Crowded around the kitchen table, my school friends were writhing in horror as my friend Amelia recounted in delicious detail her suspicions that she’d interrupted a classmate touching herself in the loos.
‘Disgusting!’ shrieked one. ‘She’s a pervert nympho!’ offered another. Suddenly my mother turned from her elegant perch at the kitchen sink with a disapproving look on her face.
‘Masturbation in private is perfectly natural and pleasurable,’ she said. ‘Don’t YOU masturbate Amelia?’
‘What’s it like having a sex therapist for a mum?’ is a question I was asked so many times as a teenager.
For some years, I simply stopped telling people what my mother did (she hates the term ‘sex therapist’ by the way, and would always insist that I explain that she ‘specialises in helping people with their sexual and relationship problems’).
And for much of that time, I would probably have told you that I found her career just as humiliating as the troubled son of Gillian Anderson’s character in Sex Education. I was just so aware of what she did.
My mother, Janice Hiller, is also remarkably similar to Anderson’s character. She’s a leading clinical psychologist and sexologist who recently published her book Sex in the Brain: A Neuropsychosexual Approach to Love and Intimacy.
Like all her writing, it’s pretty graphic and not for the faint hearted.
It’s for this reason that I never attended any of her talks or read her work – until I became an adult myself.
Now a parent and co-owner of British sex toy brand, Hot Octopuss, I’m far from being embarrassed by my mother. In fact, I credit her for destigmatising sex and masturbation at a time when most girls didn’t even know they could orgasm.
One of my earliest memories is of my mother explaining how my body worked, and that women could get just as much pleasure from sex as men. This was news to my friends who believed women made sex noises to increase their partner’s pleasure.
Except, I had no idea just how unusual and ‘progressive’ my upbringing was until, aged nine, a school friend stumbled upon a copy of The Joy of Sex in the study, sandwiched as it was between The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Becoming Orgasmic: A Personal and Sexual Growth Programme for Women.
As my classmate guffawed her way through the mildly erotic drawings, asking whether my parents ‘used the book’, I felt an embarrassment that would colour my remaining primary school years.
One time, before a group of friends were due to visit, I collected a bunch of sex books in my bag and hid them in the school library. They swiftly disappeared and I was in awful trouble with my parents.
In retrospect, compared to my oldest son’s sexual awakening – via a friend’s phone streaming porn on the bus home from school – The Joy of Sex was a rather sweet and innocent way to discover sex.
Still, right up until my late 20s, I was determined to follow a more conventional career, working in journalism, think tanks and then the charity sector when I had kids.
But I held onto an arms length fascination with my mother’s work. So, when a close friend approached me about developing a sex toy with him while I was on maternity leave in 2009, I didn’t hesitate.
In fact it was my mother who had doubts, reminding me of how tricky dinner party conversations can be when your career revolves around sex.
Apparently someone once asked her if her role was practical in any way, and she had to explain that she provided talking therapy, not sex work!
But when my friend and I launched our first product PULSE, a hands-free vibrator for men, I had no qualms sharing the product reviews on the family WhatsApp alongside her latest research on treatment for vaginosis.
When people ask me now about the challenges of running a sex toy business with young kids, I refer back to my own childhood for guidance. There are challenges of course – I do not keep products in the house, and working from home when the kids are there is tricky.
But I don’t allow my children to feel ashamed or embarrassed about my career.
There was a zero shame approach to anything sex related in our home growing up, if anything – no question was too embarrassing or personal to ask.
So, by the time I was 16, I knew practically everything there was to know about sex – to the benefit of my friends. Anything I couldn’t help with, my mum of course could.
By the time I was in my late teens, my mother was more of a local celebrity than an embarrassing parent – friends would gather at the kitchen table to ask critical questions that they would never dare to share with their own mothers.
Unruffled by the intimate details that invariably came up, she would pass out self help books on how to masturbate and give advice on everything from sensitive nipples, to what happens if someone ejaculates near you in a swimming pool.
But this openness has always gone both ways. My mum has always asked rather intimate questions – sometimes awkwardly so.
About the author
Julia Margo is co-founder of sex tech brand Hot Octopuss. Her mum, Janice Hiller, is a consultant clinical psychologist and author of the book Sex in the Brain: A Neuropsychosexual Approach to Love and Intimacy.
Just the other week she asked me over brunch whether an ex had suffered premature ejaculation. ‘Just something I’ve been wondering about,’ she said. ‘There’s a new theory linking chronic early arrivers with premature ejaculation and I immediately thought of him.’
He did have a terrible habit of arriving everywhere at least 15 minutes early.
When I was pregnant with my first baby, she enquired whether I experienced ‘strong orgasmic contractions’ during sex with his dad, as there was a theory about conception being more likely if women orgasmed during sex.
When I didn’t answer, she asked me about my vaginal mucus instead.
Once, in my 20s when anxiously bouncing my leg up and down waiting for a friend to arrive while the family sat in the lounge, she commented: ‘Julia, those movements look like you are stimulating yourself.’
I try not to jiggle my leg around her these days.
But she’s often my first port of call to discuss a new blog, podcast or research about sex. I share her passion to destigmatise sex and educate young people, particularly in this world where it’s so much easier to access porn than sexual wellness information.
I have no doubt that my upbringing contributed to my decision to leave the charity sector and build Hot Octopuss into the global brand it is today.
With my own kids, I try to avoid embarrassing them too much, and I don’t want to be the sex-pert mum around the kitchen table with them.
Still, I am deeply grateful to have never experienced the body confidence issues or shame around my own sexual pleasure and desires that so many of my generation seem to have. I try to pass that forward as much as I can.
In fact, mindful of my younger children, I recently ordered my own copy of The Joy of Sex and popped it on the shelves above the piano.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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