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Responsibilities, tensions and ways forward: parents’ perspectives on children’s sexuality education

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posted on 2023-04-19, 05:42 authored by Kerry H Robinson, Elizabeth SmithElizabeth Smith, Cristyn Davies
Children’s sexuality education continues to be plagued with tensions and controversies. In consequence, children’s access to sexuality education is severely compromised, especially in terms of the time dedicated to this topic, the content addressed, how it is taught and by whom. Based on a study of 342 Australian parents of primary school aged children we explore: (i) parents’ perceptions of the relevance and importance of sexuality education to their primary school aged children and the discourses that inform their perspectives; (ii) parents’ views on who should be responsible for the sexuality education of young children; (iii) whether there are certain aspects of sexuality education considered more appropriate for the family to address with children; and (iv) what the implications of these findings are for sexuality education policy and practice in Australian primary schooling. Despite the controversial nature of the topic, the majority of parents in this study believed sexuality education was relevant and important to primary school children and that it should be a collaborative approach between families and schools. However, some parents/carers acknowledged that while that they believed that some topics should only be addressed at home they also indicated that this often does not happen.

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP110104431].

History

Publication Date

2017-06-01

Journal

Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning

Volume

17

Issue

3

Pagination

15p. (p. 333-347)

Publisher

Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

ISSN

1468-1811

Rights Statement

© 2017 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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