Watch Jennifer Garner Talk About Sex… Education

2 minute read

Jennifer Garner, who stars in the new movie about the perils of the internet Men, Women & Children, has nothing particular against porn. She just doesn’t want her three kids to see it online before she’s had a chance to talk to them about sex. “I really hope my kids don’t run across stuff online that could appear violent to them,” she said in an interview with TIME.

Garner, who admits she takes a pretty disciplined approach to bringing up Violet, 9, Seraphina, 5 and Sam, 2, says she’s done a lot of thinking about how to teach her kids, especially her daughters about sex: she’s attended talks, she’s read books and she’s talked to experts, but says she’s still no quite sure what’s the right approach. Her own mother and father, whom she calls “the best parents in the world,” have still never talked to her about it. “I’m waiting for The Talk, mom, dad,” she jokes in the interview, which TIME subscribers can read here.

Of her kids, Garner says, “I want them to see sex as something joyful, as a gift, as a celebration of love and of their bodies. And I’ve never thought about that before, but it makes me feel really cool and hippie-ish to even think of it that way.”

Elsewhere in the interview Garner says she’s not nearly as connected online as her husband, Ben Affleck, and although she doesn’t want her kids to enter the digital world just yet, he may have other ideas. “It’s definitely a team sport, parenting,” she says.

While Garner says she quickly closes pages that have any mention of her or her family on them, she does sometimes take online courses. She was an active participant in a course run by New York Times writer Nick Kristof when his and his wife Sheryl WuDunn’s book Half the Sky came out. Anonymously, of course.

Because on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a movie star.

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