Parents Play Key Role in Sex Education

In this age of AIDS, it takes almost as much talk as action to practice safe sex.

Even the most self-assured adults have difficulty asking direct questions about someone’s sexual history, insisting on the use of a condom or saying “no” in a high-risk situation. So how can teen-agers who aren’t even able to talk about sex comfortably with their parents be expected to initiate prudent, intimate discussions with their peers?

Never, say educators, has it been more important for children to grow up in an atmosphere that encourages them to talk freely about all aspects of their sexuality. Yet, at a time when young people are being bombarded by mixed messages from the media--MTV airs provocative rock videos while newscasts on AIDS caution that sex can be deadly--a surprising number of parents are saying far too little, or nothing at all.

As a result, their kids are living in two disparate worlds. At school, they confront the reality of the ‘90s: In spite of the specter of AIDS, an estimated 54.2% of adolescent females nationally have had premarital sex, and four out of five males are sexually active by age 19. But at home, the repressed atmosphere of the ‘50s prevails. Sensing their parents’ discomfort and denial, many teens who are sexually active--or feeling great pressure to give up their virginity--keep this part of their lives quiet.

Too often, communication opens up only after a family faces a crisis: the news that a teen-ager is pregnant or has a sexually transmitted disease.

Carol Cassell, author of “Straight from the Heart: How to Talk to Your Teen-ager About Love and Sex,” says most parents have great intentions but end up settling for silence because of their own uneasiness over a subject that wasn’t discussed freely when they were growing up.

“The biggest problem is that most parents never took Sex Ed. 101,” explains the nationally recognized sex educator, who is based in Albuquerque, N.M. “They’ve all said, ‘When my child needs this information, I’m going to do a better job than my parents did,’ but there’s this void in their background. They don’t know when or how to bring up the topic, and they worry about saying the wrong thing.”

Estela Martinez, director of education for Planned Parenthood/Orange & San Bernardino Counties, points out that parents are also reluctant to bring up the subject because that means they must: 1) look at their children as sexual beings and 2) openly acknowledge their own sexuality.

Sex educators say it may help parents to remember that the way they show love and respect for each other has been giving their children unspoken messages about sexuality since birth, that there’s nothing wrong with admitting their discomfort when talking about sex with their children and that they don’t have to have all the answers.

Says Cassell: “They don’t have to worry about getting everything perfect. Kids give parents high marks for trying, for caring enough to say something.”

Ideally, sex education in the home should be a lifelong process, Martinez says. Planned Parenthood’s guide on “How to Talk With Your Child About Sexuality” points out that as soon as children begin asking questions, parents should respond directly and matter-of-factly, using proper names for sexual parts and being careful not to say more than little ones are ready to hear.

As they approach puberty, children need information about how their bodies are changing, and by age 12 they should understand the mechanics of reproduction and know about sexually transmitted diseases and contraception.

In their teen years, they need help sorting out their feelings, resisting peer pressure and making responsible choices. (For more information on how to discuss sex with your child at various stages of development, call Planned Parenthood at (714) 973-1733.)

Martinez says that many parents find it difficult to talk to their teen-agers about sex because they fear that information will lead to promiscuity. But the teens who communicate comfortably with their parents tend to be the ones who make the most responsible decisions, she adds.

About 75% of the teens who attend her lectures say they never discuss sex with their parents. “They’re more at risk of disease and pregnancy because they’re getting information from their peers and by experimenting,” Martinez says.

Cassell agrees: “Most of young people’s bad decisions are made through ignorance, not through education.”

Susan Leavy, a therapist who manages the counseling program at Planned Parenthood’s Santa Ana office, says she gets past her discomfort when answering her 6-year-old’s questions about sex by reminding herself that: “I’m giving my daughter a gift of information to help keep her safe. The more knowledge she has, the more protected she is and the more power she has.”

What teens most need to learn from their parents is “the fact that sex isn’t some hurricane force in our lives, that we do have the ability to make good choices about sexuality,” Cassell says.

She feels teen-agers would be more receptive to the idea of abstinence if parents focused less on discouraging premarital sex and more on reasons for deciding against pre-adulthood sex.

