Teen sex education, or teen sex ed, is important for helping teens to understand the changes in their bodies and in their relationships during the teenage years. Sex education helps teens make healthy choices about relationships and sex.
Sex education for teens should start well before the teenage years. Starting early, parents should have age-appropriate discussions with their children about love, relationships, values, and sex. It is appropriate to give children and teens honest, clear answers when they ask questions about their bodies or about relationships. For young children these answers do not need to be graphic, but should be straightforward.
If parents make sex education an open, ongoing discussion with their child, by the time the child is a teen he or she will feel more comfortable asking his or her parents questions about sex and the changes brought about by sexual development in the teen years. Parental opinion is one of the most important factors teens use to make decisions about sex. If parents have not educated their teens about sex, or discourage questions from their teens, the teens will get more of their sex education from friends and the media, which are not reliable sources.
Teens do learn about sex from television, movies, music, and magazines; those teens who were exposed to sex through any of these media when young are more likely to begin having sex at an early age. The need to correct the false impressions teens may get from the media about sex is an important reason that teens should get sex education from their parents.
Sex education conducted through schools or religious groups can also help to correct the misinformed and sometimes deceptive sex education teens get from the media and from friends. Some types of sex education presented by schools or religious organizations for children and teens might include:
- Good touch-bad touch talks for elementary students, teaching them that they have the right to be safe from inappropriate physical contact, and that they should respect this right in others.
- Basic descriptions of the reproductive system, usually presented in middle school, before puberty, to pre-teens separated by gender.
- Discussions of human sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, and types of birth control, including abstinence, usually presented to teens in high school sex education courses.
- Value-based, age-appropriate discussions about relationships and sexuality offered by religious groups.
These sex education classes generally require parental approval before the child or teen can participate, and give parents another opportunity to discuss relationships and values with their children or teens. Schools, religious groups, and community organizations may also offer advice or written materials to help parents talk to their teens about sex.
Some parents are afraid that teen sex education encourages their teens to have sex. A recent study in Texas, however, found that teens who took a two week sex education class became more interested in waiting until after high school to have sex; before the class 84 percent of the teens wanted to wait, and after the class 87 percent were planning on waiting. Also, before the class 60 percent of the teens said they wanted to wait until marriage to have sex, and after the class 71 percent were planning on abstaining until marriage.
The likelihood that teens will have sex is also reduced if they watch less than 2 hours of television on school nights, attend religious services, and come from a family with both parents.
Parents, whether married or single, are still the strongest influence on the choices their teens make about sex. By being involved in their teens’ sex education, parents can help their teens develop healthy attitudes about love and sex.
Teen Sex Educaiton Sources:
- U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, MedlinePlus: “Sex-ed program may get adolescents to delay sex” [online]
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, healthfinder.com, “Mass Media May prompt Kids to Try Sex: Study” by Kathleen Doheny [online]
- WebMD.com, “Where do Kids learn about Sex?” [online]
