5 Reasons Why Parents Should Push For Comprehensive Sex Education

In a study looking into the sexual risk-taking of youth between the ages of 15 to 19, students who were given comprehensive sex-ed are 50 percent less likely to experience an unintended pregnancy than those who are given abstinence-only sex-ed.

It’s super important for parents to talk to their kids about how to use condoms and other forms of contraception. But parents often don’t have all the correct information and instructions, and therefore aren’t able to give their kids the skills they need in order to stay healthy.
That shouldn’t stop parents from talking about healthy sexuality and contraception, but it’s a reminder that kids should have trained professionals to provide them with the most current medically-accurate information.

As parents, you have the duty and right to pass your values about sex onto our kids. If part of your family’s values system is waiting until marriage for sex, that’s fine. Comprehensive programs should be teaching programs that prepare all kids to have healthy and happy lives, and give them facts that will help keep them safe.

Programs that combine abstinence-until-marriage information with recommendations for condom and contraceptive use are shown to positively impact teens’ sexual health and behavior by pushing back the age at which they first have sex, as well as reducing pregnancy and STI rates. It’s really the best of both worlds.

Most kids will have sex eventually and will use some form of birth control, even in marriage. A comprehensive sex-ed curriculum can help them when the time is right.
If consent education is included, all kids can benefit from the empowering message of bodily autonomy and respect for others.

Most of us hope our kids will wait until they’re older to have sex, but it’s time we faced reality and offered our kids a healthier sexual education.