Both parents and their children cannot or do not want to talk about sex and contraception. Almost none of the parents have built a relationship with their child - conducive to confiding and talking about growing up. It's a pity, because sex education prevents premature parenthood and becoming an adolescent grandfather.
Parents still feel the barrier related tosexual education , what's more, they have no need or desire to actively participate in their child's sexual education - according to a CBOS study conducted on "adolescent grandparents" " (1)as part of the 3rd edition of the Campaign for Conscious Parenthood" When 1 + 1=3 ". Research Center for Public Opinion Research(2)showed that "adolescent grandparents" reproduce patterns of lack of reliable conversation with children about puberty learned from the family home, andsexis still a topictabooin Polish reality. For generations, there has been no talk of contraception and pregnancy prevention in family homes. Grandparents, in their teens, learned about sex mainly from friends and colleagues, older siblings or cousins, and say that their knowledge of sex was negligible. There was hardly any talk about contraceptives because their parents did not use them, but most of all because both sex life and contraception were embarrassing topics. What is more, grandparents declared that they raised their children in the values taken from the family home, but they used different educational methods: they showed more understanding and affection, they tried to talk to their children more and spend time with them. Unfortunately, as this year's research shows, these conversations were not adapted to the real needs of young people starting sexual intercourse.
Sex education: duplicating mistakes
- "Young grandparents", for whom adolescent parenthood complicated their youth, regret that no one talked to them about sex, and yet most of them reproduced the same parenting mistakes as their parents: they also did not talk to their children on the topics of growing up or starting intercourse - explains prof. n. hum. Zbigniew Izdebski. - It would seem that there should be no sex in these familiesalready taboo. The results of the study confirm that nothing basically changes in sex education. As children, grandparents complained about the lack of good and reliable education at school and at home, as well as the lack of open discussion. When they faced a similar situation as their children began to grow up, they did not necessarily remember what this lack of knowledge meant to them in their youth. The most surprising thing is the enormity of parents' irresponsibility and the lack of drawing conclusions from their immature behavior in their teenage years.
Sex education at school
As research shows, also sex education at school has not changed much. Grandparents directly criticize the state of knowledge provided at school, describing it as insufficient. According to them, classes are not conducted by properly prepared staff, too little is said about contraception and the consequences of starting sexual intercourse. Schools do not take sex education seriously, do not devote enough time to these topics and do not provide young people with the necessary knowledge. In the opinion of grandparents, also young people are not ready to participate in such activities. Grandparents criticize the frivolous approach of their children to classes: "young people think they already know", "young people have their own minds and how young people know it better", "because boys laugh at such topics", "children run away from lessons on which they could learn something about intercourse, and the school has no way of making them walk "," the children are laughing and nothing comes out of these lessons. "
ProblemCampaign for Conscious Parenting "When 1 + 1=3"
The campaign was inspired by disturbing statistics on irresponsible sexual behavior of young people, as well as insufficient knowledge about contraception in Poland. This was confirmed by the research on sexual attitudes and behavior of young Poles, conducted in April 2008, the situation of adolescent mothers and adolescent fathers (2009), as well as the opinions of "adolescent grandparents" (2010). The aim of the campaign is to educate young people about responsible sexual behavior by making them aware that sex will always be related to the topic of motherhood and parenthood. The Conscious Parenting Campaign is designed to promote contraceptive knowledge and conscious family planning so that in the future, parents will be mature people to decide to have children. According to specialists, knowledge is the main factor enabling conscious parenting. Without information on contraception and without free access to it, no one will successfully implement their plans,especially in such a delicate matter as the intimate sphere. That is why the organizers of the Campaign set themselves the goal of education. As part of the Month of Conscious Parenthood, the Campaign visited with educational campaigns in 2008: Lublin, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk, in 2009: Białystok, Kraków, Olsztyn, Łódź and Poznań, and in 2010: Zielona Góra, Kraków, Katowice, Kielce, Rzeszow. In each city, it was possible to consult specialists: a gynecologist and / or a sexologist. The honorary patronage over the campaign was taken by: the Polish Gynecological Society and the Society for Family Development. The campaign was initiated by Gedeon Richter Marketing Polska Sp. z o.o. - patron of conscious parenting.
Sex education: will the internet replace it?
According to the respondents, young Poles today have many more sources of information at their disposal than their parents when they were their age. Among them are the Internet, television and color magazines. According to the respondents, young Poles, just like themselves, usually learn in a "spontaneous", random and uncontrolled way. Moreover, according to grandparents, in the Internet age, young people have knowledge about sexual behavior and its consequences, but show a lack of assertive behavior or are unable to use it under the influence of emotions and alcohol. According to their parents, the children are already educated by, among others, media that dazzle with sex. He has heard and covered all this topic, so both parents and children believe that they know everything about sex. Therefore, parents do not feel guilty for neglecting their children's sexual education.
Sex education: parental helplessness
Some of the respondents believed at all that they could not prevent their daughter / son's early parenthood. Most parents feel helpless because they are not authority figures for their own children who don't listen to them and don't want to talk to them. This is evidenced by the following statements of the respondents:
» Probably nothing could be done, we are helpless, this situation has taught us humility, to life, to everything, to our expectations (…) you can say, but what about will it arrive? There is no guarantee. Who will listen to some "strange" stories or talking parents? Young people have to find out on their skin. You can obey, you must even follow it, but you cannot protect it. The whole situation has taught me so much, I need to warn me, sensitize, talk, but what the children will do with this knowledge, we have no influence on it.» Can we help them somehow? I think that probably not, it is something like that, this forbidden fruit, that you want to try it so much, that only afterwards you wonder whatthere will be consequences ("double youth" born in 1970).» Because I know how to prevent? My child was raised and it was discussed, but they decided that the intercourse was unprotected.
Sex education: talking about sex is a must
According to prof. Zbigniew Izdebski, parents have the right to expect that other institutions, not them, will take responsibility for education in the field of sexuality. - From the psychological point of view, it is justified. But this absolutely does not justify them not to enforce from the school a reliable knowledge of sex education to young people. Parents should not make excuses for not having influence over their children's upbringing because they are not an authority for them. Seeing that the school is not involved in it, they do not show this activity themselves - says prof. n. hum. Zbigniew Izdebski. The recipe for effective transfer of knowledge may be the implementation of reliable sex education from the beginning of primary school, as well as competent "home sex education", that is, the ability to conduct dialogue on issues related to sexual life in the "triangle": parents - children - school. Above all, however, the "barriers of shame" need to be broken so that it is normally possible to tell children that if they do, they should just use contraceptives. Why complicate their lives at a young age? The more so that the Internet and the media will not replace a wise dialogue between parents and children about sexual life and its consequences.
--------------------------------------------- ----- 1) Young grandparents are people who became grandparents before their son / daughter turned 18. A "youthful" grandfather or grandmother is not always really young. In the case of large families, a large age difference between children and a late fatherhood, e.g. after 30 years of age, it happens that the "adolescent" grandfather or grandmother is already over 50, i.e. at an age that may be biologically and culturally associated with the appearance of the next generation, i.e. a grandson / granddaughter. 2) CBOS survey conducted for the purpose of the Campaign for Conscious Parenthood "When 1 + 1=3", March 2010, in-depth interviews with 30 adolescent grandparents, i.e. people who became a grandmother / grandfather before their son / daughter over 18 (17 grandmothers and 13 grandparents) from different regions of Poland, 6 people became grandmothers / grandfathers before they turned 40, the youngest "adolescent" grandparents were born in the years 1971 - 1974.