ones that allow children to enjoy running around naked on the beach without being concerned about their bodies? The ones that allow a brother and sister of four and six to share a bath together and to talk about the fact that one has a ‘willy’ and the other a ‘botty’ because that’s one of the differences between boys and girls? Or the ones that big businesses and Hollywood push onto them as they grow up, that tell them that they have to be thin and beautiful?

3) "Most parents would be very concerned if they knew that their children were being given literature at school produced by an organisation that doesn't put sexual intimacy in a clear moral context and that fails to respect the role of parents."

Oh, for goodness sake! What sort of world does Mr Wells live in? Of course people respect the role of parents – at least those that are at home because they’re not too busy putting in 60 hour weeks at work to buy the latest gadgets.

Now, I have to confess at this early stage that I haven’t read the magazine, so it may be that it goes into great detail about sex and encourages six year olds to grow up having it with as many people as possible. But I sincerely doubt it. I’m not sure that being able to name your body parts is really going into sexual intimacy in any great detail.

I am firmly in the camp that believes that the more we inform our children, the more we empower them to make appropriate, sensible decisions as they grow up. I would far rather have a six year old daughter who, when wandering through the supermarket asks at the top of her voice; “Mummy, are peas bigger, or smaller than a sperm?” (oh, yes she did!), than live by the Sarah Palin method of keeping kids in the dark until, surprise, surprise, they find themselves pregnant.

And as for a ‘clear moral context’, I think that my kids get that from seeing their parents’ happy marriage and from having clear guidelines and rules for how we treat other people.

I watched Dispatches (about the new immunisation against cervical cancer) on Monday night. Various arguments were given both for and against the immunisation, but the one thing that horrified me was the group of mothers stating that they did not feel that they wanted their daughters to have the jab because they did not want to have a conversation about sex with a twelve year old. My God, no wonder six percent of teenagers in this country get pregnant every year.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I have two daughters and I would like them to hold on to their innocence as long as possible. But I don’t think that talking openly about sex and loving relationships is likely to deprive them of their childhood in some way. Having had an embarrassingly rubbish sex education at school, I don’t feel wildly confident about it, but I try my best to answer six year old Milly’s questions when they come up. The last time was in the supermarket - in a very LOUD voice she asked, “Mummy, is that apple bigger or smaller than a sperm?”

From my perspective, I blunder through things as best I can and pray that sex education nowadays is manifestly better than it was thirty years ago. So I just can’t understand these people who complain about sex education being ‘too explicit’. As far as I am concerned, the more that teachers take off my hands, the better and, in the mean time, I will try to be as open and unembarrassed as possible.

I would like to see a much more open attitude towards sex in schools – much more along the lines of that in Holland (where only one percent of teenagers get pregnant). I certainly wouldn’t complain if Milly and her peers were to be taught about sex and how babies are made (yes, and how big a sperm is in relation to an apple). Far better that she learns from her parents and teachers than from teenage magazines and other teenagers who have already ‘done it’. I don’t believe it would make her more likely to become sexually active in her teens. On the contrary, I think it would equip her with the skills to deal with sexual issues.