The Sex Talk: Parental Communication and School-Based Sex Education

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Abstract

Sex education is both vital to the health of America’s youth and deeply inconsistent across the country. What drives these inconsistencies and inequities varies from policy differences, community input, or direct parental intervention. Parents hold the potential to encourage and educate or restrict and inhibit their child’s sexual health learning. This study examines the relationship between parental communication and formal sex education access with data from the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth. I find that young people who have high levels of parental communication on sexual health topics also have higher levels of access to sex education in school or community settings. This relationship did not extend to lesbian, gay, and bisexual students exhibiting dissimilar sex education access patterns.

Author

• Meghanne Bartlett-Chase, The University of Iowa