Educating your child in love, sex and life:
a difficult but crucial role of parents

In this first of a two-part series, we look at why it is innately so difficult yet crucial that parents do not relegate the role of educating their children in sex, love and life to a third party. In the second part, we will look at how parents can go about approaching this sensitive area with their children.


Part 1
Why it is so difficult but so important

Just the other day, my still very innocent 11 year-old asked me what a condom was used for when he accompanied me to the supermarket. It gave me pause, but I answered him factually, and this of course led to a whole range of other more "interesting" questions from him.

It is a common phenomenon, and a world-wide one at that, (if this gives you heart), that parents are just not comfortable talking about sex and related matters to their children. When it comes to our children and sex, an interesting dilemma exists for parents and was highlighted at a recent public meeting organised by a government body to encourage more parental input into sex education of their children. While the general consensus seemed to be that the parents present want abstinence to be practised by their children, they question themselves as to whether they are selling their children short, being irresponsible even, by not discussing contraception with them, i.e. not equipping them for the "just in case" scenario.

Intuitively as parents, we want abstinence for our children until such time as they have found that satisfying, fulfilling relationship which holds the promise of the future for them (i.e. marriage) because we want them happy and healthy. No parent wishes to see their child weighed down by the consequences of poor decisions which have resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and the guilt associated with the decisions in dealing with the pregnancy. Nor to see a disruption of educational possibilities which can have lifelong consequences; or to see their happy child, full of promise and potential, descend to a state of poor self-esteem, depression or a loss of confidence from feeling they have cheated themselves by giving him or herself to the wrong person, or by contracting a sexually-transmitted disease.

To make the situation muddier and harder for parents though, there is a welter of confusing statistics out there. None other than the very prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2002¹ has published a widely quoted review of thirteen programmes to reduce unwanted teen pregnancies and found them "ineffective". Or more recently, a review in the same journal in 2007² concluded that "abstinence only programs that aim to prevent HIV infection are ineffective". Or when the book, "The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell US About Our Kids" quotes brain experts as saying that "adolescents have bigger passions…but no brakes…until they are twenty-five", implying that "that's just 'em - you just can't change them". When weighty voices of authority resound with messages like these, what can a parent do?

Well, the answer, as often is the case, is to trust your instinct, if you think it has sound basis.

"Abstinence Only Programmes Don't Work"?

Jokin de Irala, Deputy Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Navarre, looked at the reviews by the BMJ and his conclusions are interesting. He says that of the 2007 review, the most you can say is that those 13 programmes were no more effective than alternatives offered, not that they were ineffective, and not that abstinence only programmes do not work. And of the 2007 review, he pulls apart the credibility of the conclusions reached by citing elegantly and succinctly one pertinent example of the many serious methodological problems which the authors glossed over:

"… how does one compare programs that ranged in duration from one session to 720 sessions, or evaluate outcomes reliably when there are dropout rates from 5 per cent to 45 per cent? Given these problems, the total number of young people in the studies -- 15,940 -- has no special relevance, even though it is cited as though it gives extra authority to the review."

He raises some very interesting points in his article 'Abstinence Education: Are we asking the right questions?'³:

"Do we really expect that "abstinence promotion" during a few school sessions will work in a society where the media are conveying exactly the opposite message?

Think of gender violence, sexism, discrimination, academic failure, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, the problem of drinking and driving, smoking and other drug taking. Would a dozen classes in eighth or ninth grade change these behaviours if everywhere else the message was different?

The question for these issues is "how" can we convey the right message and not "whether" we should convey them. If a program aiming to prevent gender violence does not succeed, it would be a terrible mistake to conclude that "education against violence is not effective". We would rather have to think of a way to do it better given that this particular program had failed, or we would have to think of how we could help this program to succeed."

"The Myth of the Teenage Brain"

What about the idea that well, adolescents just can't control themselves because that's the way they are anatomically? Neuroscience tells us that their prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain which sits just behind your forehead) which inhibits impulsive behaviour, matures a lot more slowly (not till the age of 25) and this explains the impulsive nature of adolescents and young adults. So are we wasting time trying to teach abstinence which requires precisely the need to control these impulses and need for instant gratification?

