Parents in denial

I had to get this off my chest:

Too many parents are in a state of denial about their children. It is too easy to think they are existing in a vacuum of wholesome goodness, sheltered and shielded from supposed “bad influences”. In reality, youths today have access to many questionable content via the Internet and mass media. The reality is that youths know much more, and understand much more than we would like to believe.

I had, in the course of my work, known about teenagers getting infected by HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases. HIV is bad enough, given that there’s no cure, and requires expensive medication to keep it under control. To many youths, however, whether they get pregnant (or not) matters more. Teen pregnancies are on the rise, and often alters irrevocably, the course of one’s life.

That is the reality. They know what sex is, and most would have seen pornography via the internet, or heard about it from friends. There is a terrible information gap existing. Young people know about sex, but do not know enough to allow for responsible decision-making. We would like to think they aren’t going to engage in sex, or even think about sex, but that is not the case. The reality is that they are aware of sex, and many will unfortunately engage in it before marriage.

Any child can get into such a situation. While it is easy to dismiss such behaviour as belonging to “ill-behaved” and “badly brought up” youths, the reality is that in this time and age where information is easily accessible via the Internet and mass media, youths engaging in pre-marital and unprotected sex are a dime a dozen.

Prevailing fallacies about condom messaging prevent the comprehensive sex education in moving forward. As a Director puts it, “the edict comes from so high up...from the edge of heaven, there is no point challenging it”. The thinking that talking about condoms will encourage youths to engage in the sexual act itself has no evidence to support it. In fact, there have been studies disproving this particular assumption.

And so, we don’t talk about it. Some think they will “naturally” learn about it. Some procrastinate and leave it for “later”. Or some just take a laissez-faire attitude and remained detached. Honest and open communication does not take place, and the child has no trusted adult to turn to for accurate information and advice. And so the cycle goes on. The lack of accurate information and advice pre-disposes youths to make badly-informed decisions, and opens them up to numerous risks.

This issue of comprehensive sex education is rooted in culture, in social norms and set ways of thinking. If we cannot break away from the yoke of outmoded thinking, the cycle will just go on.
All it takes is just one time.