When I was about four I remember remarking to my dad that his and mummy’s bodies were different and me and my cousin’s bodies were different and what were these differences between boys and girls for? And I remember the answer. Dad told me, in an age-appropriate way, about sex, that he and mummy liked it and it was something married grown-ups did to make babies and for fun.

He didn’t talk about sperm, eggs, or fallopian tubes, nor guilt or danger. The conversation as I remember it was interesting and not charged. The reason that I remember it was that my mother came into the room and interrupted him by saying sharply, “that’s quite enough”. That stuck with me. What was she so worried about?

It’s probably the same thing that the Swedish parents were worried about when they who wrote in their thousands to complain about a cartoon that was broadcast telling children about Twinkle and Willie. And that is: the ongoing embarrassment between the generations when it comes to talking about sex.

If your three-year-old asks you about sex, it may embarrass you. Rather than take responsibility for that embarrassment, you lash out, like my mum did at my dad, and like Swedish parents have at this TV programme. And you excuse your indignation by blaming the TV producers for being disgusting.

So what is the right age to talk about sex with your children? The TV producers sarcastically suggested after the controversy that it was probably 18, because kids won’t have noticed what was in their pants until then.

When it comes to sex, one size does not fit all, and the right time to talk about it is when the child shows some curiosity about it, like I did. And as the child matures there may be – depending on you, the child and your relationship with your child – times when you or they want to have further discussions around sex. But to argue that there is one precise age when “the conversation” should take place is nonsense.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The idea that there is one precise age when ‘the conversation’ should take place is nonsense.’ Photograph: Alamy

It’s too easy to pass down shame and guilt about sex to another generation, just because it was passed down to us. It’s too easy to deny we have baggage around the subject of sex and blame the world for bringing up the subject, rather than looking to our own embarrassment and being curious as to why you feel that way.

Children don’t lose their innocence because they learn facts. I believe a loss of innocence comes when children irretrievably lose trust in their parents’ ability to keep them forever safe and take care of them. The time must come when they learn this, but let that day be put off until they are mature enough to cope with it.

I have just asked my grown-up daughter about how we told her about sex, or about why daddy dresses up in funny clothes (my husband is an occasional transvestite), and she says she has no memory of it. And neither have I. If the conversations are normal, not charged with emotion, and not avoided, I think we have a better chance of stopping shame and guilt going down another generation.

Or do we want to do this? Has my mother, in forbidding my father from telling me any more about sex on that occasion, giving me a feeling that it is bad or naughty, and do I get off on the very fact that it is a bit naughty? Is that what Swedish parents are hoping for their children? Let’s be all ashamed and forbidding about the subject of sex so that when they are adults they’ll enjoy it all the more because of the added spice of perversion? I’m joking. I’M JOKING.