Parents and schools should cooperate on sex education

SECONDARY schools should develop a strategy for communicating with parents about relationships and sex education that occurs at school, a report has recommended.

The study, published by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, examines parents’ approaches to educating their children about sexuality.

It found that while parents didn’t always respond fully to questions from their younger children, they reported attempting to raise sexual issues with their teenage children. However, these attempts were often blocked by the young people who were reluctant to talk about the topic.

Another dominant pattern was for parents to convey the message to their children that sexual promiscuity was morally wrong, while there was almost universal consensus among parents that pre-marital sex was inevitable.

One of the authors of the report, Dr Abbey Hyde warned that low parental monitoring has been found to be associated with early sexual activity, more sexual partners and inconsistent contraceptive use.

“Many parents find it difficult to engage in sex education with teenagers but they need to be aware that other sources of information might not convey the sense of responsibility needed to maintain good sexual health,” she said.

“Parents’ role in sexuality education needs to be strengthened so that healthy sexual values are transmitted to young people.

“We know from existing research that parental monitoring, such as knowing what time adolescents come and go and where they are has a protective effect in terms of sexual health.”

Other recommendations in the report were that parents fulfil their responsibility to talk to their children about relationships and sexuality and not assume that young people’s knowledge of sexuality and relationships is accurate, thorough or even sufficient.

Launching the report, director of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency Caroline Spillane said parents should communicate with children at an early age about relationships and sex, delivering age- appropriate and accurate information to create an environment where children will feel comfortable discussing the subject as they get older.

“Parents are best placed to judge precisely what information is appropriate for their children at various stages in their lives,” she said. “The agency has created a number of resources to help parents feel comfortable and confident in leading a conversation about relationships and avoid a situation where they are reacting to teenagers’ behaviour as they get older.”

Interestingly, the authors of a report released this week gauging children’s happiness, said there were difficulties collecting data on sexual behaviour in Ireland because of a “general nervousness” as to how parents might react.

Ireland was the only country where questions on sexual health were not included in the questionnaire distributed to 5,000 children in schools in 2006.