“The concern of parents really is that they don’t want their son or daughter being sexually involved too soon, before they can handle it. So instead of talking about virginity and chastity, talk about postponing sex and making good decisions,” she advises.

Jeff Simon, a 17-year-old student at Woodbridge High School in Irvine, says the more he learns about sex, the more wisdom he sees in the idea of waiting until marriage.

As one of Planned Parenthood’s peer educators, Simon has been trained to talk to teens about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases, among other issues.

“I came home one day this summer and told my dad that I may want to hold off on sex until I get married,” he says, admitting that, before he went through Planned Parenthood’s training program, he felt invulnerable to the threat of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“I was very ignorant, thinking, like most teens, that nothing could touch me,” he says. Now that he knows how devastating AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases can be, he’s beginning to feel that sex outside of marriage poses too many risks, he explains.

Simon is grateful that his father began talking with him about sex when he was in grade school, and that his questions--about such concerns as how girls’ bodies change during puberty, whether they have the same sex drive as boys and how his religion views masturbation--have always been met with straight answers.

He wishes more of his peers shared this kind of openness with their parents, because he sees a lot of confusion among teens struggling with peer pressure to have sex, fear of AIDS and the complex emotions involved in intimate relationships.

Simon says it’s vital for parents to begin making sex a comfortable subject in their home as early as possible.

“If you don’t bring up the issue, your kid’s going to learn about it the wrong way,” he says. “Younger and younger kids are watching more and more television, and what they learn from TV may not be the right message.”

Lauren McCaul, a 15-year-old Orange High School student who also works as a peer educator for Planned Parenthood, has often seen facts about sex from TV programs get distorted as they are passed from one teen to another.

McCaul, who appreciates the fact that her parents are “OK with the subject” and offer useful information without making judgments, says most of her peers don’t talk about sex at home “because they think their parents will be uncomfortable, which is probably true. They don’t want to see their parents squirm.”

But when parents succumb to what 18-year-old Daniel MacArthur of Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove calls “the embarrassment factor,” many teens end up taking risks out of ignorance. The Planned Parenthood peer educator says a surprising number of teens believe that you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex and don’t know how to use birth control properly.

Mary Ann Creason, a 45-year-old Silverado Canyon resident, says she was determined when she was raising her two daughters to make sure they could turn to her for reliable information about sex.

Although she grew up in a home where sex was never discussed openly, she wanted to be an “askable parent” who could handle any question without being shocked. Creason, who had a strict Catholic upbringing, “desensitized” herself to sexual terms that she felt uncomfortable saying by repeating them to herself over and over until she could use them unself-consciously around her children.

Her youngest daughter, Anne Jarvis, who is 23, says Creason succeeded in creating an open, non-judgmental environment. When Jarvis fell in love and began thinking seriously about having a sexual relationship with her boyfriend at age 16, she went to her mother for help obtaining birth control, she says.

Creason, who took her daughter to a birth control clinic, recalls: “As a mother, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is too soon,’ and I wanted to say, ‘You’re so young; don’t do this.’ But I felt she was going to do it anyway, and I preferred to have a 16-year-old on the pill rather than a 16-year-old with an unwanted pregnancy.”

Creason says she gave her daughters this simple advice regarding premarital sex: “For some it’s OK, and for some it’s not. Everybody makes their own choice--but you shouldn’t take it lightly.”

Cassell suggests that parents who feel insecure in the role of sex educator concentrate on what they know best--the lessons they’ve gained from their own experience with human relationships.

“That’s what kids want to know most about,” she says. “They need their parents’ opinions about love. How do you know when you’re in love? How do you handle breaking up? What if the person you love doesn’t love you back? How do you postpone having sex and still stay close to someone? These are the things parents have experience with. They may not know all the facts about the HIV virus, but they know about the love bug.”

Cassell, who points out that parents have to walk a fine line to maintain an open dialogue with teen-agers without prying, is concerned that young people are getting the “scare message” about AIDS but not hearing enough about the healthy side of sex.

Planned Parenthood’s Martinez puts it this way: “Let them know that sex is a wonderful, intimate, positive thing when responsibility is the cornerstone of their behavior.”