Fortunately, we are each, much more than a prefrontal cortex. Thomas Lickona in his article "The Myth of the Teenage Brain" ⁴ addresses this issue:

"… if we brought 100 randomly selected 15-year-olds into the room, we could line them up on a continuum -- from those who have never had sex or done anything reckless to those who are having sex several times a week and engaging in a lot of other high-risk behaviours. Their brains would all be 15 years old and roughly the same in their prefrontal cortical maturity. Why, then, the great variability in behaviours that call for the regulation of impulse?"

What then is the difference? Should we give up on trying to teach teens self-control? What is the point in abstinence programmes then?

There are abstinence programmes that work and work very well⁵, but they are not just the work of a few visits or talks from an educator. As de Irala states:

"… we should empower youth to be able to make the best choices and, when behaviours are involved, this includes character education. We cannot just give them information and slogans; we have to help young people internalise good values and develop the skills, or habits, that go with them. This is not the work of one program."

What we are up against:

a). Tradition!

Traditionally and culturally, I think, it is the rare person in our generation and generations past who would have had parents who had sat us down and talked to us frankly and openly about sex and related matters. It just wasn't done! But we survived, didn't we, you might say? So why wouldn't our children as well if we just perpetuate this cycle?

The answer to that lies in the era that we live in where traditional values of family, marriage, commitment, respect for the dignity of the human being, are being eroded and attacked from different quarters - we see this for example in rising divorce rates and increasing numbers of de facto relationships; where our children have an immediacy of access to information from the media, i.e. the Internet, that is unprecedented in the history of humanity, allowing children to bypass the safety net of asking and seeking answers through parents and other traditional sources, while at the same time, not necessarily having the critical capacity or maturity to analyse the plethora of information coming to them.


b). The sexualization of our children through the Media

Youth educators Jonathan and Karen Doyle point out that as parents, we are not helped by the absolute saturation of sexual material in popular. In their programme, "It's Your Choice", they highlight a March 2000 paper from the Center For Media and Public Policy in Washington⁶ where 843 pop culture media products were studied including free-to-air and cable TV, 50 of the highest rated telemovies, 50 of the top grossing recent movies and 495 airings of 189 different MTV music videos. It found:

-	5,152 separate scenes containing sexual material in the 843 separate media inputs
-	63% contained visual images from nudity to simulated intercourse. The remaining 37% appeared in spoken dialogue or song lyrics
-	Of this 37% - 72% consisted of material including nudity, masturbation, sexual dysfunction and exhibitionism.
-	The remaining 28% consisted of sexual intercourse, oral sex, X-rated pornography, incest, etc.

If these statistics are not sobering enough, in a recent paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine⁷, 200 of the top Hollywood movies of all time obtained from an Internet database were looked at and after removing movies older than 1983 and Disney style children's movies, 87 movies were analyzed and revealed:

-	only once in the 53 episodes of sex did concern for the consequences arise.
-	In 98% of sexual intercourse, no concern for a resulting pregnancy was expressed.
-	Not a single movie studied made any suggestion of the negative consequences of sexual intercourse, unwanted pregnancies or STDs.

It doesn't take great perception to realize that our children, and possibly ourselves as well, by being fed distorted images of sex and relationships with little reference to reality and consequences, are being coached into accepting high risk sexual behaviour as an acceptable social norm.


Fighting Back

It ain't easy talking about sex. And to talk about sex, emotions, feelings- well that might just as well take the cake in terms of stretching the parental comfort zone! Communicating with your teen, as opposed to a younger child, also carries its own challenges as Marion Neubronner in her article, "How To Listen So Your Teenager Will Talk"⁸, points out.

So you see, in many ways, it is no wonder that parents a) are not comfortable, b) are confused about what to say c) are not sure how to say what they want to say about sex and their children's sexuality. But if we don't, who or what is filling the gap in our children's education in this vital area of their development? Most likely, it is the media and their friends. Even if it is a reputable third party like the school, do we really know what they are being told?

Don't lose heart, though. The good news is that even if teens sometimes seem like a race unto themselves, studies have shown that parents can have enormous influence on the decisions teenagers make about sex and relationships. Find out in part 2 how to approach this challenging facet of your child's maturing individuality in our next issue of Family Tone.

Audrey is the editor of Family Tone.