A systematic review of parental attitude and preferences towards implementation of sexuality education

Abstract

Parents play a unique role in providing and facilitating their children in acquirement of sexual and reproductive health knowledge. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of parents’ attitude, preferences towards sexuality education (SE) and factors that contributed to their attitudes and perceptions based on review of relevant literature. The articles were retrieved via electronic databases, and manually examined to identify the studies that addressed the research questions. There were 29 studies with a total of 22,213 parents involved which published in peer-reviewed journals between the year 2000 and 2018 were selected and reviewed systematically. The findings emerged from the review were categorized into three main themes which included parental attitudes, parental preferences towards the implementation of SE and the factors contributed to their attitudes and perceptions. Most studies revealed that parents showed positive attitudes and support the inclusion of SE in school. They preferred age-appropriated SE to be introduced in elementary schools and secondary schools. Some parents supported SE which is aligned with religious teaching and cultural. Demographic factors, parents’ sexuality knowledge, religious and cultural factors could affect parental attitudes and perceptions towards SE. This understanding could be useful for policymakers and educators to encourage collaboration with parents to strengthen the effectiveness of the program and scale up SE to benefit the young generation.

“Providing Sex Education Is Challenging”: Malay Mothers’ Experience in Implementing Sex Education to Their Children with Intellectual Disabilities

“…They also stated that SE should be age-appropriate and tailored to the individual’s mental development, and education should be at a level that is understandable by children, similar to previous studies [ 38 , 45 , 46 ]. To meet parents’ perceived requirements and unmet needs of children with ID, Sravanti and Jayendra offered a model that described the “What, Why, and How” of five constructs to ease in providing SE: understanding human body, hygiene and self-care, social skills, privacy, safety, and handling feelings [ 46 ].…”

The existing pattern of mother-daughter communication of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) matters among Sinhalese adolescent girls aged 14-19 years, in Sri Lanka

“…A cross-sectional study carried out among the parents of Nigeria to determine the perception of timing and initiation of sexuality discussion with adolescents indicated that most parents preferred to initiate sexuality discussion with children only after puberty (14). Moreover, a systematic review that was carried out to assess parents' preference for sexuality education of adolescents, pointed out that parents perception of their children as too young to receive SRH information is a barrier to discussing sexual health matters with children (15).…”

“…However, the review of literature from western cultures indicated that mothers were okay with initiating sexual education for their children at a younger age like elementary school or before (15). A similar study carried out in the west found that the pre-adolescent age from 11-14 years is the best time for mothers to start sexuality discussions with their children since the children are more inquisitive during this phase and undergoing physical and psychological discomfort (16,17).…”

Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Parental Attitude and Health Beliefs Toward Sexuality Education

“…In addition, when developing these measurements, most researchers were targeting on parents of high school students (Odebode, 2019; Peter et al, 2015; Welshimer & Harris, 1994) with limited evaluation tools for parents with children attending primary schools. Parents’ expectations for sexuality education could be varied based on physical and mental maturity of their children (Barr et al, 2014; Yeo & Lee, 2020). Parents with older children might think sexuality education is more relevant to their children’s need.…”