The Role Of Sexual Education In Adolescents

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Although the teen pregnancy rate has been on a decline (Ventura, Hamilton, Mathews 2014), there are disparities that leave portions of the population, such as the poor, teens, and racial minorities, with little or no information about sexual health education. Additionally, those same portions of the population may have incorrect information on sexual health. If we are willing to let our teenagers make the correct decisions about their sexual health, they should have the right to be informed of accurate sexual health topics from educational sources. However, there are power discourses that put adolescents at a disadvantage when searching for correct information on sexual education.
Last year, I wrote a quantitative research paper analyzing
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2011). However, teens believe they are not receiving enough information, or even information pertaining to their curiosity when parents do discuss sex with them. Parents, on the other hand, have the impression they are providing their children with the information they need to make informed decisions regarding their sexual health. It seems as though adolescents’ judge talking about sex with their parents through the quality of the information, mothers conclude they talked to their teens based on the actual action of talking with their children, regardless of the quality of the information provided (Jaccard et al. 2000).
Comprehensive sexual education is the preferred method of sex education in schools, according to public opinion (Herrman et al. 2013; Rose 2005). The rates of comprehensive sexual education have been on a decline in the last couple of decades (Herrman et al. 2013). Funding has been given to schools to teach an abstinence-only approach and to not provide information on contraceptive options (Rose 2005). Many students who have taken sexual education at school deem the curriculum not useful and a negative experience (Dudley et al.
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According to a report from the Guttmacher Institute (2016), if there is a discussion about sexual health between teenagers and medical providers, the conversation lasts, on average, 36 seconds. Many healthcare providers prefer to have parental consent before supplying contraception to adolescents, as public opinion has shown parents are the preferred source of sexual health information for adolescents. As a result, medical providers wish to leave the quality and quantity of the information to the decision of the parents. Parents, on the other hand, believe medical providers to be a useful resource for their teenagers. Unless there is a conversation between medical provider and parents, the adolescents are unable to receive much sexual health information from their medical

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