We can continue to raise consent as an issue, but let’s not suggest that healthy romantic activity typically involves situations when consent might be unclear. Instead, we could say, “If you’re unsure about whether you have a green light in the bedroom, you may or may not have a legal concern. But you definitely have a relational one. You should not feel comfortable proceeding if your partner says no more than ‘O.K. … fine,’ to something you suggest.”

“An effective lesson on consent,” said Nicole Cushman, executive director of Answer, a national organization that promotes sex education for youth, “is not just about providing a legal definition and a script that young people need to follow.” In Ms. Cushman’s experience, teaching about consent should address “communication skills, decision making and respect for personal boundaries.”

Our surprising comfort with the term consent grows out of a reluctance to acknowledge that women have libidos, too. Only if we ignore female desire can we go along with the troublesome premise that, in heterosexual interactions, men will play offense and women will play defense.

“You can consent to having sex, but is that all we should expect from our sexual experiences?” asked Anna Rosenfeld, 23, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a former peer educator for Planned Parenthood. “As women, we should be taught to expect pleasure and reciprocation — that is a higher bar than what we are necessarily taught to think about.”

To remind young people that sex is about shared enjoyment, we might say to both our daughters and our sons, “Know what you want and learn what your partner wants. Good sex happens where those two agendas meet.”

Of course as parents, we often feel reluctant to communicate with our children about their emerging sexual lives. Or we may be so busy warning kids about the potential downsides of sex that we forget to let them know that it also has the potential for intimacy and joy. If we broach the topic at all, we may be inclined to address only the legal and medical ramifications, and say little about the respect we hope young people will extend to, and expect from, their sexual partners.

“The hookup culture has reinforced the lack of respect,” Ms. Lauster said. “It suggests that you’re not supposed to think of the person in terms of a relationship — you don’t necessarily have to respect the person you’re hooking up with. And I think that goes both ways — that girls don’t necessarily respect the guys they’re hooking up with.”