At what age should a child be taught about human sexuality, and how should the subject be approached? What should be covered?

At what age should a child be taught about human sexuality,

I don't know. I'm thinking around 10-12 years old.

and how should the subject be approached?

By the childs parents. :|

What should be covered?

What the childs mother and father decide should be covered. :|

when he/she catches you banging the wife like a screen door in a hurricane.

:rofl:

I think jojo has a good age range, but I also think it 1. depends on the child's maturity and 2. if they've walked in on a sex act. These also apply with how much to tell them.

I plan on telling them what they want to know when they want to know it. If they don't approach me first, then no later than age 11. I know by the time I was 12 I was already having some pretty strong "urges"

of course I never got the talk from anyone, I learned the old-fashioned way: friends and porn.

You explain as they ask, but use tact & realize their ages. I'm pretty blunt & truthful, but my kids arent lied to or uninformed.

My parents were pretty open about it, they didn't ban me from watching sexual content in movies and they answered when I asked questions so I knew the basics, by the time I got to sex ed in school it was all just details and mechanics. My first sex-ed session in school was 5th grade (so right around the 11 year old mark that other people have said here). I never atually got sat down and given "the talk" all at once, I liked the gradual method, it all seemed to work perfectly for me. I'll probably try the same approach with my children.

While I think it is important for parents to be the ones to do more of the sex ed teaching I also think it's important that schools don't cut it out of the curiculum and ignore it because there are a lot of parents out there who never breach the subject with their children because they are embarassed or feel akward about it or simply because they are not as involved in their child as they should be. If we, as a society, want to decrease the number of teenage pregnancies and STD's then we need to talk about it to our kids. Ignoring the topic and only telling them to abstain from sex just isn't going to work.