Parent Preparedness When Discussing Child's Sexual Education Essay

Parent Preparedness When Discussing Child's Sexual Education - Essay Example Right when parents begin to assume their responsibility in educating the child, the children seek an escape and thus, generate a communication gap that lead to lack of knowledge transmitted form parent to child. Another argument that sex education supporters raise is that the success rate of abstinence only program are low. One cannot observe any significant difference between individuals who enroll and who do not in this program. In order to frame a sex education program for school counseling, it is a recommendation that one starts with the most basic knowledge and then progresses to higher level of complexities. A very important perspective that needs attention here is the preparedness of parents in terms of educating their children. Experts believe that parents can play a crucial role in teaching children about sex. Introduction The paper aims to address the importance of sex education in adolescence. With the growing number of cases of sexual abuse and rapes, the matter is a pres sing concern for schools and parents all over the world as it is their responsibility to educate the child beforehand. ... Studies by World Health Organization reveal the contribution of healthy sexual development to overall well being of an individual. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, David Satcher, â€Å"sexual health is inextricably bound to both physical and mental health,† (Moore & Rosenthal, 2006). In terms of definition, sexual education refers to "education about human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and other aspects of human sexual behavior" (Klein, pp. 9, 1992). Although people all around the world accept the importance of sexual health, very few actually agree to the idea of education system to promote it. Main arguments regarding sex education programs involve role of government in family life; limitations to parent’s role in defining a sexual pattern for their children, subjectivity of values associated to sex for instance, gender and po wer etc and above all how does one define a mature sexual behavior for adolescent (Bruess & Greenberg, 2008). In addition, there are also questions as to how can one effectively communicate these ideas to adolescents, the content of such courses and mainly who is better suited to provide this guidance. Sex education has never been this critical an issue. Researches (Reintsma, 2007) reveal that there are 850,000 pregnancies and 9.1 million STIs (sexually transmitted infections) (Moore & Rosenthal, 2006). In addition, 70% females and 62% males have already experienced vaginal sex by the age of 18 in US. It has been a grave problem with little attention given. Moreover, as per U.S Department of Justice, every 2 minutes, a woman is raped. Only in the year 1995, 354,670 females encountered rape or