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Straight Talk About Sex
Giving Your Child the Facts About Sex
By Tara Swords
Tanis Exner didn't wait for TV, teachers or playground friends to teach her 8-year-old daughter, Jenelle, about sex. Exner began sex education, as she says, "from the beginning."
"We did not leave out body parts when we taught her about her body," she says. "We thought her vagina was as important as her nose or her feet."
For parents like Exner who are worried that their children will experiment with sex at too young an age, research shows that this approach is the best one.
A national survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Children Now found that kids whose parents are more open in their discussions about sex and sexuality are less likely to become sexually active at a young age. The idea is that children who feel they can approach their parents with questions will get factual information and feel less compelled to seek out answers through their own experiences.
Exner says she learned the hard way and won't let her daughter do the same. "I learned about sex from my unreliable friends and ended up a teen mum because I knew nothing of birth control," she says. "I did not want my own daughter growing up ashamed of her body and ignorant of the facts."
Media coverage of the teen pregnancy rate in the United States has thrust the issue into the spotlight – and the numbers are a combination of good and bad news.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit research group, the U.S. pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 dropped 17 percent from 1990 to 1996 from 117 births per 1,000 girls to 97 births per 1,000 girls. After a near crisis in the number of teen pregnancies in the 1980s, this was a sign of progress, a sign that some effort or combination of efforts was convincing teens to avoid early parenthood.
After the teenage pregnancy rate began making headlines, educators, parents and teens alike mounted campaigns to reduce the number of girls facing the prospect of motherhood before even reaching their 20s. This sparked a nationwide debate as different interest groups battled over the best solution: abstinence or contraception.